compost update

This is a quick update on the com­poster I picked up back in early May. Was eight weeks enough time dur­ing a cool spring to cre­ate a batch of usable com­post? I wondered.

Yes and no seems to be the answer. When to empty a com­post pile or bin is always a bal­anc­ing act. The most ephemeral scraps have long passed the point where they’re most ben­e­fi­cial. At the same time, the wood­ier clip­pings are only par­tially on their way to being ideal com­post. You can screen the com­post and use what will go through a half-inch screen. Or you can take the lazy way out and dump out most of what you have and pick out the egre­giously big chunks for fur­ther break­ing down.

I opted for the lazy/impatient method. A cou­ple weeks ago the pile had started to cool down, and I didn’t want to keep feed­ing the pile more scraps, only to have to wait addi­tional weeks to empty it. In total I net­ted about twenty gal­lons of gor­geously earthy-smelling black gold. I’m not sure how much I fed the com­poster, though I know I came close to fill­ing up the 80-gallon con­trap­tion at least twice, only to have the clip­pings com­pact as they broke down.

I emp­tied the buck­ets around var­i­ous veg­gie plant­i­ngs around the yard. At this point the com­post will serve as mulch, with some of the nutri­tion leach­ing into soil as the beds get watered. When it’s time for the late sum­mer changeover of crops the mulch will get worked into the soil and serve more as an amend­ment. By that time I hope some of the big­ger, crunchier bits of yard waste will have bro­ken down even further.

If you want fine com­post to mix into plant­ing mix or to start seeds, you’ll want it bro­ken down fur­ther than this, or you’d break out a screen to take out the big­ger chunks. But for how I used the com­post, this approach seems like it’ll work just fine.

Once I emp­tied the com­poster it was time to start the next batch, mix­ing some of the left­over scraps from the last batch with the new mate­ri­als. I kin­duv liked this photo with it perky col­ors and many lay­ers. (I think it’s worth click­ing on to expand.) Still I’m not the first one to turn a cam­era on a com­post pile: I linked back in Decem­ber of 2007 to Very Rich Hours of a Com­post Pile, a photo project by John Pfahl. It’s worth a look.

Fac­ing an empty bin I sud­denly felt the urge to do some tidy­ing around the gar­den if it meant that I’d be gen­er­at­ing yard wast that I could feed the com­poster. Stop num­ber one: one of the tow­ers of Echium wild­pret­tii that had col­lapsed spec­tac­u­larly over a walk­way and against the side of the house as it reached the end of its bloom­ing. I’d lived a cou­ple of weeks with the plant in this con­di­tion, step­ping over it as I went back to my stu­dio. But it was time. To avoid being inun­dated with hun­dreds of baby echi­ums, how­ever, I only clipped the lower part of the plant for my bin. The top, with its myr­iad seeds is now in the greens recy­cle bin, on its way to the city recy­cling facil­ity. The city facil­ity caught fire in the 1990s from the high heat in their com­post pile, so I have no doubt their facil­ity will be able to break down seeds like this.

Over­all, this has been a com­poster: it gen­er­ates no unpleas­ant odors, and being a tum­bling model it’s even fun to turn the drum a few rev­o­lu­tions to keep the clip­pings mixed. The last few days have actu­ally been warmer, so I’m hop­ing the next batch will cook even quicker than the first.

July 13 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden |

7 Responses to “compost update”

  1. Pomona Belvedere on 13 Jul 2010 at 11:34 am #

    Well, I’ve been pho­tograph­ing com­post since before 2007…but never dared to pub­lish. Now I have a cohort.

    Sounds as if you got good value out of this com­poster. I’m a lazy/impatient com­poster myself, so I appre­ci­ated your reports on that method.

    And yes, your com­post pic­ture def­i­nitely looks even bet­ter enlarged. To me, things like com­post or dead leaves are abstract art wait­ing to happen.

  2. ryan on 13 Jul 2010 at 9:52 pm #

    I’m not so sure about those very rich hours, but you have some nice look­ing com­post. How’s that for a pick up line, eh. I’ve always wanted to plant a E. wild­pret­tii for a client but your photo of it flop­ping seems like a good rea­son not to. Seems like one of those plants you have to pick out for your­self, rather than have some­one pick it out for you. I may need to plant one in my own gar­den some­day, now that I think of it.

