My household eats a lot of produce, and does a lot of cooking from scratch, so I often have kitchen scraps to add. I toss it all in.
Every day this week, my pitchfork has clunked against half a coconut shell (rind?).
The other half is in there somewhere too.
I'm expecting to find that for quite a long time to come.
What's your chunky bit?
Over the last 5 or six years I've tried to save, probably 100 avocado pits. I've had like 4 successes. The oldest two are probably 5 feet tall and have flowers for the first time
I use a tumbler so mine aren’t sprouting but I have avocado seeds that I think have had an anniversary or two in there.
Two years ago I pulled out a 12 inch tall tree growing from an avocado pit in my compost.
Good for you! Mine never even sprout!
I thought the tree from a store bought avocado seed would not bear fruit resembling your typical avocado? You need to get a graft right?
My understanding is it is kind of random, as avocado isn't true to seed. Just like any other fruit tree. Might be unnoticeable difference, might be worse than the store, might be better.
Largely I think it is a myth perpetrated by the industry to get you to buy from them. Similar to the notion you can only save seeds from heirlooms
Good luck! Hope you grow a strain that is big with those micro pits.
Avacado pits will often crumble if I squeeze them if they have been in there for a season.
I just toss the avocado pits out in the yard an the squirrels and chipmunks seem to take care of them.
My avocado skins have stuck around and formed a pleather like quality
Chop your avocado pits and they'll break down much quicker. If you use the heel of your life to remove the pit from the fruit, you're already halfway there.
This comment is going to cause a lot of trips to the ER
"avocado hand" is a well-known phenomenon already. Cutting a pit in half is not dangerous if you have decent knife skills.
If Americans aren’t taught basic finance skills in school what makes you think knife skills is common.
Eat != Cook
I usually clean off the avocado pits and toss them in the backyard for the squirrels, but one ended up in my compost and it's trying to sprout like crazy.
My wife refuses to crush the eggshells and I don’t always catch them so we have a few eggshells that just won’t die.
I like to dry mine out in the oven, it makes crushing them fun and they break down quicker once they’re brittle
I put mine in a jar and every now and then microwave it to dry them out. Once the jar is filled I’ll blend them and add to my worm farm as a fine powder
You waste energy by trying to speed up an energy free process…. Brain
Do what works for you, bud
My wife refuses as well it’s annoying.
Those coconut shells are absolutely the most persistent! I swear they decay in the compost pile less than plastic does! I throw it onto the woody mulch under trees.
The chunky bits in my compost are mostly bones, wood chunks, and mango seeds. If the mango seed gets a hole or crack in it, it'll finally start to rot. I just throw these items into the woody mulch under some trees and asparagus near the compost bins, or throw them into the bottom of the next round. Or if they make it to the garden with the compost I try to tuck them under the soil. They'll decompose eventually, no worries.
Corn Cobs.
I compost a great volume of material. I turn my compost piles with a tractor and plow blade. 6ft high rows, 10 ft wide, 200ft long. A couple weeks ago I was turning a pile and uncovered a mostly decayed raccoon skeleton. I'm guessing that it had tried to burrow into the compost for warmth during the winter, but succumbed to the gases and oxygen displacement. 🦴
I did not dig it out as there's really no point at this stage.
And you were probably annoyed at finding produce stickers in your compost. 😄
I would rather have a dead raccoon in my compost than a produce sticker
That’s a hard take.
😂 I've seen some of the photos that people have posted where there are dozens upon dozens of them settled at the bottom of their compost pile.
Dead raccoons or produce stickers?
A dead raccoon or it's weight in produce stickers? ⚖️ Evil, no?
Personally I'm just fine with the ex-raccoon as it's basically just unprocessed bone meal at this point.
What’s heavier, a kilogram of dead raccoons or a kilogram of produce stickers?
Sorry something about your comment triggered the memory of that video lol
If I could have a 6x10x200 compost pile, absolutely. Give me a dozen.
What's the PLU code for a dead raccoon?
🤦 (making a note)
I didn't think to whip out my phone to check the rib cage for a barcode.
🤳🩻
A selfie with the racoon (zombie) is easily justifiable, IMHO.
Idk, 95% sure they'd be especially bitey. 🦝🧟
4011
I think that's actually bananas
It’s actually for the boneless bananas, but they won’t know if you don’t tell them you didn’t actually get the boneless bananas!
Did you call for help? “Cleanup on aisle compost!”
Pine cones
Me too.
Bits of charcoal from the fireplace ashes.
Same. I try to break them up with my hands but some of the charcoal bits are not entirely burnt pieces of wood the thickness of my wrist
Lobster and clam shells
Yes, I put lots of Russell shells in a couple of years ago and some are still hanging on in there
Quince fruit. They don't come off until cooler weather so they overwinter and turn into golf balls.
