The Compost Bin

You know what's just as good as compost tea for your plants? Need a hint? Well there's a big hint in the title of this post. Give up? Yes, it's fish tank water.

Fish tank water is a great natural fertilizer. It's loaded with fish poop and it's a scientific fact that plants love poop. Well that's what I heard anyway.

Once every month or so our aquarium needs a water change. About 40 percent of the water is removed along with a lot of the sediment thats sitting there in the gravel. This is done with a tool called a gravel siphon which is just a big plastic tube that you jab in and out of the gravel. This jabbing stirs up the muck that's in the gravel while it siphons out the water. A typical water change for our tank will fill a 5 gallon bucket. I used to pour this water down the drain but now I know better.

In the summertime, this water will go directly into my garden beds or the compost bin. Winter water goes right into the house plants.

Since I started using my fish tank water as a fertilizer, my plant look shiny, healthy and I'm no longer wasting this perfectly good water.

What's a gardener to do in the middle of winter? Well I don't know what you're doing but I'm keeping busy with indoor gardening projects like making a Terrarium. It's pretty easy to make your own Terrarium and I like the way they look. The project will also help take your mind off of the fact that you're stuck in the darkest, coldest days of winter.

First you'll need a glass jar or an old fish tank. I bought this jar a few years back at a kitchen store with hopes of storing flour in it for all the bread I was going to make with my bread machine. Well, the bread machine has been moved to the back of the closet and now I've got a great jar for a terrarium.

The key to terrariums is choosing the right plants. The inside of a glass jar (with a lid) is a pretty humid place. Pick a plant that likes a lot of moisture. If I had somewhere sunny to put this terrarium, I'd grow some Venus Fly Trap. But unfortunately my house has gigantic eaves that block out the sun. There is not one sunny window sill in my house which is great for the air conditioning bill but not too good for plants.

I get a bag of ground charcoal and put a 1/2" layer at the bottom of the jar to keep it from getting stinky. Next up is gravel for drainage. A half inch to a full inch is plenty in a small jar. Here's a tip, you can buy black fish tank gravel that looks like dirt. Top it off with regular potting soil but remember to leave room for the plants.

Now sit back and enjoy your terrarium. That's what I'll be doing until spring arrives.

Now here's a good idea that's almost ready for prime time. You may have heard that they can now make biodegradable plastic using corn. So the whole supermarket paper or plastic argument may be going away sometime soon. But did you know your next picnic or BBQ could become more green too? All you need is some compostable cutlery.

How cool is this? These knives, forks and spoons are biodegradable and can be composted. They're made from corn starch "and other biodegradable fillers".

If you explore around this Eco-Products site, you'll see they also have compostable cups, plates and other cool things. The containers and plates are actually made from Sugarcane.

Unfortunately, these green products are probably a little too expensive for me. I think I can get a package of 500 forks from Costco for under $10. These compostable forks are sold in cases of 1000 for $45. But as they become more popular I'm sure the price will come down. And then I'll be the first on my block to have a Zero-Waste BBQ.

Here's an awesome quote that I just found while going over the articles Google sent me. You find a lot of interesting things in the news when you have a Google Alert for Compost.

This is from an article about how E. coli has been getting in our food supply lately. It was in the San Francisco Chronicle. The quote comes from a letter to the author that was written by Ian Davidson (it's the second letter on the linked page).

The application of properly made aerobic compost and the liquid extract of such compost (known generally as compost tea) to the foliage and root system of a plant creates a microbial force field around the plant that is naked to the human eye. By inoculating plants with these beneficial organisms, it is virtually impossible for pathogenic organisms to even touch the plant, because the beneficial aerobic organisms are in such dominance.

Well said, Ian. And on a personal note, I'd love to have my own "microbial force field". I'd use it on my kids all the time.

What's that honey? The kids are chasing each other with brooms again? Don't worry, the force field is up, they'll be fine.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to settle for a microbial force field around my garden. And that's not a bad thing to settle for.

Does anyone know what this stuff is? It's some sort of fungus that's growing in my mulch.

