The Composter

I've wanted a composter for many years - a place to put yard waste and food scraps and do good with putting it back into the earth. We looked at many options, but never agreed on anything. Greg kept telling me to go ahead and buy one, but I thought they were too small. I wanted him to put together some pallets for me to just toss stuff into, but he didn't really like that plan.

Recently I was looking at blogs and came across directions for making a composter using a large Rubbermaid trash can. I happened to have an empty can in the garage, concrete blocks in the garden, and plenty of "green" and "brown" components to add to it. The only thing I had to buy was a package of bungee cords to hold the lid on, cuz you know with the wind we have here, it's a good possibility that lid would end up across the street in the neighbor's yard!

For brown stuff I used leaves that had piled up on the south side of the back deck the past few weeks (stuff blows in and piles up there all year round), some torn up newspaper, and torn up brown cardboard. The green stuff was mostly lawn clippings and a small bucket of food scraps from the kitchen, including egg shells, strawberry hulls, banana peel, and some shriveled up cilantro. Fruit and veggie scraps, only - no meat or animal products at all, except for egg shells. One good thing for compost that I don't have any of right now a pile of worms. Any of my Adams cousins remember picking up night crawlers for Grandma to use for fishing? I'll tell you about that another time.

So I filled it up, sprayed it with the hose, and rolled it around on the ground a little bit. It's now heavy enough that the wind won't take it.

I should have some nutritous dirt to add to the garden in a few weeks. I'll let you know!