Ahhh! Leaves

I'm visiting family in Virginia.  Virginia is full of leaves-everywhere.  On the grass, in the streets, in the driveways, in clear bags piled up against the houses.  Some of the neighbors are using leaf blowers to blow them into the streets, but the wind is going to blow them right back into the driveway tomorrow.  I want to take them all home with me.  They don't appreciate them here in suburbia.  Nobody here owns a compost tumbler.  They all have three cars in their driveways.  I think they may not have heard about carbon imprint yet.  But the city does have a recycling program for just about everything man makes.  The also have 'free cycle' where you can give stuff away to someone who wants it.  I think it is a great idea.  It doesn't have to go to the dump and it doesn't have to be made again.  It's so easy to help others reduce their carbon imprint.

One troubling thing I saw was a so-called "health-food store" with every vegetable wrapped up in plastic, exotic foods from all over the world, all at a premium price.  They had a coupon for $1.00 off a particular brand of butter, so I went to check it out.  The price of the butter is $6.99 for one pound.  I decided that the coupon would not help me to want to spend that much for a  pound of butter during the holiday season when we will be using it all up quickly.

So far, no butter from the health food store and I'm not going to be able to take all the leaves in the city home with me either.  But, I did meet some people who have a black walnut tree and they don't like black walnuts, so I gathered them all up to take home with me.   This city has redeemed itself a little in my book.

I left my compost tumbler full at home.  I hope someone is tumbling it for me while I'm here in suburbia drooling over leaves.

Saturday before Thanksgiving

August 27th

Since it has been raining every day since March 12th and been quite cool here, composting has been slow.  I emptied the compost that was in the composter for two months and put it into a new made raised bed that has not been planted.  It will probably set all winter before I plant in it.  I made another batch rather quickly since we had some warmer days in August.  I am using a lot of the manure from the chicken pen along with grass clippings and some cut up stems and debri from the garden.Three hail storms have created a lot of debri in the garden to compost.I moved the ComposTumbler to the SE corner of the garden.  It is more sheltered there.  I am thinking it will help in the cooler months to extend the composting season.I have decided that we definately need to cover the entire garden area if we intend to garden in Colorado.

Composter progress:

May 25, 2009,  I have been able to empty my composter tumbler of the material that had been in it over the winter months.  I refilled it with leaves saved over, some shredded stems from the fall, and lots of manure from the chickens and rabbits.  Some days are warm, but it is very rainy and cool on alternate days, so again, progress will be slower than 'usual', as my tumbler sits outdoors in my garden.My soil, being 100% sand, is always in need of amending with compost or vermicompost.  The sand seems to swallow up the compost and it dissapears.  It is amazing.  I suspect that the compost migrates to the lower levels of the soil.  Hopefully, over the years of adding more, some of it will become visible on the surface.  I notice the raised beds are not quit as bad at this, as they started our being filled with at least 50% compost to fill them. 

Composting update-April 27th.

We have had some very nice warm days that have alllowed me to put in some garden work and plant some shrubs and trees.  The composter started working again, and I actually had to add water to it.  It's not finished yet, but it smells good.  One week of constant warmth might do it.  So far we are getting 2-3 days of 60-80's temps and then it snows again, like it did last night.  Every one says our weather is very different this year.  We are glad for the moisture, though, as we got none all fall and winter to speak of.  The pastures are greening up now, which is early for that.

At least I don't have to water the garden today.  I put seeds in for the cool temperature germinators, like lettuce, broccili, snow peas, spinach.  I am eating last years spinach which came up and is growing quickly.

High Plains Drifting!

I've come back to snow and very cold temperatures, so I am not even going to worry about tumbling my compost tumbler until the weather breaks.  The rabbits are inside the warmer chicken coop and I am thinking I can put some of their fresh manure into the tumbler to warm it up.  Maybe I should put the whole tumbler inside the chicken coop too!

Late Summer composting success

9-9-09

In my area we haven't had a "real" summer where it gets hot.  August had a few warmer days after a summer of hail and constant rain.  We got nickel size hail here.  Further south they had it golf ball and hard ball size, so I feel mildly fortunate.  It still does a number on the garden.  It is too late for tomatoes to  ripen in my garden.  I have been cleaning up the plants by removing the dried up damaged parts and composting it.  The composting process is finally working on time for me.  I have a third batch almost ready to harvest.  Since I built two new square beds, they are getting most of it. I use some for top dressing heavy feeders and beds that need a boost before replanting them after the storm.  The spinach bed and lettuce bed were replanted.  I put in some late carrots and beans, too.

We compost the droppings from the chicken coop with other things.  I like to add some fresh cut grass to it to heat it up.

I find, the more manure I put into the ComposTumbler, the more I need to tumble it.  This keeps it broken up and decomposing faster.  So, I sometimes turn the tumbler 4-5 times each day.  In the third week of the process I open the lid and check for doneness.  When it is fully done you will not smell any uric acid from the manures or ammonia from the grass.

We are now discussing the best way to cover our garden to protect it from the summer hail and excessive rains.  Tomatoes do not like rain!

