The Compost Bin

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2011-09-05T14:26:00.004-04:00

Thank you for visiting The Compost Bin Blog. I've stopped updating this site but I'm going to keep it up for archive purposes.

If you're looking for my recent articles about Gardening, Cooking and more, please visit my new blog:

GoodStuffAtHome.com

Garden Goals

2011-01-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

Well another gardening season is almost here. It's been over 60 degrees for the past week and other than the giant piles of snow that I made when I shoveled, most of the snow is melting. And with the disastrous season that I had in the garden last year becoming nothing more than just a bad memory, I'm writing down some garden goals for the new year.

Winter Sowing - I've actually been winter sowing all winter long. Through the blizzards, the snowmaggedon and the snowicanne, I was filling up empty soda bottles and apple juice containers with soil and planting seeds. I've been known to do some leaf thieving in the fall to add to my compost bins but this winter I became a bottle borrower, going through my neighbors recycling bins. My kids like to say, "Dad thinks he's a hobo and goes through people's garbage."

Worm bin - The good folks at Natures Foot Print Inc were nice enough to send me a worm bin to review. It's a Worm Factory 360 and it's pretty cool looking. I even got a DVD with some nice instructions about raising worms and it says that the best temperature for worms are between 40 & 70. And that just happens to be the temperature of the inside my garage at this time of year. So I'll be buying some Red Wiggler Worms and vermicomposting real soon.

Raised Bed Cages - Between the rabbits, the woodchucks, the chipmunks, the birds, the squirrels it was a constant battle to protect my garden. A fence by itself just can't protect those fruits and vegetables from the daily onslaught of those hungry pests. So I'm going with a new protection scheme this year. I'm going to build hinged wire boxes over the top of my raised beds. The design I'm thinking about will also protect the garden from any freak hailstorms and I'll also be able to cover them with garden fabric for quick and easy hoop houses.

Grow a lot of food - That's my goal every year but it seems that growing your own food has suddenly become in vogue.

Canning - I'd really like to start enjoying tomatoes during the winter. Supermarket tomatoes and even expensive hot house tomatoes just really taste like crap. It's time to start saving the tons of tomatoes that I grow every year and the best way to do that would be to get one of those home canning kits. It's something that I've always wanted to try.

Well those are some of my goals for now. I'll provide more details and photos of these and other projects in the weeks to come. I haven't posted in ages and I'm looking forward to it. Happy Gardening.

Compost-Off Continues...

2009-10-14T06:33:00.001-04:00

Round 5

Round 6

More of the Gaiam Compost-Off

2009-09-27T15:01:00.003-04:00

I'm enjoying these Compost-Off videos by Gaiam. But both the Earthmaker Composter and the Bio-Orb Monster Compost Bin aren't doing that well. Well at least that what they're focusing on in the videos.

I'll defend these products a little bit and say that neither bin is really a "set it and forget it" type of product. You're going to have to watch your compost and tend to it's needs.

For example, if your bin is stinky (like the bio-orb is these videos) then add more dried leaves or shredded newspapers. And if it's drying out (like the Earthmaker) well then water it. Or maybe even leave the lid off when it rains.

Well that's my two cents. Enjoy the videos.

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Which Compost Bin To Buy

2009-09-03T20:39:00.004-04:00

Have you ever wanted to see a compost bin throwdown? A real side by side blind taste test? Well the good folks at Gaiam have done just that.

Check out this video where they compare the Earthmaker Composter and the Bio-Orb Monster Compost Bin. With the video you can get a good idea what it's like making compost with these things. And there's going to be more videos in this series. I'll keep my eye out for them.

Compost Fire

2009-08-23T12:16:00.005-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

If you follow composting news (and who doesn't) then you probably heard about several compost fires recently.

There was one burning in Maple Valley, Seattle earlier in the week and another in Saginaw, Michigan yesterday.

Now before you get worried about your kitchen compost crock bursting into flames on your counter top, both of these fires took place at composting facilities. These are really large processing plants that compost for a whole town or city and their piles are probably larger than your house.

Can a compost fire start in a home compost bin? It's probably possible but it's rather unlikely. Some of the factors that cause compost to spontaneously combust are the following:

Large Well Insulated Piles
Limited Air Flow
Dry Pockets in the Pile

What happens is the biological activity in a compost pile generates heat. And if the pile isn't aerated (which is common when the compost pile is bigger than a house) decomposition will be anaerobic. One by-product of anaerobic composting is methane. Now you've got heat and fuel and all you need is for this to happen near a dry pocket of unfinished compost in huge well insulated pile and poof, you've got a compost fire.

