The Compost Bin

Image via WikipediaI'd like to wish everyone a Happy Halloween and I'd also like to remind you not to throw your pumpkin in the trash tomorrow.

A pumpkin, even though it's orange, is an excellent green for your compost bin.

Here's a tip for all of you out there trying to secretly grow marijuana in your basement. Having three pallets of compost delivered to your apartment building might give you away.

I'm not making this up. Actual drug dealers who were growing cannibus in an apartment had 360 bags of compost delivered to the site. That caused the landlord and police to get a little suspicious.

It makes me proud to know that the benefits of compost are getting to be so well known that even the shady underbelly of society is taking notice.

Making Compost Is Not Hard
There, that's my answer. Let me explain why I don't think that making compost is hard at all.

Here's a picture of one of my compost bins from last fall. It's probably around November or December. Do you see that it's filled to the top?



Now here's the same compost bin from about a week ago. Do you see how all of those leaves, grass clippings, garden and kitchen waste cooked down to less than half the size of the original pile?



Now here's where I explain the easy part. I never mixed this pile. Not even once. And in fact, I even continued adding more stuff to it during the summer. That's why there are grass clippings on the top of the pile. And I didn't keep it as moist as a wrung out sponge and I didn't worry about the ratio of browns to greens. It got wet when it rained and I put whatever kitchen & yard waste I had at the time right in there.

All of that fussing is for people who are trying to make compost in three weeks. What's the rush? And if you have more waste than will fit in one bin, then start another. I'm going to let this pile sit until the spring and add it to my raised beds or wherever I need it. And I'll also start another pile with all of the leaves that fall from the tree this autumn.

If you aren't in a hurry, composting is easy. Just fill a bin and wait a year. How hard is that?

Well the winter garden isn’t off to a great start. I got the seeds in the ground and thanks to the leftover rain from Hurricane Ike and a few other rainy weekends they all germinated. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m very excited to try growing fresh salad greens and other cold hardy crops through the winter with the aid of a hoop house or a cold frame.

Unfortunately there’s also a woodchuck who is also very excited to see that I’m trying to grow salad greens and other cold hard crops through the winter. And he’s found a way into my garden.

I use a thin Deer Fence to keep pests out of the garden. And it works great. But towards the end of summer it starts to show signs of wear and tear. Now usually this wouldn’t matter because I put the garden to sleep every fall. But since, the garden isn’t sleeping and in fact, looks more like the early spring garden, it does matter.

The fencing isn’t too expensive for 100 feet so it’s not a big investment. But it does take some time to get it installed around the vegetable garden. I buy a couple of 2x2 posts, cut them to size and stick them in the ground. If you paint the posts black, the fence is invisible from the house.

I fasten the netting to the post using plastic tie wraps. I also like to bury some of the fencing under some mulch so that if something were to go up to the fence and start digging, they’d hit the buried part of the fence and hopefully stop. This has worked great for some time now. But with rabbits and the big old woodchuck always trying to get in there, eventually the fence gets a few tears in it.

In fact, I probably helped damage the fence. Whenever my kids see the critter from the glass doors in the livingroom, they yell, “Woodchuck” (well sometimes they yell “Beaver” but you get the idea). Then I run outside and chase it out of the yard. These things must have terrible eyesight because it usually runs right into the fencing. And even a 20 pound blind animal eventually will tear through one of these little fences.

I think the stubs in the picture are bok choy. I forgot to label the seeds when I put them in the ground, so I was going to wait and see what they when they came up. Hey at least I got the seeds in the ground! Getting them in the ground and labeled is a goal for another less busy year.

What’s next? Well, these guys should recover. But I have at least another fifty feet of fencing in the garage somewhere, so I’ll go outside today in the rain and put up a new fence and crawl around on the ground and bury the netting under in the mulch just like I do in the spring. Fall gardening sure is messy.