re: Tips for Compost Beginner

Compost veteran: forget the little fiddly tumbler unless you have a minuscule yard and thus tiny output of scraps and clippings. I just make a neat pile, bordered on two sides by hardware cloth as a fence. It can take an entire yards worth of mowing, and all I do is give it a few turns a few times a year. When I want “good” compost, I dig down toward the bottom. Which also accomplishes the necessary job of turning the heap. If you’re not in a hurry, piling it up in contact with the soil works fine.