27 Composting Myths in 15 minutes - Do it Right - Save Time and Money

As a new gardener I found YouTube both a blessing and a curse. Do this! Don't do that! You are a blessing because you cut through the noise, make gardening simple and give me the gardening joy I had expected it to be.

I knew an old women who pre-washed literally everything in the kitchen in a separate sink, which drained in a bucket. She not only saved soap and hot water, because the dishes were already almost clean: All the nutrients went to the compost. But was hard, to identify it as a compost, because the top layer was only worms. I never have seen a comparable amount of worms in any other compost. And I have seen a lot.

Exactly, I hear this stuff all the time it drives me nuts. Nature has been doing it all forever.

3 years ago, a racoon got runover in front of my house. It stood there for 2-3 days. The town never picked it up. So I dragged it to my compost pile and buried it in the compost. Within 3 weeks, it was completely gone. When I went to turn the pile, I was expecting some parts to still be there. It was completely gone, bone and all. No sign, no trace of it. I thought maybe some animal dug it up. Nope. The pile looked undisturbed.

Thank you thank you thank you. People are all concerned about what they have to do to “begin” composting. I tell people “start a pile” and if you think about it, water it if it’s dry. If you don’t water it, no big deal.. if you give it ideal situations t will compost faster. What’s wrong with slow compost? Just start… if you don’t mind a messy look, leave the stuff there.

Thanks- good video. I used to periodically turn my largish compost pile until I realized the pile tends to be inhabited by creatures I value in the garden- garter snake family in summer and toads hibernating in winter so now I more or less leave it alone and just scrape off top third or so into new pile when I judge bottom is ready.

This is the first time I have heard to keep paper out of the compost pile. Also it never occurred to me paper had no nutritive value. I shred my non-glossy junk mail and use it as a brown. It shreds very fine. When ( I at least thought) my compost is finished, there are no paper shreds, tea bags or anything else. I can’t tell the difference between my compost and my clay soil. It does have tons of pill bug families though. This is confusing.

Great info. I have a big pile of whatever I find in the garden. Heck you can even put hair from haircuts into the pile. Chuck it in the pile. I only dig into it and bury kitchen scraps into the compost pile from small bin I have in the kitchen. I don’t turn it, the worms/fat grubs in the pile do all the work. I have a small drip sprayer above the pile that waters my pile every few days. If I dig into the pile with my hand, I get a lot of earthworms/grubs/earthworm cocoons with every handful. I get some fat seedlings that grow in there too which I plant up elsewhere. Free plants every year. I just strain the compost with a metal screen I need to use it. The only hard part is getting enough bioactive mass in the beginning to start it. After that you just chuck organic matter into it.

I compost everything. One inch spread in august and peas and oats planted as a cover. They die each winter. I plant transplants in these beds. they do great. Thanks much for this video Dr. Pavlis.

Exactly= Nature knows exactly how to on its own

Some of the myths arose from vermicomposting. Worms don´t like some stuff…sooooooo….I gave away my vermicomposter and moved the worms into compost heaps. Now everybody is much happier.

I compost everything in 4ft cube bays- if it was once alive and it rots chuck it on and eventually when it goes cold the worms move in and do the rest

I have tried vitually every one of these myths, and each and every time, PROVEN how right you are, Mr. Pavlis. I have also read your book on conposting and highly recommend it! I am still reading "Olant Science" and then onto the "Science of Microbes.""

So sensible and helpful, thank you! None of my experience contradicts anything I've heard here. If I were to add one lesson learned, it would be that composting is much slower and produces much less product than we expect at the outset.

Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham mentions evidence for most animals preferring cooked food, since it's easier to digest and takes less energy to extract nutrients. Still not a reason not to compost it, but thought you'd be interested. Great book.

From my own experience I’ve discovered “compostable” plastic doesn’t decompose, even in a hot pile! However one of my kids cotton tee shirts decomposed down to nothing except the label in a semi hot compost pile in about 3 months!!!

When the city started to collect organic waste separately I got a new bin, a little bucket for the kitchen an roll of bags of this "bio-plastic" for free. Of course they never got anything from me, but I gladly use(d) the stuff for my own purposes. Karma is a bitch: I was picking pieces of these damn bags out of my own compost for three years...

If you chop and drop or chop and compost, which loses more in gas. How do you apply compost to the soil and at what stage to minimise losses from gas and not turn anaerobic in winter. Is it better to apply to the suface and grow large rooted plants in it, to get the material into the soil, or just mix it it, when harvesting root vegetables

I have a large, three bin composting setup. Each bin is 5x5x5. One bin is for "finished" compost that cures over time. One bin is actively composting, my hot pile. The last bin gets filled over the year with rough material, which will get layered with grass clippings and leaves I mow up with a towed lawn vacuum. I compost everything; the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving, table scraps, weeds, grass and leaves, etc. I have a One year cycle for each bin and rotate the material through the bins. I screen the almost finished compost with the fines going in the curing bin and the larger stuff going back into the new, active bin.

I thought the problem with cooked food was the salt? Especially since I live in a salty area as it is?