It doesn't really bother me because my yard is always full of mushrooms and weird growths because I use so much mulch and almost finished compost everywhere. I even get a nice bunch of morels that sprout up every once in a while.

My guess is that it's something that grows where ever there's decaying wood (like my shredded wood mulch).

Most likely, I'll just cover it up with more mulch this spring when I top off all of my border beds.

With the recent blast of warm weather here in New Jersey, I've managed to finally finish closing my vegetable garden for the winter. Better late than never, I always say.

Not only do I like to add a heaping of compost to my raised beds every spring, I also like to add shredded leaves in fall. The shredded leaves serve as a mulch so that I don't loose too much of that easily workable, organic matter packed, garden soil.

And since my lazy neighbor's leaves have found a winter home by getting blown across the street into my yard, why not shred them. With my leaf blower configured to leaf vacuum mode, I sucked up a few bags full of leaves for the garden.

When spring comes, I'll just turn the shredded leaves over in the soil and that'll add even more organic matter to the mix. That means more worms, less watering and a host of other benefits. Shredded leaves are almost as good as finished compost.

Who says I never finish anything, my garden is now tucked in nicely for winter and the yard is cleaned up too. If you ignore the January part, I'm looking like an overachiever.

Let's face it, compost needs a makeover. The only press that compost gets is when there's a neighborhood battle over a stinky compost bin. You don't hear teens at the mall saying things like, "Dude, compost is the awesome!" Even Al Gore really didn't mention much about compost during his many speeches and events that helped him earn a Nobel Prize.

When you think of compost, if you're like most non-gardeners, you think of garbage. And besides Oscar the Grouch, how many things associated with garbage are even remotely popular?

Well this composter would like to take his hat off to Julia Roberts. While Britney's meltdowns are making big news by demonstrating a celebrity who's falling apart, Julia Roberts is making news by doing it right and going green. I've read a few articles where she mentions what she's doing to be more environmentally friendly and one of those the things she's mentioning is composting.

It sounds silly when you talk about composting, but it’s something that is manageable in my household, something that I know we can accomplish.

Pssst... composting is good for the planet. Pass it on.

Could I get a moment of silence for my Colocasia gigantea Thailand Giant Strain. The poor fella just didn't have a chance outside in the cold of winter.

This giant elephant ear is not at all hardy but due to the perfect storm of excuses, I wasn't able to overwinter it this year.

Last year, I brought it in the house and it overwintered in my living room and I thought that I'd do the same this year. I actually did bring it into the living room which is no easy feat because the pot is really heavy. The pot's diameter is 22" and it holds a lot of soil in there. Probably about the equivalent of the state of Rhode Island in this behemoth of a flower pot. Well in my warm house, the bugs that decided to overwinter in the pot got confused and assumed it was spring. After a few hours inside, my living room was like a scene from the 10 Commandments when Moses sent the locusts after the Pharaoh. Except Pharaoh didn't have to get his pool net to catch all the bugs that flew way up to his 16' cathedral ceilings. So let it be written that I would not be overwintering the Giant Elephant ear in the living room, so let it be done.

The next option was my garage. It's a disaster in there and you can barely walk around. In fact the only way that you can walk in there is to walk on top of stuff. I'm usually pretty organized but the garage just totally got away from me. You see, my 10' x 12' metal shed that was filled to the rim, collapsed last year. There was about a foot of ice on the roof and the thing just totally caved in. So when it rains outside, it now rains in my shed too. Of course all of that junk had to go somewhere and the garage is where it went. So I just didn't have the space in my garage to overwinter my giant elephant ear.

My last plan was to wrap it up and insulate it. This way it could be overwintered outside. My grandfather had a 10 foot fig tree that he overwintered outside, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Well my grandfather was retired and had plenty of time to build a structure with 2x4s and roofing paper that he stuffed with insulation every year. And his fig palace would have no doubt stood up to winter better than my shed did. But never the less, I didn't have enough free time to wrap my plant either.

Now, we're in the middle of winter and I'm left with a sad looking pot, that's filled with nothing but the state of Rhode Island and a bunch of hibernating locusts that were sent by Moses. Next year I guess I should put some lamb's blood on my front door. I think I have some in the garage.