As mentioned before, late this winter I decided to get serious about landscaping (among numerous other things.) I started researching inexpensive and easy composters. Despite some excellent advice from friends I wasn’t finding anything quite cheap and easy enough.

Then my friend Harriet Engle, who lives in a duplex next to my friend Roslee [...]]]> … I think.

As mentioned before, late this winter I decided to get serious about landscaping (among numerous other things.) I started researching inexpensive and easy composters. Despite some excellent advice from friends I wasn’t finding anything quite cheap and easy enough.

Then my friend Harriet Engle, who lives in a duplex next to my friend Roslee – both from the science-fiction club – revealed she was helping put a garden in their shared backyard. Since she seemed experienced I asked for her suggestions. She said she’d had success just getting a big old covered trash bin with wheels. Bingo! Thus was born what I call the Harriet Engle Rolling Composter.

(Before I went into any detail on this I asked Harriet if it was all right for me to use her full name. She allowed as she didn’t have any stalkers or outstanding warrants she was aware of, so it was.)

At Wally World I found just such trash bins, of 50-gallon capacity, for $25 each. Which definitely rang the cherries as far as “cheap” was concerned. Not too long thereafter I chanced to accompany my best friend Joe to Wal-Mart, as well as, more to the point, Joe’s pick-up truck. So I bought one of the bins and brought it home. I thought of buying a second – some systems recommend up to three separate composters – but decided I wanted to see how this one worked before expanding.

Harriet mentioned drilling holes in the bottom for drainage. I was initially concerned about compost dribbling out, but realized the quarter inch holes I intended to drill weren’t going to allow for much of that.

So I drilled my holes. Then I started layering in the weeds I cut down last fall, now thoroughly dry, in with the kitchen waste I’d accreted over eons. The whole I wet thoroughly with the hose and parked in the shade.

Soon thereafter I discovered aeration was a major deal. So out came the drill and I put some holes around the top to let the stuff breathe.

After a few days it seemed hot. Then it cooled off. I turned it. It refused to heat up. My Albuquerque gardening book said failure to heat meant I needed more nitrogen-rich material in the mix. So in went some more kitchen detritus, along with some green weeds I pulled from the backyard.

A few days thereafter I felt heat emanating when I pulled the lid off to check. Plunging my hand in – this being the rough and ready method, like pregging a horse – I found the depths uncomfortably hot to the touch. Which supposedly meant the compost was a-fermentin’. Yay!

A couple days later it was cool again. I also noticed that the heap had settled quite noticeably. My friend Larry Hays, Landscaping God, mentor, and general inspiration to me on the subject, confirmed my hope that this should mean I had, indeed, achieved compost. Indeed, he predicted as much as a third by volume would’ve converted.

Whoa! I couldn’t wait! Except I had to. To extract the compost, if any, I needed a screen to filter it. Especially since, lacking a shredder/grinder, I’ve put a lot of twigs and whatnot in that isn’t breaking down any too quickly. And I didn’t have such a screen. For all the noise being made about such matters these days it isn’t easy actually finding composting supplies.

I found compelled to make myself a Big Nasty Compost Screen, details to follow. Also I bought myself a second container to hold the hypothetical compost. Because a) I wasn’t sure the big rolly bin would fit in my car; and b) I was certain I wouldn’t have near that much compost anyway, I decided to get a smaller container. I settled on a 26-gallon trash can sans wheels.

As mentioned yesterday, I found myself too exhausted to do much with my new goodies. Last night I got a good sleep, so after doing some writing today I tackled the compost-filtering process.

When I emptied the rolling bin onto a tarp it didn’t smell that good. No huge surprise; I hadn’t turned it last week, since I wanted to combine filtering with turning, as I did today. And I commenced operations.

Emma came out to watch. For some reason she’s more sanguine about watching me do things when we’re outside; whenever I undertake any kind of physical project indoors she immediately seeks the shelter of her pen. However, the screening quickly fell into the category of Daddy Things Too Weird for Caninekind Ever to Hope to Comprehend; Emma is a highly intelligent dog, and perhaps nowhere shows it more distinctly than her ability to grasp that a certain number (a large one) of things Daddy does simply make no perceptible sense, so it’s not worth even trying. She shortly identified this as such as endeavor and went to lie across the yard. There was shade there, and anyway she had the buffering of distance in case she’d misjudged and Daddy’s special words came out.

However, a vile wind blew up, raising a big column of dust and alarming me with the prospect that my hard-earned, not to mention filtered, compost was going to blow away to Bernalillo. It also caused Emma to bail and petition to be let inside. I did, and then fortunately the wind died back and I was able to complete the turning/sifting without great further drama.

It wasn’t terribly efficient. Then again, it’s the first time I’ve tried anything like this. And on the whole, I’d have to say it was a success.

