Last fall I posted an article, Compost at the Coast. It was about changes to my composting system. I went through a winter with the system and I have made some adjustments. I found that my new rotating compost bins work best when given materials that have already started decomposing so I added a plastic garbage can. It actually doesn't need to be a full-sized garbage can but I went with full size because it was easiest to get. One third the size would be about right. When the weather gets cooler, I might cut it to that size.
I also added a smaller rectangular container to hold our organic waste when the barrel was in its composting mode. What ends up happening is that about two weeks worth of "nutrients" go into the barrel. Those nutrients are mixed and covered with the right amount of brown material to make certain that a proper carbon to nitrogen ratio is maintained for efficient composting. If you need more information on composting and keeping that ratio right, this page is a great resource.
At around three weeks, I empty my rotating barrels of compost and put them in the large square storage bin. I then shovel the decomposing material from the garbage barrel into the two rotating bins. I have learned that filling each rotating bin about one-third full works best. I close them up and give them a spin every few days.
Once my garbage barrel is empty, I pour what I have collected in my small container into the barrel. I thoroughly soak it and cover it with a one to two-inch layer of Daddy Pete's Raised Bed Mix. I like that particular brand and type because it has a little more of the woody material needed for good composting.
During the next week to ten days, I empty our nutrients collected from the kitchen directly into the barrel and add a little Raised Bed Mix every few days. Once or twice I will stir the materials with a shovel. After I have two weeks or so of rotting materials in the barrel, I cover it and soak it again. For the next week or ten days, nothing goes into the barrel. All our nutrients go into the square container.
Then the cycle starts over again with the rotating bins being emptied and the materials from the garbage barrel being put in the rotating bins.
Maybe all of this sounds like a lot of work, but I can guarantee that good compost yields amazing results in the garden. Our sixteen feet of green bean trellis produced over fifteen pounds of beans. Our two small beds, one of them raised gave us over twenty-five heads of lettuce. We ate the lettuce from the last of March until the last refrigerated head of Romaine was served in mid-June. You can add spinach, spring onions, banana peppers, and tomatoes to our list of successful crops. This year the garden also produced a monster cucumber plant which happens to be planted at the base of our compost storage bin.
Here is a link to a photo album of pictures which go from when the garden was planted in February to when we decided to give up on the remaining green beans and start preparing the soil for a fall crop.
