Bear & Honey

When we started our registry for wedding gifts, I did add a couple of really neat composting containers to the list.  I’d still like to have one or two of those at some point, because I’ll need to have a few containers going if I want to have lots of good compost on hand at any given time, but there’s no reason I can’t start now using some materials we had on hand.

This compost bin is a variation on the considerably more fancy “tumbler” model of compost bin.   With just a few things we already had on hand, we were able to create a more low-tech, but still awesome, version.

We used:

A plastic garbage bin that was supposedly being used for “yard waste” but not actually serving a purpose.   It’s important to use a bin that has a lid that you can secure, to help with the whole “tumbling” part.

A drill that Greg got as a gift from his dad for his birthday.  Yay power tools!

Beyond that, all we needed were a couple of paving stones (we had a few sitting discarded on the edge of the yard) and the scraps & dirt that would become our initial materials for composting.

First, I drilled holes around the garbage bin, spaced fairly evenly apart.  Organic matter needs nifty stuff like oxygen in order to break down properly, and we want our compost to be moist but not wet.  The holes will let in some air and also help drain excess water from the bin.

I gotta say, drilling holes into a plastic bin is really, really easy…but you still get to feel like sort of a badass wielding a power drill.  It’s possible that I drilled one too many holes in the bin because I was enjoying it so much, but you ain’t heard that from me.

Next, we set the bin on top of a couple of paving stones in the yard.  We picked a spot that was convenient enough to walk out to regularly, but not in direct view of the deck.  It also gets fairly regular sunlight, which we want in order to keep in warm in the Winter.  During the Summer we may move it to a shadier spot in order to maintain the right moisture level.

Into the bin went some dirt from potted plants that were long gone, along with a bowl full of kitchen scraps, some torn up junk mail and cardboard, and the pieces of our leftover jack-o-lantern (goodbye, Cannibal Jack!)  I also added in some broken twigs and leaves that were swept from the deck.  Then, we closed the lid and left it alone.

Voila!

Every couple of days, I go out into the yard and roll the bin around a bit in order to keep everything circulated.      I’ll be adding kitchen scraps (fruit & veg scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds — no meat, dairy, or grease!) and paper regularly, and yard trimmings (leaves, small branches, grass) to the mix and eventually we’ll have our very own dirt!

If you want to try this yourself, here are some helpful links:

http://www.greenworks.tv/special/composting/index.html#

http://www.epa.gov/waste/conserve/rrr/composting/by_compost.htm

http://www.thecompostbin.com/

And here’s one about vermicomposting, to appease Greg, who really, really wants some worms.  I think it’s a dude thing.   http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/green-basics-vermicompost.php

The absolute BEST part of this project was the cost and effort involved.

Materials – $0

Time – 10 minutes

Effort – EASY, like whoa.

Are you composting at home or wanting to try it?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

My dad’s family is from a very rural area of Kentucky.  Even though we lived in suburban Atlanta, he would sometimes speak fondly of keeping chickens or wanting a goat, which my mom would quickly veto.   Mostly, he was joking, but I think that some part of him missed the self-sufficiency of country life.

Growing up in a large metro area, recycling, composting, and home gardening were things that only “out there” hippies did.  I got the impression that it was really difficult and inconvenient, and indicated something about my lifestyle or political standing.  Despite all that, I would often daydream about picking vegetables from the garden for lunch, planting bulbs, and finding uses for all the things we regularly threw away.

In the country, these activities were not political statements, they were just a way of life.  It was practical and necessary to re-use whatever you could, to feed the plants with coffee grounds and to do as much as you could on your own just in case the power went out or the money stopped coming in.  Gardening wasn’t for hippies, it was for people who had any lick of sense.

My Uncle Jim had a great vegetable garden that I wish I had spent more time in.   When we were up in Kentucky I had lots of outside space to run around in, tomato plants to look at and touch, and dirt to wiggle my fingers in…but back in Atlanta, when vacation was over, it seemed like a faraway concept.   Our condominium had about 3 square feet of “yard” and planting anything edible was not allowed by the homeowner’s association.

Needless to say, when we talked about moving up to the Little Green House, one of the very first things out of my mouth was “We can have a GARDEN!”

Last weekend, we took the first step toward that dream of picking our lunch from the backyard.   We decided to create a compost container out of an old trash bin that was not being used.  It is a variant on the “tumbler” model of composter, but much cheaper and pretty darn easy to do.      In the next post I will describe how we did it in case you want to try it for your own yard!