This isn't likely to happen in your average home composting set up but it's not a bad idea to give you compost a mix now and then.

Sources: 1, 2

Compost Tumblers

2009-08-19T20:00:00.010-04:00

Here is a list of the most popular compost tumblers on the market:
(according to Amazon - 08/19/09)

#1 - Achla CMP-05 Spinning Horizontal Composter
I find this hard to believe actually. It's not the cheapest tumbler out there (see #2) and it's not the most well known brand either. But I guess it's the fact that it looks easy to use and it's decent price make it very popular among people shopping to compost tumblers.

#2 - Envirocycle Composter
The Envirocycle Composter being on this list makes more sense to me. It's nice looking, doesn't take up a lot of space, easy to spin and has the lowest price on this list. And I think that's why this model is a very popular choice with school gardening programs.

#3 - Tumbleweed Composter

I don't know why it's called the tumbleweed composter since it doesn't really look like a tumbleweed. It's more of a garbage can that was skewed through the middle by an axle. Well, regardless of the name this thing mixes compost ingredients well. A slow spin will cause the contents to move from the top to the bottom and back again. The legs look a little flimsy though.

#4 - Back Porch Compost Tumbler
I can see why The Back Porch Compost Tumbler belongs on the back porch. It's ugly. It looks more like something you'd see at bingo night instead of in the garden. But regardless, it has a great reputation for making fast compost.

#5 - MANTIS® ComposT-Twin

At $499, I'm surprised that this one even made the list. It's the Cadillac of compost tumblers. If you want a big tumbler, that spins easily and you want it from a brand name that you can trust then this is it. I still can't get over the price but at least they offer free shipping, a money back guarantee, free activator and a Guide to Composting. It's not in my budget but it is on my wish list.

Musa Basjoo Banana

2009-08-11T19:44:00.008-04:00

Now here's something that you don't see every day. A banana tree with little bananas on it in New Jersey.

I'm a big fan of the hardy banana plant, the musa basjoo and I have been growing them for years now. Every fall I dig them up, wrap them in newspapers, bubble wrap or burlap and overwinter them in my garage.

But this is the first time that I've ever gotten the plant to flower and actually make tiny little bananas. How cool is that?

What's even more interesting is that because of the Crazy June Hailstorm that we had here in my area, the plants lost all of their leaves and looked really beaten down most of the summer. They really are the smallest and have the fewest leaves since I bought the original plant years ago.

But maybe that stress forced the musa basjoo survival instincts to kick in and they tried to create some seeds. Well whatever the reason, it's pretty neat to have a banana tree with bananas. We don't have a long enough summer for them to become fully grown and I don't think the musa basjoo fruit is edible but I'll be watching these plants with great interest for the rest of the summer.

Rotating Composter

2009-08-02T18:49:00.003-04:00

Have you been searching for a rotating composter that looks like a lunar lander? Well if you are then I've found exactly what you're looking for.

How cool looking is this thing? I'm sure you've seen typical compost tumblers that look like a big cylinder on it's side. Stuff goes in the top and you spin it around. Sounds boring right? Well if you want to make your composting much more exciting then you should try out this STC Green Ecomposter. I think that aliens might come down to your garden and rotate this bin for you.

It's made from recycled plastic which is nice and it's a pretty big composter. The dimensions are 32"x32"x31". I guess it's not quite a perfect sphere but it looks like it.

It's on the expensive side, coming in at over $200 but that's still less than the Urban Compost Tumbler which in my opinion is one of the best tumblers on the market.

And if you're into modding your compost bin then may I suggest getting some black and white plastic spray paint and turning this thing into a big soccer ball. My son would get a kick out of that (oooh, that one was bad). Either that or the lunar lander that I mentioned earlier. Even when you're not composting, this rotating composter will be fun for the whole family.

Garden Update

2009-07-06T06:27:00.002-04:00

Here’s a great gardening tidbit that you don’t often see in gardening books. Frozen ice balls falling from the sky for almost an hour are really not a good thing to happen to plants. So you should try to avoid that if you’d like to have a great garden. Unfortunately I was not able to take my own advice and as I’ve mentioned before, a freak June hailstorm in New Jersey left my vegetable garden shredded.

But here it is several weeks later and some plants have started to bounce back. Now don’t get me wrong, I still totally consider this year’s summer garden to be a disaster but all is not lost.

Usually around the 4th of July all my tomato and pepper plants are rocking. They would be full of flowers and really starting to reach for the top of the tomato cages or stakes or whatever I decide to use to keep them upright. This year, I’m just happy to have a few leaves on the plants. I figure the storm set me back about a month.

