My containers overall mostly had coffee grounds, vegetable scraps, discarded science experiments (i.e. spoiled leftovers), and the occasional donated spoiled produce from friends to whom I've described SKIP.
At first, my mulch was just dirt. Later, I had twigs and leaves, too. (so fancy!)
OK I think I screwed up the directions for documenting this, and now i have to go out and collect all the compost again from under the mulch, put it back in the bucket, etc. I have pics of the buckets full but not next to the hole opened up, and pics of the hole opened up without the bucket. And today I learned I am even worse at following directions than I thought was possible for any intelligent life form. Hm. The Following Directions airhead badge is next on my list. I just have some weird mental block here.
I realized my mistake on the one i did today and redid it, so you can see the time-stamps don't quite go in order, because the picture of everything covered over again is right before the picture of me re-dumping the full bucket into the hole. (It's not that complicated, Josh, how did you ever pass driver's ed?.)
I'm just going to post what I have and see if it's close enough.
this one is out of order and I don't know how to re-order it. i realized i screwed up put the compost back in the bucket to take this picture then put it back in the hole and then covered it
Community Building 2.0: ask me about drL, the rotational-mob-grazing format for human interactions.
Joshua Myrvaagnes
pollinator
Posts: 2211
Location: Massachusetts, 5a, flat 4 acres; 40" year-round fairly even
My buckets were filled with our own food scraps plus some I got from a neighbor who was no longer able to get them composted (they would go to landfill, thanks Covid-19!). The scary prickly things are chom-choms or rambutans, my partner is Vietnamese. Yes, we have a banana tree in zone 6, don't laugh. It supposedly would fruit in an indoor space with enough sun and maybe some steroids, and we planted it out cause it seemed it would be happier. Also it makes us look like REAL permaculturists. Fun fact--you can use the leaves as disposable plates. You can also see bits of sugar apple in there, the lumpy fruit. She orders this from the tropics, it doesn't grow around here. She hates hot weather but can't live without fruits from her home climate, go figure. Also I was lazy and stored up the second bunch of compost in 2 kitty litter buckets for probably a month while August made me feel like a raisin in the sun, and weirdly maggots and black soldier flies had managed to lay in there! The white bucket was just about full both times, and it is a 5-gallon bucket as far as I know, standard 5-gal garden bucket.
Community Building 2.0: ask me about drL, the rotational-mob-grazing format for human interactions.
Joshua Myrvaagnes
pollinator
Posts: 2211
Location: Massachusetts, 5a, flat 4 acres; 40" year-round fairly even
Shoot, i left out the 2nd compost bucket before pic when it was actually full. I can merge this all into one post if it helps, I just am trying to not use the "edit" button because sometimes it says that makes even more work for admins.
2-2-compost-2-before-20200923_123435.jpg
2nd compost bucket before it went in
Community Building 2.0: ask me about drL, the rotational-mob-grazing format for human interactions.
Here is my submission for the Gardening - Sand - Ruth Stout Style Composting BB.
To document the completion of the BB, I have provided Opalyn's Log for Ruth Stout Composting. I'm including only 2 photos here and the rest are in my log.
Over the course of BB20, I collected approximately 5.5 gallons of compost and made a RS compost pile on the Quartz Road side of a Hugelkultur berm at Base Camp.
After returning to my sister's in Tacoma, I collected approximately 5.2 gallons of compost and made a RS compost pile in the chop and drop project area.