Reddit reviews Let It Rot!: The Gardener's Guide to Composting (Third Edition) (Storey's Down-To-Earth Guides)

Here's a few of mine that I really like. I have way more than these, but I'm not sure I'd recommend all of them, per se. Anyhow, should give you some ideas.

Security - Talks about small unit tactics with small arms and so forth.

Butchering and cooking wild game - If you hope to hunt for food, you gotta know what to do with it after shooting it.

SAS Survival Guide - Really tiny dimensions that make this easy to toss in my BOB.

Composting - If you plan to garden, you're gonna need to compost. I also have various gardening books such as container gardening, organic gardening, gardening according to the Mormons, etc. The Mormons have a lot of great homesteading-oriented books. Here's one called The Forgotten Skills of Self-Sufficiency Used by the Mormon Pioneers


Bushcraft - Never hurts to learn some knots and be able to make simple things out of natural materials.

Organization and Planning - I'm reading this one now. Touches on a lot of areas of things to think about that you gotta plan for. A good amount of stuff I hadn't really thought about before.

Best advice is pick up a copy of Let it Rot!: The Gardener's Guide to Composting. Great information for beginners, lots of different methods to try if you're so inclined.

For kitchen waste, a vermicomposter is ideal. I built an OSCR jr from these plans I found online and it lasted for about a decade and a half before the plastic became brittle from exposure to sun/elements. I'm in the process of building a new one (pay attention when drilling the holes, one of the three bins is done differently). The worm castings and the tea that drains into the bottom bin are excellent fertilizers and maintaining the bin is a cinch.

Having a pair of bricks to place in the bottom/drainage bin is helpful to keep the worm bin from sitting in liquid.

I'm going to either install a stop-cock or at least drill a hole and keep a rubber plug in it to make draining the bottom bin easier.

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For yard/garden or any other bulk/high volume a larger compost bin will be necessary. I find the commercially available ones to be too small. I built the three bin system detailed in the book "Let it Rot!" which is also an excellent resource if you want to understand these processes a little better. The three bin system works fairly well at handling grass and hedge clippings, leaves, old pine shavings from inside the chicken coop, etc.

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I almost exclusively use the worm casting tea for watering my houseplants and plants in containers, likewise the worm castings get spread primarily as a top dressing for the same containers and the surplus then goes to the garden and landscape plants.
The compost from the big triple bin gets used throughout the yard as mulch or to till in with new plants.

I'd recommend Let It Rot! also.

Love Mike McG and didn't know he had a composting book. Will have to check it out. Thanks for posting.

For composting, I would look at Let it Rot and the Rodale Book of Composting. The second is more detailed and is my choice for "if I had to choose just one."

I've never dealt with such a problem. But my gut tells me to throw a bunch of carbon and nitrogen at it to make it really hot and that should kill anything bad in there with a high nitrogen for a while. You'll also want to add sod as it's a starter. But I think hit it hard with the grass trimmings for the nitrogen to run it hot.
Almost everything I've learned about composting came from this book, that I LOVE.
https://www.amazon.com/Let-Rot-Composting-Down-Earth/dp/1580170234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484012881&sr=8-1&keywords=composting+book