I knew that my perennial berry plants would be fine for next year but this years blueberries and blackberries are actually looking pretty good. The June bearing strawberries were cut short by a week or two but the plants have recovered nicely. I’m also lucky that the smaller ever bearing strawberry plants that I have on my patio were spared from the ice storm.

And I’m really surprised that my zucchini and squash are growing nicely again and even flowering. I think I may have to grab some blossoms and make a nice omelet sometime soon. After the hailstorm these guys looked like they went through the garbage disposal. They’re really wasn’t much left. But I guess that having healthy roots planted with lots of compost was enough to keep them alive even though there were no leaves left. Good for you zucchini. I vote you as the comeback vegetable of the year.

The new rhubarb plants that I put in this spring are questionable. I was planning on letting them grow some deep healthy roots and not harvest any this season but the hailstorm decided it wanted some rhubarb and broke a bunch of stalks off for me.

Other than that, I’ve got tons of hostas that look like an army of slugs had their way with them. But hostas really are bulletproof. By the end of the month most of the ripped leaves should be replaced with new ones, so no worries there.

And the same goes with all of my hardy banana plants. Oh they look awful right now but given some time and perhaps a few doses of compost tea, new shoots should start outnumbering the tattered confetti like leaves that now have the majority.

So that’s where I am right now in the garden. I also bought a few seedlings to fill in some of the vast expanses of emptiness in the garden that I’m not used to having in July. Things could have been a lot worse so I’m thankful that I’ll still get a chance to enjoy a garden fresh tomato sometime this summer. Hey it might not be until August but I’m not better late than never.

Growing Kohlrabi

2009-07-04T10:56:00.003-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Since I’ve got a lot of free space in the vegetable garden lately, I’ve been on the look out for something interesting to try growing. Sometimes I’ll go to the store to buy tiki torch fuel and I wind up coming home with a new plant. That’s exactly what happened this week and now I’m going to try growing kohlrabi.

Kohlrabi definitely seems like an interesting vegetable to try growing. So what exactly is Kohlrabi? Kohlrabi is also known as a German turnip. It doesn’t taste like a turnip though. People say it has a taste that sort of is a cross between a broccoli stem and an apple. I think technically the vegetable is related to cabbage but it must be a third cousin or something because I just don’t see the family resemblance.

I planted them a few feet apart but only because of all that space in the vegetable garden that I’ve mentioned before. You can put them a lot closer together if you’re short on space. The rest of the planting instructions are pretty typical, well drained soil, amended with a lot of compost, heavy feeder.

So what can I do with this Kohlrabi? That’s a good question. I’ve looked up some recipes to try and they seem pretty simple. You can eat it cooked or raw. You can fry or grill kohlrabi with garlic and oil but that’s not very exciting. You can cook and old shoe with garlic and oil and it’ll still taste good. I also found some coleslaw recipes that use kohlrabi instead of cabbage. That sounds good. I’ll definitely give that one a shot.

Well I hope to be able to try these recipes, but that depends if the plants don’t get eaten by a woodchuck or get bombed with several inches of hail. It’s been a weird gardening season so far but hopefully I’ll be able to remember it as the first season that I grew kohlrabi.

Garden Damage

2009-06-17T08:05:00.012-04:00

Well here it is, the middle of June and I don't have a vegetable garden anymore. The day before the hail storm in New Jersey, I had tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, rhubarb, corn and more but now I have nothing but shredded wheat.

It's really amazing how a bad hail storm can destroy a garden. I was so worried about the woodchucks eating my plants that I never considered that I should worry about ice falling from the sky.

Its definitely too late to start over using seeds. I may pick up a few tomato plants at the nursery just so that I can get something from the summer garden. But mostly I'm just going to move on and focus on planning the late summer/fall garden. There's lots of great cool season crops and root veggies that I've been meaning to try.

Well I'll start planning it once I clean up this mess.

June Hailstorm

2009-06-16T07:46:00.008-04:00

Just when I think I've got the yard word under control mother nature decides that there's a lot more to do. Northern New Jersey was pummeled by a freak hailstorm yesterday that not only left several inches of ice on the ground but also shredded all of my plants and trees.

I took these pictures 4 hours after the storm when I got home from work and you can still see the ice in my yard. It was really weird to be outside in June and be able to see your frozen breath and we usually don't have ice on the pool toys.

Looks like I'm going to be pretty busy with the clean up for the next few days. Check out this local news video for more on this crazy weather.