Our chickens are eating good this summer!

The Fastest Composter in the World

Even with the fastest compost tumbler in the world, without the warmer temperatures needed to keep the little microbes alive, it just takes longer.

If you live in a warm climate you will not have the same problem I have.  The combination of high altitude and cooler climate will only allow me to get compost in three weeks during the warmest months, whichever they happen to be.  This year it is not June.  Last year it was not June.  August should be better.  I will let you know.

Garden Becky

My ComposTumbler's Partner

2.8 HP Electric Chipper/Shredder

Last week of October, 2009

This late in the year plants are drying up and the garden is trying to go to sleep. The greenhouse is still going strong, but the shorter days are telling everything it's time to quit. Once the squash plants and corn stalks are brittle dry, I will compost them. This year I have ordered one of 4seasongreenhouse.com's electric shredder machines. It should be here by the time the plants are ready.

Last year I spent a lot of time and muscle cutting up the long parts of the plants to help them compost faster. Since I am smarter this year than I was last year, I decided to get the shredder to do the shredding of all the big pieces. The smaller the parts that go into the composter, the more quickly they can decompose. You can run your horse pucky and cow pies through the shredder also. It will all mix much better that way. And of course, the endless leaf supply can be shredded.

This electric shredder is quiet to run, so it won't disturb the neighborhood to run it, and there is no gas to buy or fumes to smell. It will be a perfect partner to work along with my ComposTumbler. I hope it will speed up the composting I do during the winter months.

The decision that changes things.

Debris waiting to be shredded and then composted

While I am waiting for my shredder machine to arrive, I am cleaning out beds and letting the plant debris dry out thoroughly. I even removed the long stringy zuccini plants from the compost tumbler so they would dry out. I will put them through the shredder and return it all to the composTumbler with the other material I have waiting to be shredded.

Well....sorta...

Nov.13th, 2008

I let everything dry out, but then we got 6" of snow and I totally forgot about the drying out process, so now it is all wet again.

But, the chipper/shredder arrived yesterday, only 5 days after I ordered it. So I put it together.  You can see how that went in the How To section-look for How to put together the electric chipper/shredder.

The only thing I had that was dry was a bin of leaves, which really don't need to be shredded because they are so thin they break down easily in the compost.  I managed to shred up some soft twig and filled the composter with dry leaves, a little rabbit manure and cow pie that was close by, adding a bucket of water and a little bit of wet sand/dirt.  I tumbled that around good and now it just has to do it's thing.  If I can locate that bag of activator in my garden shed, I will sprinkle some of that into it, as it is pretty cold outside.

Freezing temperatures...

Are definately keeping me from doing anything with my compost tumbler out in the garden.  I have been adding kitchen scraps to the Backporch composter tumbler on the back porch.  The morning sun hits it full on.  Some days it thaws out, but most of the time it is a frozen brick.  I put the stuff in the composter anyway, so that when it does thaw, it will be turned a few times.  It will all be there waiting for the mid-winter warm up that usually comes along in Feb.  If not, well it can just wait til the Spring thaw.

Jan 27,2009 update:

The weather has been roller coaster-ing up and down, but mostly it's been colder than normal.  The compost inside the composter doesn't thaw out every day.  Turning the composter when the compost is frozen is a hoot.  It will start to spin out on you real fast, but nothing inside moves.

Spring will get here...eventually.

Feb and March, 2009 update:

By George! It feels like Spring is here already.  Our weather has turned very warm and dry.  I added two large feed sacks of chicken/rabbit manure to the ComposTumbler in the garden and on nice days it gets tumbled. Had to add some water to it.  We live in very dry climate and the wind makes it dryer.  The compost is looking like compost, but not quite finished.  We are supposed to be having snow blizzards, but we are just getting sand storms.  The spinach bed is starting to grow. Not good.  It will snow again and kill it.  But until then I let it grow.  The rabbits need some greens.

The backporch composter on the back porch gets most of the kitchen scraps and starts the decomposition process while it's warm.  It will take longer to finish, but I may put it into the worm factory and let them finish it off.

It is not really Spring, it just feels like it.

April 4, 2009

After a very mild and dry winter, we are getting our moisture during the official spring months.  Since the calender said it was Spring, we have had four snow blizzards.  They have been short, not too heavy, and had warm sunny days in between them.  This is good for the pasture land.  Composters are staying frozen even on the sunny days.  It takes about a week of sun to thaws them out.

Just before the snows started, I harvested a bushel of nearly finished compost from the tumbler in the garden, and added a lot of shredded up stems from last years garden.  I filled it up full, wet it down and gave it some tumbles to mix it.

I used the nearly finished compost, mixed with some sand, to fill holes and plant fresh seed in the pasture.  It was good timing, just before the first snow fall.  The seed won't come up until it gets a lot warmer-what I would call Spring weather.  April can be a volitile month for weather.  It may be spring in Georgia, but it ain't here on the high plain grasslands of Colorado at 6,000' elevation.  We just take it as it comes.