At Last, I Have Dirt!

I'm not certain how anything ever survived before humans and composters were invented.  We have some of the best technologies at our disposal and still, it took this long for me to figure things out.  Due to an oddly cold winter here in San Diego, the compost took longer than I expected.  Also, due to be being a noob, I think it added additional time.  Thank God for the Internet so I could continue to look things up along the way.

About 3 weeks ago we finally decided to just open the things up and take a peak at the mix inside.  What did we discover?  Dry as a bone.  Clearly not what you're looking for in compost.  So while my wife dared me to just pee into the thing, I opted to get a hose and just water the stuff down.  Got it moist (not dripping), closed the lid and turned.

Every 2-3 days afterward, we just kept on turning the LifeTime composters (which are back at Costco right now by the way).  So today, we decided to take another look.  And low and behold, it's compost!  The feel, smell, and appearance of what was in our bins was what we see at the store.  Not quite dirt, not mulch, dark in color, and just fantastic!  I do find it odd where I am in life that I reached the age where I'm overly excited about making what is in essence a bunch of trash in dirt form, but I am!

So in the end, our first attempt (both bins) at composting took about 2 months.  Not too shabby, as non-tumbling compost can take longer than that I have read.  We had some learning along the way.  We ended up not filling the bins up enough either as there was room for quite a bit more compost.  But we'll do better on the next batch.

What did I learn?

• Cut all rinds.  Watermelon is fine, just chop the rinds down into 1x1 or 2x2 chunks.  Orange peals are fine, just again, rip them up.
• Egg shells don't really add a lot, but it's nice not to add it to the trashcan.  But make sure to crumble the shells up a bit.  If they are fully in tact, you'll likely have some in tact chunks when the compost was done.  Not a huge deal.  We dug ours out today and just tossed them into the next batch.  I'm sure given enough time it'll completely break down.
• Paper towels are fine, just again, shred it up a bit first.
• Moisture levels are important!  As you'll read everywhere, there has to be the right balance.  For us, was it that our grass clippings didn't have enough moisture in them to begin with?  Did we put in too much brown?  Not sure.  But in the end, dry is better!  You can add water a lot easier than taking away moisture.  So check the thing every week until it looks OK.  Doesn't hurt to crack the shell open real quick every so often (at least, I don't think it does!)
• The bulk of our compost is from mowing the lawn and picking up leaves.  But the kitchen waste is a great catalyst I'm sure.  We have a 5 gallon bucked near the composter to toss our kitchen waste into after we've sealed the doors.  It's no good to add waste to an already cooking bin as you'll just be adding time until it's done.  Having two bins is good, but honestly, a third location to store stuff is helpful for us.  We have gotten to the point where we don't want to throw anything in the trash we can't compost.
• As with recycling, which I get a great feeling every time I've filled up my recycle bin, composting makes me feel good.  Knowing I'm not just adding to a trash pile or tossing down food bits down the drain feels good.  It feels even better knowing this compost will be feeding my new love; growing heirloom fruits and vegetables.  Check out Baker Creek if you want to order some fantastic seeds! 

So what's next?  Clearly I'm going to keep on composting.  I have to figure this thing out down to a science, because being the geek that I am, I love a formula.  So I'll try to fine tune things so I can get compost as quickly as possible.

Also, I want to get a worm farm.  We'll see how that goes, but worms are awesome.

Scraps for the Composter

I've done a lot of research on the topic of what can and cannot be put into my compost bin.  Mind you,  I plan on using this compost in my vegetable garden.  And for now, what I'm about to write is coming from a newbie at this with no practical experience.  This is just what I have gathered thus far in terms of what I am willing to toss into the bin.

In our kitchen, we keep a nice small container next to the sink which has a charcoal filter and is very easy to clean.  It's glass and nice looking; highly recommend something like this.  The one we were going to get was nice, but ugly as hell.  I guess if you have room under the sink that's ok, but our sink is loaded with a bunch of cleaning supplies and crap.

From the kitchen, thus far:
1) Avoid meats, dairy, and cooked food.  Also, avoid limes (or so I have read).
2) Limit the fruit, but I'm tossing in my rinds from my oranges.
3) Paper towels and napkins (not if they're covered in milk or something which will stink)
4) Coffee grounds, tea bags (no staples), Egg Shells (although I read they give no benefit)
5) Raw veg peelings
6) Shredded paper.  I've used junk mail and other crap I get sent to me.  Tossed it into a shredded.  If it had a ton of ink, I didn't use it.  No glossy frames from the envelopes.
7) Pencil shavings
8) Grass, Leaves
9) Chicken Manure (bought this from the store previously)
10) Kleenex. Yes, used Kleenex even.  I'm not overly concerned about any odd virus.  These bins get very, very hot for extended periods of time.  Most of what I read said no worries here.

Anyway, this is all happening in my first batch, so I'll have to followup with results.

I did find this cool online calculator for composting.  Again, probably too anal, but useful.  Most people just say wing it, and I imagine after a few batches, I will.  But if interested, this is a cool Compost Calculator:

http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwaste/fileshtml/organics/compostcalc.htm

And It Begins

Over the past two or three years, my wife and I have slowly started getting into gardening.  We have a big enough yard that we can experiment.  We started by building a couple garden beds in a side yard and buying some starter plants to grow.   If I recall our first batch correctly, we started with nothing but tomatoes and squash.  It went relatively well (once we learned to toss in some chicken manure in the box!).  So the next year we tried it from seedlings... This was not as successful.  The following season, I tried it from seedlings which we started inside.  I also built two more boxes on our hill in a different area of the yard with even more exposure to the sun.  This, however, ended terribly.  Everything I transplanted died quickly thereafter.  Frustrated, and wanting to give up, I just plopped some of the seeds into the original two beds (emptied out, but resupplied with more chicken poo), and surprisingly, things grew.  Still, what came out wasn't quite right (a bit on the small side), but at least there was a sign of life.

So, before actually getting good at growing things, we decided to take that next step (the obvious thing to do).  We decided it was time to get some kick ass soil of our own to put in our beds. Clearly the dirt mix we were working with sucked because anything I try to grow should grow!  So, for our Christmas present to each other this year, we bought a dual tumbler composter.  We ended up getting the Lifetime product: we had seen it at Costco a couple years back and loved how it looked, it had great reviews, and Home Depot was having a sale.  http://www.lifetime.com/lawn-garden/gardening/composters/60072 if you're interested.

After assembling the thing (it is not for the feint of heart a it takes a while to build) I began my research on how one goes about composting; not the simple things, but the nitty gritty.  But first, perhaps, a bit about me.  I'm a bit on the obsessive side when it comes to hobbies.  When I go in, I go ALL in. I like to research the hell out of things before I buy them and before I do them.  So before actually putting anything into these bins, I researched and worried about what exactly to do.

What is the right mix?
What can go into this damn thing?
Where in the yard should I have it?

Well, the day finally came this past weekend where I said screw it, gotta try sometime.  We finally loaded up one of the 50 gallon drums with an assortment of crap.  What did we put into it in the end?

We left about 1/3 empty.  I wanted to make sure there was plenty of room for the stuff to tumble around and with 2 50 gallon drums, and a theoretical 2-3 week turn around, I figured let's see how this goes.

Out of the remaining 2/3:
55% fresh cut green grass
35% Leaves from our rose bushes and lemon tree
10% Kitchen scraps (coffee grounds, orange peels, etc)

That's it.  I'm going to check it to see how it's looking as I'm thinking of adding in a bit of chicken manure.  I've read it's a good way to get the heat going.  But if the thing is generating enough heat already, I may just leave it alone.