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

Here's my 2 five gallon bucket Ruth Stout submission

2 bucket of 5gallons from my canning bb and a corn roast.

So for this BB I need to do some explaining. I attempted this with the 5 gallon bucket, however I live alone and could not produce enough organic material before it turned into mush. I believe that as a single person, even one who eats from home almost every night, I needed to reduce the size and repetitions of my compost bucket as filling 2 5 gallon buckets by person is not feasible.

So for this BB I used a roughly 1.25 gallon container as my compost bin. I had to do 12 repetitions of this BB in order to make the 10 gallon quota. The reason I did 12 is because the first two fill ups I had were only about .75 gallons full and I wanted to make sure I got this bb covered.  I had two mint plants that I used as the two spots to compost and cover. I apologize in advance for the massive amount of pictures. In an effort to avoid a colossal amount of pics, I will be adding only a few to show the two spots where everything was dumped and covered. I have more photos of stuff covered/ uncovered that I can add if needed.

I did this Ruth Stout style composting project at Wheaton Labs when I was there for SKIP camp in July 2022.

I put the compost in the mulched hugel beds around the Fisher Price house with compost from the metal buckets in the kitchen and classroom area. They are 3-gallon buckets, so it took nearly 3 and a half buckets to get to the full 10 gallons.

Note: I'm a bit frustrated with the pictures, because the way the buckets flare out, a picture taken from directly above exaggerates how much space there is from the top of the contents to the rim of the bucket. In other words, they were a bit fuller than they look. Three of them were basically full--not to overflowing, but as near to the rim as reasonable--and one of them was a little over half full.

Here are my photos of each bucket with the hole in the mulch where I'll put the compost, followed by the empty bucket and the mulch mounded back over the compost I'd added.

Many thanks!

 1. 2.5 gallons - mostly pulp from carrots, collards greens, apples, and cellery.
 2. 2.5 gallons - mostly beet stems and bad leaves from canning.
 3. 5 gallons - mostly apple scraps, carrot pulp, and garlic peelings.
 - mulch came from grass clippings before the lawn went to seed this summer.

Other half of my bb submission ( couldn't edit my original post to add it)

I have a total of 3 pails and 2 holes and the pictures are labeled to the bulleted list:

1) it's in a 10 gallon container with an estimate of 8 gallons

2) the 10 gallon container has an estimate of 4 gallons AND another pail of an estimate of 2 gallons

For a total estimate of 14 gallons

So starting the long slog to getting 10 gallons.
1 qt moldy pasta sauce & 1 qt homemade chicken broth that hid in the back of the fridge till scary.

This took a little while. The pros seem to be composting in place is great and should lead to less off gassing because of applying the scraps underneath a layer of mulch. Less carting of compost around.

The cons for me are significant too though. First of all, By the time I could collect a sizeable bucket of kitchen scraps it attracted a lot of fruit flies. I prefer to get the scraps into my compost pile much quicker and let the spiders handle the flies. Were I to keep this up I would do it in mulch smaller volumes progressively around the garden, probably around more perennials. The other, more significant con for me is I don't have so much open mulched space in my garden. Doing this regularly would mean composting between growing vegetables, which is as I understand it not so great. This time worked well, as I'm putting these raised beds to sleep anyway. I will have to consider whether or not ruth stout style is appropriate for me in the future or not.

I filled my bucket full 3 times. The bucket holds 15 liters, so I accumulated 45 liters of scraps which is equivalent to 11.8 US gallons.

I applied the first bucket to site 1 and 2, because I couldn't clear enough space in one site to empty the entire bucket.

I applied the second bucket to site 3, and the third bucket to site 4.

Site 1 with cleared mulch


Site 1 with bucket of scraps


Site 1 with mulch restored and added


Site 2 cleared of mulch


Site 2 with bucket (remaining scraps from after filling site 1)


Site 2 with scraps visible


Site 2 with mulch restored and added


Site 2 with empty bucket


Site 3 with mulch cleared and bucket


Site 3 with scraps visible


Site 3 with mulch restored and added


Site 3 with empty bucket


Site 4 with mulch cleared


Site 4 with bucket


Site 4 with scraps visible


Site 4 with mulch restored and added


Site 4 with empty bucket


Edit: Added missing photos

To document your completion of the BB, provide the following:
 - a photo of the bucket of kitchen scraps next to the opened mulch
 - a photo of the empty bucket and the new mound of mulch
 - repeat for second bucket
 - describe the volume of your bucket(s) and how full they were

With an urban single-person home it took a while to get 10 gallons total,  it takes me about a week to have a full gallon.  Then the number of photos was getting crazy so I attempted to put them in collages to minimize files/posts.

I forgot to keep the empty containers in some, so I had to go back and take new pictures to add.

A few of my containers were not quite full so I'm adding 2 bonus pictures here (ones that didn't get the empty container added, doh).   PHEW.  

I hope this qualifies!   Ten total,  one-gallon kitchen compost containers emtpied "Ruth Stout" style in my wood chip gardens: