Composting

Well, I have to tell you about my composter!

This is the first year I am composting. I've only been at it a few days and already I am astonished at how much organic material we generate that can go in there. Lots of food trash from the kitchen (no meat, dairy, dog poop, etc. though). This composter is really cool. It came in three huge boxes and I followed the instructions (with some help from Mike) to put it together. It was like assembling a small rocket ship!

It has two chambers. You fill one chamber right off the bat, and let it "cook." then you fill the other chamber a little at a time, with daily garbage. Ideally, when that side is full, your "cooking" side is ready to go. It says it can produce ready compost in as little as 2 weeks; we'll see if that's true. I'm sure I'll make mistakes the first few times: not enough of this or that, too much or not enough water. It's sort of an experiment.

I started on March 22 with a bunch of rotten old leaves that had already begun to decompose. I read that you should have 30:1 carbon to nitrogen (the leaves being a source of carbon), so I put in some green weeds I pulled from the yard. Yes, it says weeds are okay, too, because temperatures inside that thing reach 170 degrees, so it kills any weed seeds that are in there. The metal absorbs heat from the sun, but the microorganisms that are decomposing the material also generate heat in the process. That is pretty darn hot!

I also put in some kitchen food waste--asparagus spears, banana peels, apple cores, etc. I threw in some wood chips for ballast, but mostly it is the dead leaves. I don't have any grass clippings yet; they said that is the best thing to add.

So we will see how it goes....