The first time I tried my hand at composting, I did a horrible job. It was back 4 homes. We built our first garden in our small backyard after the younger boys were born. Kirk had picked up a compost bin that he got for free from the city.
A young middle child, it’s the summer of 2011. That compost bin is not being used. I was pregnant with my youngest that year. I was tired and while we were changing the backyard, I hadn’t quite gotten into gardening. It’s the black lump along the fence, btw.
In the summer of 2013, with a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old, we started gardening at our first home. Kirk got me a real composter, which was a tumbler style. It was very heavy.
Neither did well because the honest truth was that the first one from the city was a piece of junk, and the second one he bought was put in the wrong place. I didn’t understand just how much heat compost needed back then, and I put it in the shade. It smelled so bad, always like a dying diaper pail. I also did not understand ratios, which I needed to add in dry leaves and such to balance it out.
We moved it to the next house, where we built an urban farm. And I know I tried using it. But again, I didn’t understand the ratios. I did finally get compost out of it.
At the next home, where we built our homestead, I tried again. This time, I went big and built one out of pallets. You just needed unlimited zip ties, and you were good to go!
I built it on the top of the slope, but within a year, I had moved it to the bottom, down by one of the beds I would make in those years. One, it wasn’t exactly attractive, and when driving by and up our driveway, it looked awful. Curbside appeal does matter. A bit.
Down by the gardens, it was easy to toss plant material into it.
But then we eventually went free-range. And it became a pile, not too different than the piles of my childhood. I added and added, and the chickens would dig it up, eating it. We actually never used the compost from it, but it sure grew amazing feral free-range potatoes and tomato plants. So….it became a bed, if you will.
Then we moved and started building the new gardens at our home in West Virginia. There isn’t curbside yard waste pickup (we did have that at the first two homes, as we lived in an urban area). With no chickens, it just ate at me how much vegetable waste I was putting in the garbage. I knew we needed to take on composting once again, but seriously this time.
I wanted the composting area to look nice. Kirk picked me up this composter unit:
Unlike our first one, it has two tumblers. Which means you can process two hoppers at once, or have one batch finishing while the other is raw. It also spins far more easily and is nowhere near as heavy.
The openings are plastic and slide out. Our first one— the whole top came up and made it hard to handle, with the lid banging around (usually onto our hands…).
The goal is to have two of these units running. With the warm temperatures in the growing season here in grow zone 7a, we get at least 150 growing days; our place is warmer than those closer to the foothills. So, at least 160 in reality – it is something I will chart more next year. With the composter bins in the sun against the garden fence, it is a quick run out each night to empty our scrap bowl. The full sun will quickly bake the compost into future soil, unlike in the PNW, where, after September 1st, the sun barely rises over the evergreen trees. I feel composting here will be far easier, especially in summer. And then we have so much less waste to deal with, and we don’t send it to the landfill.
To deal with the silver maple leaves, I picked up a 4-pack of composting bags on Amazon. We filled them up with leaves and garden waste, used the handles to shake each bag down, and packed more in. They have lids with a zipper and a trap door at the bottom.
We shall see how these work over winter and into spring. I will check them periodically to see if they need water and more vegetation.
~Sarah