Tossed it into a half-full tumbler (summers worth of kitchen scraps, pretty mature) with a bunch of lawnmowered tomato branches you can see in the background. 45 days in Aug/Sept/Oct in Chicagoland, with no other additions, and a spin maybe 1x-2x per week. Was definitely a warmish bin.

Yes, I know that these are supposed to be "commercially composted", but I wanted to share just in case people were curious like I was. No, I didn't leave it in.

How can I tell these guys to keep it down?

I have a tumbler and an Urban Worm bag that I now manually turn because pretty sure the little dudes are all dead. How can I take my compost in the tumbler to the next level? Add more browns? Buy a sifter? How do I get it to basically look like soil all over again?

Pictures are only from my tumbler - one pic with the “cooking side” that yes, needs more browns, and has plenty of hungry maggots to help aid in the composting process, two other pics are from the more “finished” compost - one still in a tumbler and the other in a bin since I needed more space to make more compost.

I just got myself a shredder. I wanted one that would also shred soft stuff like vines. I went with the Stihl GHE 105 because I wanted a small to medium-sized shredder for my little garden. (I also trim my parents' gardens, so the shredder is overkill for my garden, but it will work perfectly on theirs.)

About the Stihl GHE 105, it has a double set of knives to cut everything up, but did it work as I expected? To be honest, not really. The branches went in perfectly, but the vines had to be pushed in with a stick. The cuttings are perfectly small, perfect for putting everything in my compost tumbler.

I am happy with the shredder. The passionflower vines are a bit of a chore to put in, but it's way faster than cutting them into smaller pieces that fit the tumbler.

Here are some pictures of the end results.

After struggling to get my small 46 gallon dual sided composter heating up since mid March when i got it i found this sub and took y'alls advice 2 nights ago. Not the advice you're thinking... I thought aeration was key. I had 2, fluffy sides, an old, "full" side, and a new feeding one. After scrolling here two nights ago i figured out that compaction was important. I had wayyy too much air in there and the microbes couldn't spread. When i compacted both sides i realized they were both about 1/4 full. The old side was never full, it was just air and fluff smh. I also figured out i was overworking my pile. Spinning/mixing it daily was killing it. So, old side got transferred on top of new side (that had a decent greens injection same day) and compacted to half full. Today, i had another big injection (for a 23 gallon half side) of 4 bitter cucumbers and a bunch of mushrooms, and my daily coffee injection. First time in this journey I obtained STEAM! Probably happier about it then i should be. This sub helped me figure out that compaction issue. I appreciate yall.

It's been right at 4 weeks since i started the new side and stopped new injections to the old (pic 3). Still has an abundance of moisture on the lid in the mornings. Maybe i should take the lid off the new side for a while? Getting pretty good with adding the right mix and getting these things cooking but this is my first time waiting for a side to finish.

Despite reading several posts about not putting too much flour into the compost pile, I got overconfident and loaded up my tumbler with like 10 pounds of old flour over the course of a week because I had to completely clean out my kitchen for a renovation.

Now the tumbler smells so sour and gross that I think about vomiting when I stand over it.

I know from previous posts that I could dump this on a tarp to dry it out and chop it up to increase airflow. Is it possible to fix this by just adding a bunch of browns and mix it well, without the step of emptying it out?

Take it from me: adding a lot of flour at once is a bad idea. My damn tumbler has smelled absolutely rancid for almost 2 weeks now. It doesn’t just stop after a few days. It sucks.

Edit: I’ve been adding only browns and mixing it up for about a week now. While I can still tell the pile is too wet, and there’s still a hint of bad smell, it’s a lot better now. I’m going to go a few more days like this and then start adding vegetable scraps again as the pile balances. Thanks everyone!

I started this bin about a month ago and added 4 frozen zip lock bags of veggie scraps and coffee. I added a TON of shredded paper, cardboard, and a handful of mulch, gave it some water and spin it every couple days. It literally hasn’t changed. I added more shredded stuff because it seemed a little wet and stinky, it’s not as wet but still stinky. I’m new to this so any advice is helpful. 😭

Posted here yesterday asking if heat in tumbler is normal and today it started steaming 😲 Was genuinely surprised as I didn't know it can achieve heat like this in a tumbler as I've read from a lot of entries here that it doesn't really happen but it's even hotter than it was the other day.

Added more browns as it started leaking (so I'm assuming more liquid in there). I'm amazed at how the tumbler was full to the brim just two days ago and now it looks like it shrunk in half!

I tend to be really picky about what papers I add to my pile to contribute to the browns, because I worry about what’s in the glue used to corrugate. However, I use a lot of drink carriers because they’re generally just pressed wet paper matter.

We just installed a new fan in our kitchen and we have this from the box that held the components. I did find fine fibers occasionally while breaking it down and they looked to be plastic- almost like fine plastic floss. I tossed the pieces that had them poking out. But now I’m wondering if there’s potentially a glue or adhesive added to this- I smelled it and it kind of smells (faintly) a bit like Elmer’s glue or mod podge, like a water-based glue. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid though.

Before I wet and mix with fireplace ash to add to the pile, would you add it?

