r/composting • u/GreyAtBest • 27d ago
Pisspost My mix may be a little off...
Relax, it's roughly 7 gallons of shredded cardboard that'll I'll be dumping coffee grounds and then multiple gallons on bokashied greens on. It'll all compact down, it was just pre-loading day and I thought the entire half of the tumbler being full of pizza box shred was funny.
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u/sinest 27d ago
For a second I thought those were cigarette butts and I was gonna be like dude I dont think that'll work
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u/Rimworldjobs 27d ago
Tobacco is a night shade right? Should be fine for tomatoes /s
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u/RdeBrouwer 27d ago
I do the same! I like a tumbler full of cardboard and then add greens. I dont have that much cardboard, but 20-30% when I start. U shred pizza boxes? What u do with the greasy part of the box?
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u/Shoesnice 27d ago
Not OP, but assuming you're talking about the part that is stained with the pizza grease, it will break down with everything else especially if he's got all the bokashi stuff going in.
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u/GreyAtBest 27d ago
The boxes sit in my garage for a while until I get around to them so they're pretty dry by the time I'm shredding
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u/PassPuzzled 27d ago
I wouldn't use cardboard with dye on it
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u/amilmore 26d ago
Im pretty sure most of it is soy based these days - unless its the glossy stuff right?
I also clutch with more colorful stuff that's covered with dye though. Unfortunately I get a lot of cardboard so I can "afford to be picky". I just try to offset it with grabbing random big brown boxes from neighbors on recycling day.
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u/glimmergirl1 27d ago
I do this too when I empty my tumbler. Preload it with all my shredded browns then add greens and more browns as I go.
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u/CurrentWrong4363 27d ago
Mix some compost in a bucket of water and pour it in.
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u/Lost_Lynx_6537 27d ago
Been making JMS and soaking the browns, great results!
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u/amilmore 26d ago
whats your recipe?
I love all fun little experiments with compost, they're great because they aren't high risk nor are they "essential". You can get perfectly good compost by heaping kitchen stuff and yard waste etc into a pile, but I like tinkering and having fun with this little game.
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u/Lost_Lynx_6537 26d ago edited 26d ago
5 gallons of rain water, one small potato boiled and mashed in one cup of the water, 15g sea salt, a handful of the mulch under that bush in the corner of my yard that has the white mycelium growing through it, you know the one.
Compost is hot and full of that same mycelium.
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u/EqualPassenger4271 27d ago
Way better then then trillion cigarette butts I thought this was at first...
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u/mrbearuk69 27d ago
I tried a mix of shredded paper and coffee grounds to see how good it was without anything else. It was great for seed starting. I added quail poop the following time at that is now my goto potting mix
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u/Ancient-Patient-2075 25d ago
Pissposting aside, how do you find bokashi/cardboard combination? That might be my composting future because the weed pressure in my garden is going down drastically...
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u/GreyAtBest 25d ago
If you're using a tumbler I can't recommend it enough. The bokashi lets me be really lazy with how exact mix mixes are and does a fantastic job of getting and then staying hot. Getting the bokashi process dialed in for your situation can be a little annoying but once it's dialed on it's great.
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u/Ancient-Patient-2075 25d ago
Thanks! I actually have a big old free standing pile. I just few days ago while turning added a couple of buckets of bokashi, which I think stank up the pile (which is a new one, nothing else so far has managed to do that!) and heated it like rocket fuel. I think I might have needed more browns... Anyway, I suspect that a free standing pile of cardboard and bokashi would quickly go anaerobic, it'll require something for texture. Twigs, woodchips or such.
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u/GreyAtBest 25d ago
I don't fully understand the science behind bokashi but it does kick composting into easy mode/you can get REALLY sloppy with your mix. Bokashi if done correctly is anarobic, but because it's fermenting that's actually what you want, and while some will say it has no smell, mine definitely has like a stale beer/alcohol smell for a day or so until it gets cooking and then the smell just kinda ceases to exist. My understanding is that so long as there some medium for the bokashi to react to, it'll breakdown pretty quickly regardless or conditions which is how bokashi soil factories work.
For someone with a tumbler and a little space the bokashi step means I can empty one side of my tumbler every 6 or so weeks when it's not cold and I can compost basically anything without fear of critters showing interest.
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u/Ancient-Patient-2075 24d ago
Well it did heat up my pile really well! I'm amazed. Pile was about to start cooling I think, a little bit too early for comfort as there's weeds to kill and seeds to sterilize in there, but adding the bokashi while turning really cranked the heat back up.
The smell part is strange, I don't think that my bokashi smelled much like anything right out of the bucket, it had been sitting there for months and had just totally mellowed. Pretty amazing way to save food scraps for composting! The juice had smelled like stale cider all the time because I had a lot of apple cores in there. Not bad at all. So I wasn't too worried, especially as I usually find that an active pile will eat any smells away. But for some reason adding the bokashi really made the whole pile stink, much more than the bokashi straight up from bucket! I have no idea what would cause that.
Anyway. Shame about the stink, but the heat is so good I'll definitely use bokashi in future piles too!
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u/Leggy-Naggy 27d ago
That's some fine shredded cardboard there! How do you shred it? Taking a break from shredding twigs and cupplant and sunflower stems and such with my dinky little electric chipper. A bit tedious but I entertain myself by calling it Driveway Fargo...
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u/Serrahfina 27d ago
I personally got a 20 page shredder at the thrift store. See em all the time. Mine has been fine but if it does, well, it was $8.
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u/Leggy-Naggy 27d ago
Thanks. I have a lightweight one, 4-5 pages max, also found at the thrift store. I use it for newspaper and junk mail
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u/Mewhomewhy 27d ago
Your mix and my mix would have a wonderful child together.