Ruth Stout style composting (2 spots) - PEP BB gardening.sand.RuthStout

Ruth Stout BB submission

Hello,

Here are 4 example of the Ruth Stout style of composting. I had started with a 5 gallon bucket, but I do not produce enough volume of compost to merit that size, so I downsized to a 2 gallon bucket.

Since the first bucket was larger it was starting to break down by the time I was able to dump it, and I had to find a few spots for that much. The remaining buckets were much easier to fill and find a spot for. Details of each bucket are with the photo.

Composting party from PTJ - This was my task. Did a bunch of loads


Random order of buckets - each bucket was about 3 gallons - So I composted about 15 gallons.

I collected food scraps in pails that are about 3 gallons.

I did Ruth Stout composting at Wheaton labs. They've been adding sawdust to the compost buckets to keep it from smelling, so I did 3 spots to make sure I hit the 10 gallon requirement. All of these were done on hugels. The buckets were all close to full, and they are 5 gallon buckets.

OK, this is an attempt at my first BB -- seemed like something I could accomplish in short order.

I have a Seaberry stand with six plants that I deep-mulched with wood chips and cardboard early this summer and decided they would be a fine recipient for this "Ruth Stout compost" feeding. Herein, I'm documenting giving the first four of them 2.5 gallons of kitchen waste each. (I stopped with four because coming up with the ten gallons of compost ran me out, so the last two will have to wait a few weeks, but I'll get them too.)



The first bucket I found was a 15 quart capacity (3.75 gallons) Rubbermaid and I calculated that if I got it 2/3 full, I'd have exactly 2.5 gallons, so I did that four times. It's sort of hard to figure what 2/3 full is and the top of a pile of kitchen scraps isn't exactly even, so I made sure to go a little over each time.



So here's photo-documentation of the four buckets of slop I buried near my four little bushes:






And a little panorama with the location of the newly fed seaberries in the lower left, just for fun:



So, did I do this right?