Mandatory Composting

2009-06-14T11:51:00.002-04:00

Image by Walter Parenteau via Flickr

San Francisco recently approved the most aggressive recycling law in the United States. Residents will now be required to separate their garbage into three color-coded bins, blue for recycling, black for trash and green for composting. You read that right. San Francisco now has mandatory composting.

I think this is definitely a step in the right direction. Keeping this waste out of the landfill will cut down on landfill methane.

They’ve found that around 30 percent trash that goes to the landfill is compostable. But in landfill conditions, that waste is composting the same way it would in a home compost bin. In the landfill the piles don’t get to breath as much and the decomposition is Anaerobic. And the number one by-product of anaerobic decomposition is methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. If the production of methane can be reduced it would definitely help reduce our carbon footprint.

Solar Moler

2009-06-11T08:06:00.003-04:00

Baby Ducks in the Pool

2009-06-10T06:15:00.000-04:00

Okay, now this is getting ridiculous. Somehow my yard has become a hotel for ducks.

As long as they stay out of my garden, I'm okay with my new tenants. It's the woodchuck that has to go.

Plants vs. Zombies

2009-06-09T22:01:00.004-04:00

Have you ever wanted to kill zombies by strategically placing pea shooting plants all over your yard? Nope, me neither. Well that is until I started playing this addictive little game called Plants vs. Zombies. Now all I can think about is killing zombies.

You may be wondering what gardening has to do with the undead. To tell you the truth, I don't really know. But the makers of this game had a cool idea and then ran with it. You place pea shooting plants, mushrooms, cherry bombs and lots more stuff all over your yard and collect as much sunshine as you can while you wait for the zombie horde to start marching towards your house.

And the cartoon zombies will amuse you with their crazy ideas on how to protect themselves. Some wear a traffic cone on their head, some hold screen doors and like to pole vault. In the later levels, they even wade through your pool with inflatable floaties.

Plants vs. Zombies is an easy to learn Flash game that will have you hooked in no time. This is one of those games that you'll start playing and then the next thing you know it's two in the morning and you didn't get anything done all night.

Check out the game demo video.

It even has a free demo version that you can download to try before you buy.

I was just going to play the free version myself but I wound up buying the full version after playing it for a while.

So load up on peas, frozen peas, flaming peas and all the mushroom spores that you can because "a huge wave a zombies is approaching."

Growing Berries

2009-06-09T07:40:00.005-04:00

My pest control motto for berries has always been to stop worrying about the birds, chipmunks and squirrels that are eating some of the berries and just keep planting more of them. Eventually there will be enough for everyone.

This year that might actually be true.

Blackberries

Strawberries

Blueberries

Strawberry Thief

2009-06-08T07:43:00.005-04:00

I think that over the winter all of the wildlife in my yard got together, had a few meetings, and they have declared war on my garden. Here's one of their agents of evil stealing a strawberry.

Well listen here wildlife, you know how I had the yard certified as a Natural Wildlife Habitat all those years ago? Well if you keep eating all of my food, I'm going to have it un-certified. No more food, water and shelter for you greedy little critters.

Seriously, I think this year's vegetable garden is going to consist of nothing but peppers and tomatoes. The latest victim was a bed full of kohlrabi. Thankfully, none of the little creatures have messed with the peppers and tomatoes. But I had better keep a close eye on them.

Duck in the Pool

2009-06-07T10:24:00.003-04:00

It can't officially be summertime until after the dogwoods flower, the rhododendrons bloom and my pool gets visited by one or more of these wacky New Jersey ducks.

Go home duck!

Whole Foods Compost

2009-05-26T20:19:00.005-04:00

Let's take a break from all the Woodchuck madness and talk about one of my favorite subjects, compost.

Just because I do a blog called The Compost Bin, doesn't mean that I never run out of compost. Even though I sometimes have three compost bins going at once, I always wind up buying a few bags of the stuff at the garden center. It's takes planning and some effort to have finished compost at a specific time of the gardening season. Now if I was a totally organized gardener with all the time in the world, I'd use my homemade compost tumbler to cook up batches of compost that were ready every month. But that would mean that I'd have to turn the tumbler everyday and constantly check the moisture and get the green/brown ratio perfect. When it comes to compost, I'm more laid back and willing to wait longer if it means less work.

On one of my recent lunchtime walkabouts I found myself in Whole Foods. I'm a brown bagger when it comes to lunch but I'm always searching for a free snack. I head over to Costco a lot. They have free samples of food, plus a book section and patio furniture. I can't think of a better way to spend lunch than reading a cooking book on a chaise lounge eating food on a toothpick. But anyway, sometimes Whole Foods has some free samples out as well, so I hit them up occasionally.

