Precious is a notorious food thief.
bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Roses, Suet, Birds, and Squirrels":
People without compost bins think its a big pain, but if you go to a search engine and type: compost "never fills up," there are a lot of results. People just keep filling the bin and it never seems to fill up, so that's hardly any work. One study says composting reduces is volume by 50 to 75 percent.
The reason compost bins fill up so slowly, is first, much of vegetable matter is water, and as compost breaks down, that is released to the ground and air. Second, a lot of the carbon is turned into CO2 and CH4 (methane) and is lost to the atmosphere! For manure composting, which has been studied most closely, 30% of the overall dry matter is lost due to 53% of the carbon being lost to CO2 and CH4 (94% and 6% by volume, respectively), and 42% of the nitrogen was lost to create nitrous oxide, a gas (N2O):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14964356
These correspond to 30.1% of initial DM, 52.8% of initial TC, and 41.6% of initial TN. For WBM, DM loss was 268 kg Mg(-1), TC loss was 154 kg Mg(-1), and TN loss was 1.40 kg Mg(-1), corresponding to 26.5, 34.5, and 11.8% of initial amounts. Most C was lost as CO2 with CH4 accounting for <6%.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07212.html
Composting reduces yard waste volume by 50 to 75 percent.
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GJ - I realized early that hauling away yard trash and buying chemicals to make the yard more fertile was foolish. Organic materials are the best soil amendments, and they arrive free of charge. Leaves, grass, and weeds all contribute to the humus content of any soil type. Healthy soil attracts more birds and insects, which work for free, in contrast to chemical spraying, which wipes out the insect population (most of it beneficial) and decreases the birds feeding on the insects.
Those who build compost find there is never enough, so they borrow leaves and grass from the neighbors. People stop laughing when they see the corn reach 9 feet tall, with pumpkins growing on bushes and under them.
