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| One of my late spring gardens |
Dear Muffy,
I recently found your blog, and have been reading through your older posts. I love your gardens, and your compost is the most beautiful I have ever seen. I have tried to compost a few times, but have always given up. What is your technique? Thanks for your time!
I have always loved composting, including reducing my own garbage and growing better flowers.
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| My "New Dawn" roses |
Given we never use chemicals in our yard, enriching the soil is a must if I am to have my perennial beds. So for the gardens, I use the manure and the pine shavings from the hen house for a winter cover, and come spring, a generous supply of compost.
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| One of our Rhode Island Red hens, Gamma, keeps me company |
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| Our results |
For the longest time we wrestled with an ideal compost system. I never liked the high maintenance, smell, and often heavy shoveling work that went with traditional composters. (And given our pool is not too far away from where we compost, the last things our guests want on a hot July afternoon is to smell any decomposing.)
A few seasons ago, we put together from scraps around the house a system that has worked very well to deliver all of the benefits with virtually no work. (And this takes no special building skills either.)
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| A schematic of the no-maintenance compost system we put together and currently use |
We stacked bricks into two walls, about three feet apart. We put two pieces of Closetmaid shelving (but any coated shelving would work) between them. Then we put a traditional composter (but a garbage can with some air holes and no bottom would work just as well) on top of that.
Then we put a catch bin underneath the composter. In the catch bin we made four 2" holes directly on the bottom. This facilitates the ability of little bugs and worms to go up from the earth into the compost and any water to seep out.
Now, all we have to do is throw in food scraps (no meat, no dairy, as with all composters) in the top. In about eight weeks, the food at the bottom begins turning to compost and sprinkling down into the bucket below. Rain and gravity do the work of moving the compost, and only when it is ready. One can create two or even three composters to increase capacity (we have three).
These composters are zero maintenance. You can take the perfect compost out of the bucket below whenever you need it.
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| More company |
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One of my gardens in mid-summer
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| Even off to a party (in a Lilly), the work is never quite done |
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13 comments:
Those look like birkenstocks. I'm stunned.
Where I live we have to pay for every bag of garbage so everyone recycles and composts as much as possible. We usually end up with about 1/2 of a bag of garbage each week.
We have been composting all this time and it's ways fun to see where a random tomato or pumpkin plant will start growing after we have used the latest batch of new soil. Sometime I just go ahead and toss my coffee grinds and egg shells right into the veggie patch!
Love the Lilly! (shift) And your lilies are lovely as well. I'm impressed with your low maintenance composter design. Our current design is high maintenance. Will give yours a try. Thank you for sharing!
@Anonymous - They are indeed. I have been wearing them since before I was married.
@Suburban Princess - 1/2 of a bag - that's incredible! I guess making people pay will get results!
@Mona - We had the high-maintenance ones for years. It was frustrating to have to walk away from them for six months or so while the composting process occurred. These have a better flow - a la the human body.
When I first moved into my cottage, in an area of big estates with enormous oak trees, I raked and discarded over 100 bags of leaves before figuring out how to use them for mulch. Neighbors spend $350 to $500 several times each fall to get rid of their leaves, but I am trying to convert them to composting, too.
Thank you. I have been a thwarted, unsuccessful composter for many years. I plan on building a low impact composter along the lines of what you and your husband have come up with. This looks like just the ticket! Reggie
Do you ever have a problem with rodents getting into your compost or is that just an urban problem? I really miss have a compost pile, bird feeders and bird baths because of the rodents which are attracted to the compost and the seed.
@The Devoted Classicist - We have been composting leaves separately (they tend to kill a compost pile if used beyond just a few) as well as use them to get rid of some undergrowth before we clear more brush. The farmer from whom we buy our CSA share uses only leaves to enrich his soil. Each fall there is a steady stream of landscapers dropping off their leaves on his fields.
@Reggie - I hope you meet with success! I have always likened composting to the process of making maple syrup where one starts with a great deal of sap, but ends up with a small, but precious, amount of syrup.
@Anonymous - We have had the occasional coyote, squirrels, and mice, but have yet to spot a single bigger rodent over the last twenty or so years. We are semi-rural, with eight acres of our own but bordered on two sides by about 100 acres of preserved land. We also have a pretty active hawk population that keeps critters at bay.
I enjoyed your piece on composting and thought your maintenance-free compositor design would suit my needs. Regarding the Closetmaid shelving, are you using heavy duty or standard shelving? Also, I see that Closetmaid offers Close Mesh wire shelving which has 5/8" spacing rather than the 1" wire spacing on most shelving. In your opinion, is there any advantage to using one over the other? Thanks!
@Anonymous - Heavy duty works a bit better than standard, but is not necessary. Counter-intuitively (at least to me), a wider spacing (1") works better than more narrow, although during the first few weeks of use before a good layer is formed, you may have to pick up the odd piece of food that falls through and toss it back in the top.
Thanks for the idea! I've been trying to figure out how to make composting work where we live, without the smell bothering the neighbors.
What a clever design! We have a falling-apart and abandoned stone fire pit in our yard, which could prove a viable ready-made location for such a contraption. Thank you for the beautifully practical post.
Thank God you weren't going to tell us what the most preppy compost composition is.... LOL
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