My last Whole Foods trip wasn't very successful in the free food department but it wasn't a total waste. I noticed that they were selling a few varieties of compost. So on a whim, I bought few bags to check it out.

Now if you've bought bags of compost at a big box store then you know that the quality can be hit or miss. A lot of times the bags get soaked in the rain and the compost gets an ammonia smell to it. Yuck! Or you cut open the bag and the compost is just a big brick of soil that you have to chop up with a shovel. No fun!

Whole Foods compost is like the Cadillac of bagged compost. The bags are filled with slightly moist, dark brown, perfectly finished, crumbly compost. And I even saw some tiny worms in there. The only bad thing about Whole Foods compost is the price. Like everything else in that store, their compost is expensive. Because of the high price, I definitely wouldn't use it to fill a raised garden bed. But I had no problem tossing a few handfuls into the planting holes of some new perennials that I bought.

Despite the price, I'm going to have no problem recommending Whole Foods compost to friends and family.

Woodchuck Pest Control

2009-05-24T11:12:00.004-04:00

To stop (or at least slow down) my woodchuck invasion the first thing I did was retrace his steps. There was an obvious hole in the vegetable garden fence (buried bird netting on 2x2 posts) that he must have bit his way through. So I knew how he got into the garden area. But where did he get into the yard?

Ah-ha! Here's the hole. Now if this was where he lived, all I would need is some dynamite and the woodchuck problem would be over. But this is just a short tunnel that goes from my neighbor's yard, under our fence and into my yard.

Now over the past two weeks, I've filled this hole in at least 4 times. And if you look closely, you can even see the chicken wire that I buried in there too. It's right next to the buried hose that I use to get water up to the garden. Every time I fill in the hose or block it with chicken wire, a big heavy bag of dirt or anything else I can get my hands on, the woodchuck just keeps digging until he gets around my obstacle. Sure is a persistent little varmit.

It seems like I'm going to lose the battle to keep the woodchuck out of my yard so I'm going to fall back and concentrate on protecting the vegetable garden instead. This war is not over yet.

Woodchuck Pest

2009-05-20T18:56:00.004-04:00

There's nothing worse than losing a loved one. In this case that loved one was a bumper crop of bok choy.

I started the seeds under lights in my basement at the end of winter. Then I went to the effort to build a makeshift hoop house to keep the bok choy warm when I transplanted them outside. They even survived a couple of frosts under the hoop house and now that it's bok choy eating time I will have to go to the produce store. I have nothing to show for all of that effort because of a woodchuck.

Whether you call them woodchucks or groundhogs they are the mortal enemy of the vegetable gardener. And this woodchuck must be opening up his fortune cookie by now because he ate an entire raised bed full of Chinese take-out.

Putting up a stronger fence around my vegetable garden has been moved up to the number one priority on my To Do List. The current fence (that the woodchuck bit through) worked fine for the past two years. I just took a roll of bird netting and attached it to 2x2s around the garden. I also buried it under the ground so that nothing could tunnel underneath it.

But I guess after two years out in the elements, it got weak enough that it became the appetizer for this fat woodchuck. And by the way, this happened a few weeks ago but I'm a bit behind with my blogging lately. In my next few posts I'll describe what I've done to keep this pest out of my garden.

Ornamental Cherry Tree

2009-05-07T06:44:00.002-04:00

This Ornamental Cherry Tree was a one year wedding anniversary present from my Aunt. It's now eight years old and has come a long way from that little one gallon pot that it came in.

Originally went I planted it, I did a terrible job. I guess I didn't pack the soil down well enough because it started leaning and looked pretty crooked. But it still grew nicely for about five years. Then a few years back we did a major pool renovation and it had to be moved. The landscaping crew wrapped it up nicely and put it in a nice safe corner of the yard away from all the heavy machinery.

And months later, when the landscapers were done robbing us of all of our money, they used one of those heavy machines to replant the Ornamental Cherry Tree properly where it sits today.

Growing Garden Greens

2009-05-05T07:22:00.001-04:00

Looking good garden greens! I think there's going to be some delicious salads in my future.

By the way, all the white flowers pedals all over my raised beds are from my apple tree. They blow all over the garden every spring. It's really a shame that I have this great old 30 foot apple tree that produces apples that are so pest ridden that I just put them right in the compost bin. I just don't have the free time to organically care for this tree and I definitely will not spray anything on it.