60 years of composting

I am west of Chicago in one of the suburbs. The first time I was exposed to composting was when I was 9 or 10. The neighbor asked me if I would turn her compost pile for her. She paid me .10 cents. Over the years I have tried many different types of compost piles. I keep coming back to the 3 or 4 bin system, that are 3 to 4 foot cubed bins. Currently I have a 3 bins each 3 1/2 foot cube arrangement. I wish I had 4 bins. I live in a subdivision where you do not see any compost piles so I built a picket fence as part of the construction so when you look at it, it looks like a fence in my back yard. We have lived here about 8 years and previously lived 35 years on a 1 1/2 acre lot out in the country. The first fall we were here I started talking to my neighbors about getting their yard waste. I get the leaves, weeds, and garden waste from 5 neighbors to create the compost i need for building my beds. I repay them in produce from my garden each summer. I use to get horse manure from a place about 2 miles away from here but I stopped that because of the mess it created in my SUV. Let me get to the point. I have found a great way to handle all of the leaves I get in about a 5 week period in the fall. I fit most of the chopped leaves and yard waste into the 3 bins and bury some of it in my raised beds if I am reworking one of them. When a neighbor drops off their leaves next to the compost pile I get out there and use a lawnmower with a bag attachment and a dual mulching blade system to mow the leaves. I usually make two to three passes over them. One with the bag system shut off and the last one with it open so I can collect the clippings. Most of the leaves are broken down to the size of corn flakes when I am done chopping the leaves. If you look at the picture of the thurmomator you can see the size of the clippings. I take the bag and empty it into one of my bins then i start walking on the leaves to get them compacted down as much as possible. The next thing I do is to add about a 1/8” layer of soil on top of the leaves. After adding the soil I throughly spray everything with water for about 5 minutes. Then I repeat the process all over again. I keep doing this process until I get to the top of the bin or I can not safely get on top of the pile any more to walk on it. When bin 1 is full I turn it into bin 2 and let it heat up until bin number 1 is filled up using the process described above. Then I turn bin number 2 into bin number 3 and bin one into 2. When I am turning the compost from bin 2 into 3 I will top off bin 3 with compost from bin 2. When I am turning these bins I throughly water the layers of the piles as I go along. When bin 1 is full I have either left it until spring and turn it in the spring or I will turn it out in front of bin 2 and then turn it back into bin one. I do the same thing with bin 2. Bin 2 and 3 end up turned at least two times before winter comes.

The picture I have posted is a thermometer reading of bin 3 on December 2. We had not gotten a heavy freeze yet but the nights were getting into the high 20s and days were in the 30s. After we get constant temps below 30 the top layers of the piles freeze and I can not get the prob through the top layer. Someday I may try to dig through the frozen layer and see what the temperature is in the middle. I get my last leaves and yard waste the last week of November. One neighbor has 4 trees that hang onto their leaves until then. If the bins are full I will fill up plastic garbage bags to store them until spring. If I get a bag of yard waste that is mixed with grass clippings and yard waste I will empty it on my paths to smother the weeds. I try to keep the grass out of my compost piles. I do not like the idea of putting the residue of the chemicals put on the grass into my compost piles. I have worked toward being almost organic. That is one reason I quit getting horse manure. It can have traces of medication that the horses had received. I am as close to being an organic Gardner as I ever have been. In the spring I try to empty bin 2 and 3 into the garden before they compost down to much. I like to put chunky compost into my bed so it can help the soil structure and finish composting in the garden bed. The chunky compost is mainly wood that is ground up from twigs and small branches my neighbors give me. I just grind them up along with the leaves. Due to health problems this spring I was not able to empty any of the bins. I am finally getting to it now and the picture of compost that i have posted is compost I was putting on a flower bed I cleaned out during the cool weather we had the last two weeks.
I am posting this so if anyone wants to get a larger amount of compost in a short period of time you could try this method.