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.