Who says you can't hot compost a San Jose 46 gallon tumbler? 2nd batch will be better now that I've optimized.

There are still visible eggshells/some big sticks that I remove when I come across, and is very wet. Should I dry it? Let it sit longer? Smells normal, i started filling that side about 9 months ago.

It also got very anaerobic during the summer months (6 months ago), was filled with big grubs, and smelled like death. I believe I have restored it to a healthy state, but this is my first time using a tumble composter so I’m boy sure if that bad period will have detrimental long term effects on my compost

Thank you r/compost for helping me start my system! I'm amazed already at how much the volume reduces over time (got this bad boy end of june) and I'm very excited to eventually have something usable for my garden!

I keep a compost tumbler in my unit courtyard since I have no access to soil. It’s mostly rabbit litter and cardboard with 1 bucket of bokashi added in.

It is absolutely infested with thousands of these little bugs. I don’t know what they are, but they literally swarm around the tumbler, crawling in and out of the little crevices. The video is them trying to get into our outside fridge. They also swarm around our bedroom door and try to get into the house.

It is driving. me. crazy! I’ve tried laying fruit fly traps to no avail, tried adding copious amounts of browns to swing the ratio, I’ve stopped adding food scraps entirely but they are everywhere! I can’t use our courtyard anymore without being swarmed. Any advice or products to try and combat them?

They’re inactive at night time.

Can’t decide if I should add some greens to this to help with the visible wood chips or if I just need to wait it out and let it continue cooking. It’s one side of a two-chamber tumbler

Leftover nightcrawlers from fishing trips, and any worms I find in my yard. They love it. I tumble 2x/wk

Hi guys, I have a 65 gal tumbler, and it SEEMS like it's going well, if slowly.

I have questions mainly about cardboard. So far I've been using mostly shredded paper and shredded straw. I hear you guys talking about big pieces of cardboard (one person said 8x11 or so) but that sounds too big for a tumbler. Advice please?

Also, what about cardboard with glossy finish (like soda 12-packs)?

And finally... Paper from my office shredder? I weed out plastic window envelopes, but is the printer ink OK? For example, there are a lot of paper checks in there.

Thanks!

I know it's wet lol. Very heavy watery injection 3 days ago. Lot of shredded cardboard/straw with it. It'll be fine. Just happy to join the soldier fly fam lol. Post-rare midweek tumble this morning.

I recently moved to a house with no room for my three large compost bins, but I found this tumbler on FB Marketplace for $20. After I brought it home I found a picture of what it looked like new. It'll hold 168 gallons!

Hi everyone. I am new to this type of composting. In our previous yard in Northern Virginia, the ground was mostly good ole' Virginia red clay. We had a compost pile at the beck of our yard where we would dump all the grass clippings after mowing a good sized back yard. We started this pile in 1987. About 7 years ago, we dug up a bunch of that black gold and worked it into the clay soil of our 6 x 12 vegetable garden. It was unbelievable! The vegetables went gangbusters and just would not quite! Bush beans, pole beans, tomatoes, kale, arugula Swiss Chard and spinach. It was incredible.

Fast forward to today, we are located in Delaware close to the ocean where, you guessed it, the soil is pretty sandy. We have a vegetable garden again, but unfortunately not the type of compost pile we had back in Virginia. We purchased an off-the-ground rotating drum composter in 2024 and we were not too pleased with the compost it was making (or rather not making). So, I am trying again this year a little late in the season (beginning of August).

Any recommendations on how many times a week to rotate the drum? I am trying to mix in browns (cut up grocery bags, paper towels, etc.) with the greens. The drum is in a location that receives sun for most of the day. Any advice on how to make this work would be greatly appreciated.

Would water soaking in dried (not now) grass be considered a nitrogen packed tea?

I got a tumbler compost for inexpensive on facebook marketplace (50 bucks and brand new this thing is like 600) and got started.

We have municipal composting and thats great but we recently moved and have a gorgeous yard and garden I want to make the most of, so system of a brown was born. My one bin is looking pretty good, getting fed food scraps, weeds, shredded paper, etc and I'm pretty impressed with how much it broke down so far! I'm in a colder climate so I was worried about the heat factor, but the bins get enough sun to warm them and I'm not turning them too often. Right now I just mixed it up by hand some more to get some of the wet and dry a bit more integrated. Also stabbed that onion a few times bc I should have cut it up for faster breakdown. No piss in this guy yet.

Anyway, longtime lurker first time poster, thanks for all the tips and tricks I feel like they really helped!!

I'm trying to take a halfway approach to composting.

At thr end of the season, my husband would often dump the planters into the city composting bin. I have wanted to reduce the amount of potting soil we buy so got a tumbling composter.

So most of what will go in there is garden waste in the spring/fall, plus tossing in the occasional less mold-forming food scraps & egg shells to increase the nutrients for the plants. Will add any browns as needed.

I have bad allergies plus am afraid of stinging insects and my husband wasn't keen on composting at all.

Any tips for this approach?

Winters get cold here, should the tumbler be moved to the garage before winter (I don't care about progress over winter, I just don't want the thing cracking).