Larry will probably be amazed to learn that he’s actually been guilty of being optimistic: I didn’t wind up with a third of the original volume in compost. What I did wind up with was about a wheelbarrowful of dry, black, crumbly stuff that looks and feels like soil, anyway. At least 10 or 12 pounds of it.

I’m declaring that compost. Hence victory. Yay!

I mixed some more accumulated kitchen scraps about halfway in. When everything was back more or less in place I watered the big bin. I left the lid on the littler bin open a crack to let the finished compost air out a bit more.

Now we’ve got a gale blowing outside and it’s threatening to rain. I may yet have to race out and seal up the storage can.

But at least I got finished before the weather happened.

So, all in all, cool. The Rolling Composter works!

The purpose of this post is purely to show how utterly easy it is to compost kitchen wastes. If you want to do any kind of landscaping or gardening, or if you’re interested in recycling or self-sufficiency, now you’ll have no excuse not to just get started.

I do not recommend [...]]]> Kids, don’t try this at home!

The purpose of this post is purely to show how utterly easy it is to compost kitchen wastes. If you want to do any kind of landscaping or gardening, or if you’re interested in recycling or self-sufficiency, now you’ll have no excuse not to just get started.

I do not recommend the technique I’m about to describe. I’ll go further: don’t do this. It does not constitute housekeeping best practice. Indeed, it wins the inaugural Bad Housekeeping Seal of Reproval, which I just made up. Just confessing to it’s totally going to blight any hope I’ve had of getting dates, at least until I get thin and rich. Which fortunately are on the agenda for summer.

So. Here’s the awful easy way to start kitchen-waste composting broken into simple steps.

Do Not Do These Things:

1) Toss fruit and vegetable detritus (no meat or fat; there’s controversy over egg shells, but for now I throw ‘em in) and coffee grounds in a plastic grocery bag in the kitchen.

2) When it gets full, starts leaking (ew!), or you just can’t stand it any longer, toss onto the back porch.

3) Begin in Fall, continue over winter.

4) Springtime: suck it up and examine all those containers o’ nastiness. Surprise!

5) You have (some) compost!

Seriously. I just did this so you don’t have to. And found that, yes indeed, a fair amount of what I’d so casually disposed of had turned into what looks and smells a good deal like good, clean dirt. And much of the rest was these big cement-hard clods which I suspect getting dampened and soaking will fix.

Before I attacked the back porch I’d checked my Rolling Composter. Today it didn’t seem to be generating its own heat but smelled nice – again, like soil. What you don’t want is for it to smell like decay or ammonia or anything else vile. And it didn’t.

Since it’s been a week I turned it. And found out that a bunch of what I had tossed in had already become fairly soil-like. Now, some actual soil had gotten in there, a bit inevitably because for my dry brown layers I was forking up (something I do often, in many contexts) weeds I’d cut down last fall and left lying about. Aside from the incidental dirt – and while some composting guides advise us to toss in some earth to sort of give the mix the idea, I tend to be more afraid our awful alkali soil will just kill that stuff dead – I also found that the undersides of a lot of the dead weed layers had turned into something suspiciously compost-like. So, hey, that went in the bin too.

But still, as they say in those Aussie dubbed 1980′s kung-fu flicks. It did seem I had more soil or compost-looking stuff in there than I started with.

I turned the heap back into the bin and set it back upright. Next I drilled some aeration holes around the top of the bin so the stuff’d get more air. Then I added the accumulated kitchen waste of ages, plus some recent wastage. Then I stuck on more dried weeds, soaked hell out of it all, and covered it back up.

Oh, and here’s what you really should do about the kitchen wastes so as not to be a revolting slob:

1) Put a bucket on the floor by the sink or food-prep area.

2) Toss your debris right in there as it’s generated.

3) At the end of each day run it out and dump it into a bigger can or bucket on the back porch, or in the back yard. If inquisitive animal friends tend to frequent your premises, some kind of lid or cover would be a good idea, here.

4) When it comes time to turn your main compost pile, add the recent waste right in!

Isn’t that simple? Not to mention, uh, nicer. That’s how I’m doing it now. Really.

There’s also vermicomposting. It turns out that isn’t something you get from becoming too friendly with Paris Hilton, regardless what it sounds like. It’s a way of using earthworms to compost kitchen waste. That’s on the list to try later.

So, I am at long last doing actual landscapy things, in the case of today while taking a break from writing. I will not feel I’ve really started, however, until I dig a hole and actually plant something in it. I’ve a couple of candidates, basically awaiting me to quit dithering about where to put them. And as I mentioned yesterday, I bought those cool weapons. So now I can’t wait to try ‘em out!

Oh – as indicated, the Rolling Composter so far seems to be working well. The one issue I foresee is that I may need either another one or two or a single much bigger container. I will, shortly, post a description of where the idea of the Rolling Composter came from and how to make one.