So here is my recap from last month. My goals were centered around rehabilitating my compost bin.
- Stir the compost – Check!
- More worms from my parents garden – Check!
- Walk the food waste across the porch – This is more complicated…
- Tidy the porch so it’s less easy to be lazy
The compost bin is a bit too full to handle my food waste, except for the occasional coffee grounds. So I’m going to let the wormies do their job and then I’m going to use the compost for plants!!!!
Can you feel my excitement?
Overall, I’m very pleased with how my first Monthly Goal went. It was great, I only had one thing to worry about – not that there wasn’t a million other things I had to do as well. But this was one goal that I set for myself outside of the usual “to dos” that had plenty of time to get done. Best thing – it actually got finished! So here are two pictures of my rehabilitated compost bin to finish off. I’m so proud!
Cheers!
~B’ham Hippie
Rehabilitated Compost Bin
Compost Bin - Kombucha Baby
I have been inspired by another blogger, over at Bonzai Aphrodite to start a tradition, a goal set, a meme of sorts… Sayward at Bonazai calls her blog tradition Monday Monthly Missions. I certainly can’t commit to a set day of the week, or to anything too often.
Many bloggers have weekly memes, even daily ones.That’s a bit much for me. So, I’m going to have mine a little less often and not tied to a specific day. With my student and work schedule that would probably be overwhelming. So once a month, around the first of the month, I’ll set myself a Monthly Goal – something on my “to do list” that is important but I keep putting off – or something I was inspired to do.
For my very first Monthly Goal I’ve chosen to revisit something I started last year – my compost bin. It’s out there, hiding behind a tarp – probably with dead worms. Unfortunately I didn’t take precautions to keep it safe from deep freezes – we had several weeks throughout the winter than dropped below freezing. For the last few weeks I’ve been taking my food waste to a friend of mine – she has a yard and food waste bin that the city empties once a week or so.
For most of the winter though, I had gone back to tossing food waste in the garbage which totally left me guilt ridden, but I was too busy and couldn’t wrap my head around compiling it and delivering it in snow or freezing rain to my friends house. Not anymore. I’m tired of having food waste make the garbage smell like hell. Since my compost was still mostly frozen I saved my food waste in the fridge, in bags or bowls and emptied them once every week or so in my friends bin.
At the moment I’m still saving my waste for her bin, however, it’s much warmer now and there have ‘t been any insane freezes recently. Perhaps it’s safe to rehabilitate my compost bin!
For this there are a few things I’ll need to do:
- Grab some more worms from my parents home
- Remember to walk my food waste to that hidden corner on the porch
- Tidy the porch a bit so I don’t have to stumble over that tarp or anything the wind was blown around.
At the beginning of next month I’ll check in and share how everything went!
Yours Truly,
B’ham Hippie
Two month old Kombucha
Yes you are correct, that’s a picture of kombucha babies that are several inches thick! This is what neglectful kombucha parenting does! Haha, kidding, I’m not a parent to the kombucha, that would be weird, especially once you read about what I did to it to get it out of the jar.
Well, I did my kombucha today for the first time in about two months. I forgot. Then my kitchen stopped smelling like kombucha and I forgot again. I pulled out the older scobies and used them again. Unfortunately, I had to cut out the scoby babies, which weren’t babies really, they were annoying teenagers with no sense of boundaries – if they did they wouldn’t have grown so thick they couldn’t get out. Hopefully, I won’t forget for two months again.
So I was left with brutalized scobies that I couldn’t reuse. Maybe I could, but I’ve done enough experimenting for one month, or rather two months. I couldn’t bring myself to toss them in the garbage, so I tossed them in the compost bin, against my better judgment. I already had tossed two because the towel came off and fruit flies got in. It’s very crowded with all those scobies now. I’m thinking I might have to remove some things, mix it up again and toss the stuff back in, just to feel like I handled it more thoroughly, less haphazardly – like a grown up, because I like to pretend to be one.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen, I’ve buried scobies before and they only shrunk in a couple of months, didn’t completely disappear when I checked. But it’s okay. Perhaps this will be the turning point in my composting. Perhaps I’ll embrace this growth and bring out the other garbage bin and bore holes in that as well. Either way it will be interesting – to me at least.
Compost Bin - Beginning of September
It’s been about two months since I started my compost bin. I have wonderful news! It’s working! It’s so amazing, I’m in love with the hole-punched plastic container, dirt, worms and decomposing food stuffs!
To catch up since my first post at the end of June, I’ve added worms, a little bit of dirt and water when it started to dry enough to pull away from the sides. I got the worms from my parents house. (Thanks Dad!) I got some of the dirt there and also used some of my co-op bought organic compost (mostly broken down with wormie poo) to layer between the composting material. I now also have a compost poker, a two pronged thingy normally used for bbqing, which I used first a couple of weeks ago to check on the progress of my heap. Amazingly, after about a month and a half, most of the food stuff had broken down. The only remaining thing were some “biodegradable” plastic that hadn’t changed, perhaps one banana peal added recently and egg shells. The rest was gorgeous, lumpy looking dirt – also known as dead food and worm poop. I’ve never been so excited for poop! Sorry couldn’t resist. I am still about age 10 at heart.
So, since I’ve discovered that the stuff had turned to dirt, and was taking up a lot less space, and because I was impatient and didn’t think first about maybe taking some out so I could use it – I started tossing in more compostable stuff. So perhaps by mid-September I’ll have some more dirt.
My discoveries/notes for the beginning composter, and so I don’t forget:
If you compost in something that sits off the ground, you need to check the moisture level – meaning check to see if the stuff is pulling away from the sides.
Worms keep you from having to do a lot of work. They eat stuff and mix it up at the same time.
There are different types of worms and some work better than most – just need to figure out which are the super efficient worms.
There will be flies, so keep it away from doors or windows if possible.
If the flies are too much for you, or you don’t want to deal with them, cover the pile with a layer of dirt.
But remember, flies lay eggs, which become larva, which eat stuff, so they might actually be helping your compost pile along.
Also, this process needs oxygen, so if you don’t have worms you need to mix it occasionally.
Holes in the side of the container will help allow more oxygen to get to the stuff.
Also, if using worms, make sure the container drains well, otherwise you can drown the wormies. 
You also need enough drainage so the decomposing food stuffs won’t sit in water and create nasty soup.
I shall leave you with these lovely appealing compost pictures that I’m sure you were dying to see.
Compost Pile - Month Two
Compost Pile
AND! Full view!
Compost Pile - Useful Worm Farm
Homemade Apartment Compost Bin
I’ve been thinking about composting for a long time. Often the only positive I could think of about owning a house (the idea of home owning makes me feel claustrophobic/tied down) was that I could build a huge, brilliant, gorgeous compost pile – all scientifically done and everything.
Well, due to many things, we have yet to be even just renting a house, thus no composting. But moving here to our little Bellingham apartment, there seem to be none of the negatives that kept me from apartment composting before. We have a huge porch-deck-thingy. Our neighbors are awesome and a few of them are apartment gardeners themselves. This is not an oppressive, everything must look uniform, apartment complex. I have time and a little more energy now. Oh yeah, and I’m no longer worrying about Rick dying, so that helps.
I’ve done it! I’ve started a compost “bin”! I’m only about three weeks into the process, but it’s going fantastically – as far as I can tell. I am madly in love with a pile of decomposing fruits, veggies, dirt, worms, and a plastic garbage can! It’s such an amazing things to watch! Gosh that sounds so weird.
Stay tune to your computer screen over the next few months for updates, suggestions, failures, and much, much more!
The Modern Hippy
