Composting.

I have not been very successful with composting over the years. It's not for lack of wanting to compost or lack of wanting the finished product. It's also not for lack of knowing HOW to compost. It's mostly because I lose interest or I forget to set aside my kitchen scraps or the compost gets smelly due to too much grass or too much water or a thousand other reasons. Mostly, it's because I haven't found a method that is easy enough to maintain without constant vigilance. Was that a slightly disguised way of saying I'm lazy?

I've tried a few methods and found varying success with them. I've used the "pile" method, where you just pile up debris and then turn it once in a while. That didn't last-piles get neglected and neglected piles get animals. I tried composting in an aluminum garbage can with holes in the bottom. That got too "hot" and it went rancid. My latest and most lasting method has been to just direct-dig kitchen waste into the garden beds and let the worms do the rest. That's actually worked quite well! This winter I saved our  my coffee grounds and all our egg shells in a large flower pot on the back deck.  I dug those into the vegetable beds in early March and the worms had a field day. I will definitely stick to this method next winter.

However, there's no good reason to not give this composting thing another go. Americans put over 700 pounds PER YEAR of waste into landfills that could be composted. That's just crazy! Especially when you consider just the coffee drinkers alone-at 2lbs of coffee per month, that's 24 pounds of waste than can easily just be sprinkled into a garden bed! 

I'd been reading online about various composting methods and I wanted one that is cheap and easy. I saw a few tutorials on fashioning a tube out of heavy gauge chicken wire and then filling that tube up with your waste, grass clippings, a little soil, some shredded newspaper, etc. When it's time to turn the "pile", you simply lift the tube off, set it in a new spot, and shovel the composting waste back into it. Now how easy is that?

Brad took the "tube" idea one step further  and drilled a lot of holes into an aluminum garbage can we've had forever--but it has no bottom. (from my failed "composting in an aluminum garbage can" trial several years ago). It's even better than the chicken wire tube because it has handles and a lid. Fancy! I found a great spot behind our shed so it won't get baked in the summer, but is easily accessible so we won't forget about it.

Check it out:

Here it is--minus the lid.

You can see the holes here. Brad used a 1/2" drill bit for the holes.

Lots of room for another can or two.

My shabby chic picket fence hides the can from view.

Remember, do not put meat, dairy, or bones in your bin. You want to try to keep the amounts of "brown" and "green" about even or even a bit more heavy on the "brown."  Brown would be dead leaves, dirt, newspaper shreds, paper shreds, coffee grounds. Green things are the fruit/veg waste. If you get too much of one or the other, decomp will stop. Also, make sure it stays a bit damp.

Another thing that I do is when I'm weeding in my perennial beds and find a worm, I toss it into my compost. Sure, the bottom of the garbage can is missing and the worms can head underground, but as long as I keep up proper ratios and keep it damp, the worms come up out of the ground and do their thing on my waste.


2012 UPDATE-I've been successfully using this compost bin for over 1 year. I have had great success with it--as long as I remember to turn it. Because this is not a hot pile, it takes a little longer to break down, but I'm ok with that because I don't have to worry about it getting smelly.