[trisham]

That's a good idea, but our soil is like cement. All of our gardening is done on raised beds. I may have to break down and spend some serious money on something that I can keep in the yard. The worm composting method sounds interesting, but we have so much material I'm not sure that it would make sense. We eat a lot of shellfish, which I love to compost. The Mastiff next door loves it, too. :)

We do compost yard waste, but don't use it on our gardens. We have three areas where we just throw weeds, branches, small trees, leaves and so on. This compost is not accessible, however, since this is a very hilly piece of land. We leave as much of the grass as we can on the lawn, but if it's too heavy, it has to be raked. I'd like to gravel in the entire back yard.

[Sarajevo]

My wife built a compost bin out of 2- 4x4's, cut in half; and 3 pieces of 4ft x 4ft heavy wooden lattice. The front is 5 pieces of 5/4 decking slid into a groove. The bin is inexpensive, free standing, and 4ft x 4ft x 4ft holds quite a bit of trimmings, scraps, grass, etc. We recently covered it with plastic deer netting to keep the chickens out of it. They could empty the bin in a days time.

You might find that the compost will loosen up the underlying soil unless it actually is rock or concrete.

[meowmeow]

We eat a lot of shellfish, which I love to compost.

You can compost that?? My husband asked me the other night when he was cleaning up the remains of our shrimp dinner if I was going to compost the tails and I said that wasn't a compost thing. I'll be sad if I've been tossing shrimp tails for the last year and could have composted them :(