Christmas tree stump cutoff
Same. Every deep turn I bring up Christmas tree bits and the larger bones from the Thanksgiving turkey.
Squash stems and peach seeds
Chicken bones.
Pumpkin stem from 2 years ago
Bamboo toothbrush
Those "bamboo" products might have a lot of glue or resin or something holding the bamboo together...
I’ve got some oyster shells in mine that never seem to break down! Although my son likes to crush them with a brick. I’ve heard the resulting powder is good for the worms.
A bit of old coir doormat has been turning up in my heaps for several years now... I keep putting it back, it'll rot away eventually!! :D
Pieces of bone & a rusted hammer
Hammers don’t compost very well.
So, the victim and the weapon?
Rookie mistake. You can't leave them in the same place.
It could have been a suicide?
Sure looks like it was to me, officer! Wink wink, nudge nudge.
On a side note, whoever owns this compost pile was a Boeing whistle-blower!
It was a deer skull, but I figured it's rotted enough that I should pull it out. I like to keep at least that part of their carcass semi-intact. And I don't enjoy stabbing into it. Last time I did that it was pretty gross. So the other bones will be the primary "rattling" objects in there.
I put a banksia flower in my bin and every time it surfaces I gasp thinking it’s a big ol rat
Carrot and Potato peels. Not necessarily clunking, but they take for freaking ever to break down. Go figure, the root vegetables don’t break down quickly in the dirt. I gotta dry them out before I add them but sometimes I just can’t be bothered and I always end up slightly regretting it
I Bokashi all my kitchen scraps first and that really helps things break down quickly.
Mussel and oyster shells. Old cotton t-shirts.
Pineapple tops! Idk what they’re called but them suckers take forever to break down and I have like 5 of them in there cuz me and my bf eat so much pineapple
Mussels. I threw in a few dozen 3 years ago. They get sifted out every harvest and go back in. They are slightly smaller than they were 3 years ago. Another 4 years should do it!
At some point potatoes took root. Now any time I turn the pile tiny potato’s roll out.
Last fall's pumpkin stems.
Currently, a three foot piece of 1x2. When I get something that won't rot I like to whale on it with a pick axe in my murder hole, smash it with a single jack on a stone paver or slice it up with an extremely sharp knife (or a sawsall) on a random piece of 2x6 I keep out there.
I'm sorry your murder hole
Beet chunks, blackberry roots and avocado pits
Peach pits and avocado seeds
Macadamia nut shells. Those things need a screw press just to open them. They're less destructible then a Ginkgo tree in a nuclear explosion.
Corn and sunflower stalks.
Maybe a corn cob or two and some boxwood sticks floating around.
Pineapple top
Got a few pineapple crowns in there that take a long time to compost down.
I won't stop eating pineapple though. Not even for my compost.
Okra stems from last year's garden. I keep throwing them in the new hot bin after the rest of the compost breaks down. This year they'll go in the woods, like the sticks they are.
Bones. I Bokashi all my kitchen waste and then add it to the compost bin. So a year later when I spread it, my beds look like little graveyards. The bones don’t seem to attract anything by then, so unless I pick them out, they build up.
A chunk of mushroom substrate. It's from one of those do-it-yourself mushroom kits that comes in a box. It looks like a cube of tofu, so you'd think it would break right down, because mushrooms eat it, right? Wrong. It's been hanging around for more than a year.
Hey I have a coconut shell in mine too!
An oyster shell
Avocado pits
I chuck the occasional log in there
Corn cobs seem to take a while to break down
Pistachio shells
I have quite a few gourd shells rattling around. Last year I let some decorative gourds take over a bed I wasn't using and they ended up covering half my garden and choking out my blueberry bushes. It's like an Easter egg hunt every time I go out there even still and I just chuck them into the compost pile lol
Pine cones. I have a quite large Aleppo Pine in my backyard. For every one that completely decomposes, the tree drops 10 more.
I moved my compost setup 2 years ago. I filtered all the partially decomposed pine cones out and had a pile about 3’x3’x1’. That pile was placed on the bottom of the newly moved bin. It’s taken the full 2 years for that to finally breakdown.
Leek leaves!
3 chunky squirrels that drowned in my pool.
You need to add an escape ladder. (From the pool, not the compost). You’d be sad if next time it was something nicer than a squirrel.
An unfinished chew bone my dog had buried in the yard over most of winter.
Yeah, mine are usually avocado pits and larger pieces of coconut shell and husk. Sometimes chunks of wood
lamb bones
How much urine would it take to cancel out a produce sticker?
All of the avocado pits and a piece of carrot that has an unfathomable will to stay intact.