My neighbors were getting rid of these pallets and I was able to snatch them up before they hit the curb for trash day. I have been toying with the idea of building/buying a compost bin since starting up a backyard garden over the past few weeks and couldn’t turn down the opportunity.
More info and pictures here, https://mastodon.sdf.org/@Famicoman/110561970446094158
I saw this Ted talk by some scientist who researched all the various types of composting and according to their data at least, using just leaves turned out to be the most rapid, efficient and effective medium for composting detritus into fertile soil. Egg shells and all the other stuff we use will eventually break down, but it doesn’t break down fast enough to disperse its nutrients among the soil apparently, so you have bits and pieces of extremely slow to break down matter, whereas with leaves, everything breaks down rapidly and uniformly. I tried it myself and I’ve always found eggshells and orange peels in my compost weeks later, and even once got a fungal infection in the soil that killed a houseplant, but when I used leaves, especially dry leaves that I crinkled up with my hands first and then mixed into the dirt I was gardening with, I instantly had premium soil.
I don’t want to discourage the way you or anybody does composting, I just found this talk very interesting and after trying it myself I did like how homogeneous and healthy the soil was after I went to just leaves as compost.
Let me find the talk in case you’re interested.
It’s been a few years, but I believe this was the guy: https://youtu.be/n9OhxKlrWwc
Hey thanks for the information! Anecdotally, how long did it take for the eggshells to break down for you (if you kept them in). I’m not planning on using any of this until next spring/summer so I’m not too worried about what will be breaking down short-term.
Either way, I’ll have a massive amount of leaves coming in this fall from my property, so this will be 90% leaves when all is said and done!
After a long time, at least six months, I dug through the compost and the fragments of shells and every original piece looked the same regardless of the size, like it hadn’t broken down at all. I even found some orange peels that hadn’t fully broken down, which really surprised, so I started using a food processor to really grind the eggshells into powder first, but that powder is really fine, and it floats everywhere when you take off the lid and then after I mixed in the eggshell powder, that was when I got the fungal infection in the soil, and I was just like okay, and started looking up other methods and then found that talk, just went full leaf. It just seems like it takes a really long time for most trash to break down. Like some fruit peels apparently need half a year or multiple years to break down, which is crazy to me.
And I’ll say I lived in Hawaii at the time, which obviously is incredibly humid and damp all the time, and these eggshells and orange peels were there all year. I could feel the heat of the compost pile, so matter was decomposing, but there are just a lot of food materials that don’t break down as fast as I assumed they would at the time.
Like banana peels! I don’t think I ever saw a banana peel break down. They were just there every time I looked through the pile, arrogantly enduring next to the egg shells and the orange peels.
I see some plywood pieces in there (I think the ones with grain direction going 90 degrees from the length of the board). Expect those to peel apart and crumble when they get wet. The solid wood will hold up longer.
This is how it’s done, nice! Already thinking about expanding to two or three bins?
I was wondering, is there a specific reason for the cardboard on the bottom?
I could definitely see myself going to at least two bins, I’ll have to keep my eye out for more pallets!
I read somewhere that the cardboard on the bottom can help in the beginning to keep the bottom of the pile moist when the pile is small. No idea if that’s true or actually helpful, but I had cardboard so I figired I’d give it a shot. It’ll fall apart eventually anyway!
Nice job! If you have any spare boards left over, consider making a box you can stand on to pee on the pile!
I have my own process for eggshells. I rinse them and collect them in a box under my sink. Every so often I take them all out, put them on a baking sheet, and sanitize them in the oven. 300 degrees for 8 mins I figure is plenty.
Then I take the nice, dry, brittle shells and grind them in an old coffee grinder I have. They turn into dust which I add straight into my vegetable garden. Composting whole shells doesn’t work that well, but this does the trick.
They don’t need to be chemically transformed. There’s plenty of good minerals right there as long as you can make enough surface area for them to be accessible.