  3. Steve on 14 Jul 2010 at 9:19 am #

    “Hey, baby, want to check out my com­post? I promise you, it’s hella stinky!” ;-)

    Sorry I’ve been absent from your great site, James. I owe you a visit to all your posts, and will do so. I have never spent a wasted moment here, buddy. I’ve just been doing other stuff. I loved this, by the way, Keep us posted on your com­post­ing! It’s riv­et­ing enter­tain­ment and great for pick-up lines, too.

  4. Country Mouse on 15 Jul 2010 at 8:07 am #

    I keep com­post­ing and not get­ting any out. I’m afraid there are baby ani­mals liv­ing in the midst of my huge messy pile. It serves as a place to lower my car­bon foot­print — food scraps on land­fill are bad news, I recently learned. I also send seedy things to the land­fill com­post pro­gram trust­ing that they do com­post to high temps and will kill them. I don’t inquire though. It’s too con­ve­nient to send them off. Reminds me of the say­ing — there is no more “out” (where you can throw things!).

  5. Arleen Webster/Camissonia's Corner on 16 Jul 2010 at 1:02 pm #

    I like your com­poster much bet­ter than mine. I bought one of those sta­tion­ary com­post bins (the kind you have to open the lid to man­u­ally turn over all the stuff inside) and it has not pro­duced any usable good stuff for the two years I’ve had it. I’m about to throw in the hat and just buy a tum­bler. The close-up of that com­post pile of yours was pretty intrigu­ing — kinda like a con­found­ing Rorschach test for the OCD gardener.

  6. lostlandscape on 18 Jul 2010 at 12:08 pm #

    Pomona, com­post­ing is a beau­ti­ful process. I’m glad you’re cel­e­brat­ing it in pic­tures too. I think humans need to feed their sense of play, and for me this tum­bling con­trap­tion I have is still a hoot to use. It doesn’t hurt that mag­i­cal black com­post comes out the back end of the process.

    Ryan, you might be on to some­thing there with the pickup line: I always get weak knees when some­one flat­ters my com­post. I looked at the echium pho­tos on the Dave’s Gar­den site and one of them alluded to how hard it was to find plants that hadn’t fallen over. They seem to grow in rocky, decom­pos­ing vol­canic soil in the wilds, so I won­der if com­mon gar­den soil just doesn’t pro­vide them the sup­port they’re used to.

    Steve, good hear­ing from you. No wor­ries on being away–I’m sure you’ve got some excit­ing things cook­ing at this point! To think some peo­ple con­fused this for a gar­den­ing blog when it’s really one about new pickup lines…

    CM, even if you’re not har­vest­ing com­post from it, your greens pile is a major improve­ment to just toss­ing the scraps. Decom­pos­ing stuff in land­fills is def­i­nitely a methane generator–not good news for the planet. As much as think the city land­fill is doing a bet­ter job of com­post­ing than I am, I’m still reluc­tant to go there for the free mulch and inex­pen­sive com­post. Poten­tial weed seeds bother me, but so does not know­ing what tainted scraps peo­ple have tossed into their greens bin.

    Arleen, the sta­tion­ary mod­els can work, but they’re def­i­nitely lots more work to keep turned. Now that I’ve pur­chased my tum­bler I’ve been notic­ing sim­i­lar mod­els around. Most seem lower to the ground, poten­tially harder to turn, and def­i­nitely more dif­fi­cult to empty once the com­post is ready. Another model was a sphere that you could roll to wher­ever in the gar­den you wanted the com­post, mean­ing you didn’t have to trans­fer the com­post to a bucket. But that solu­tion wouldn’t work on my multi-level yard.

  7. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » soylent black on 07 Dec 2010 at 6:32 am #

    […] scraps, most of the gar­den clip­pings, all these things end up in the big black bin. The first batch of Soy­lent Black took about six weeks in high sum­mer. The next batch got close to ready but then I fed the composter […]

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