Fall Composting Tips from a Mummy

With Halloween upon us and autumn in full swing, I have asked my friendly neighbor spook, the Mummy, to give us a few of his best fall composting tips.

Mummies, of course, know more about preservation and not decomposing than your average Halloween ghoul and they can use those lessons in reverse to teach us the best composting methods.

• Empty your bins of finished compost now to make room the fall leaves. Just as you would remove the organs from the body you are about to mummify, you need to clear out those bins now so you have space for the leaves that have already started to fall.
• Create hollow monuments to hold your dead. Maybe not a pyramid or fancy sarcophagus, but a few simple wire bins will help you hold onto those extra leaves instead of sending them off with the yard trimmings truck.
• Without moisture, we mummify. If you want your leaves, food scraps, and internal organs to be around next year (or 1,000 years from now) you need to remove all of the moisture. We do not want that, so make sure the contents of your compost bin are as wet as a wrung out sponge.

The Mummy recommends holding onto those fall leaves now so that next year you are not cursing yourself with having too little browns.

Happy Halloween!

For past Halloween composting posts check out:

• The Headless Horseman’s Guide to Backyard Composting
• Compost Lessons from the Swamp Monster
• Three Reasons Werewolves Make Terrible Composters
• Compost Ghost
• Was Frankenstein an Outstanding Composter? 
• How to Practice Compost Witchcraft
• Compost Like a Vampire
• Three Warning Signs Your Compost is a Zombie
• Smashing Pumpkins