It was at least four or five years ago when my granddaughter found a library book that talked about compost. As she found out, the Crystal Coast has everything you need for compost: air, nutrients, heat, and moisture. She was so interested that I helped her make a compost pile behind our house. It did not work very well because a raccoon stirred it up. I quickly developed a system that allowed us to compost without help from the local wildlife. It was a much smaller scale than when I used a 60HP four-wheel drive tractor to turn our composting cow manure at Tay Ridge Angus back in the late seventies, but the principles of making compost are the same.
I bought three large garbage cans, cut the bottoms out of them and staked them in place. I eventually added a scavenged storage bin for the finished compost. The tops of the garbage cans had holes drilled in them and I used weights and/or bungee cords to keep the critters out.
We dumped all our vegetable and paper waste except newspapers into the compost bins. Some garden waste also joined the household waste, but we were careful not to put tomato vines or any others that might be diseased into our bins. Since we do not have a shredder/grinder, sticks and coarser items still went to the dump. I layered my bins either with hardwood mulch or inexpensive coarse soil which passes for topsoil. I also added some water to the bin and used a shovel to turn it occasionally. Once the bin was full I turned the contents upside down by shoveling it to the next bin. Then I would start all over. You have to keep the green succulent stuff to about one third the volume of what you put in the barrel. We keep that ratio by using everything from coffee grounds and filters to used paper towels and woody mulch or topsoil with lots of mulch.
The material in the second bin would get stirred a little by shovel over the next month to six weeks. After that time its volume would be reduced by half. At that point, I would turn the contents upside down once again by shoveling it into my third garbage bin. Once the third bin was full, I would shovel it into the square storage bin. We figured out that we generate enough compostable materials to create about 8 cubic feet of compost every six to seven months.
We usually put our compost on the garden in the February to March period and again in the September to October timeframe. If I have a surplus, I bag it in old bird seed bags and store it.
The system worked well but was very labor intensive and took up a lot of space. We recently modernized with a dual chamber HotFrog rotating composter. I went with the HotFrog because it did not have dozens of screws that might rust holding the bins together. The first batch has already come out but it is a little early to say how it will work during our relatively mild winters. I am hopeful that we get the same great compost with a whole lot less work.
Here is a picture of our compost storage bin which should be done with its final cooking in the next four weeks or so. At that time we will empty it and start the process over. This is the last of the three barrels that we used in the past. We used it to transition to our new system. While you cannot feel the quality of soil from a picture, you can get an idea of the soil our continuous applications of compost have helped create by looking at soil just to the left of the Vinca in this photograph.
Find more links to information about the Crystal Coast at my CrystalCoast.me website.
