KOMPOST

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• Size does matter. The smaller the particles that go in your tumbler, the hotter and faster your process (see Composting Physics). I’ve loaded a tumbler with tall pulled weeds and waited almost a season for finished compost. Worse, the compost didn’t heat up enough to kill the weed seeds. Feeding your compostable material through a shredder or — more economically — running over it a few times with a lawn mower helps speed up the decomposition process. Turn! Turn! Turn! At some point, it’s time to stop loading material into your tumbler. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as the amount of material in the barrel decreases in volume as the process proceeds. There’s always room for one more pail of kitchen scrapes or another bag of grass clippings. But adding more material sets the process back and you might find unfinished carrot peeling or chopped celery garnishing your compost when it’s otherwise complete. This makes for good reason to have a second tumbler or a nearby heap to hold materials while a load is being finished (yes, dear, I promise not to take my own advice). The stand-by pile goes into the tumbler as soon as it is emptied. How you turn your compost also has an affect. Don’t just rotate it once and consider the job done. Swing it back-and-forth a number of times after each spin to shake up the materials then spin it again. The axle on which the barrel rotates goes through the center of your tumbler and help breaks up the compostable material as it’s turned. Paddles and piping in some tumblers have the same effect. Compost tends to become compacted as it forms. Several good turns will assure that your compost has been well broken up and mixed with air. This should be done a minimum of twice a week and three or four times a week isn’t too much. Spinning daily or more than once a day (your kids will be tempted since spinning a compost tumbler can be loads of fun) doesn’t give the compost a chance to attain maximum temperatures. While it doesn’t take long for heat to build inside a properly filled tumbler, too much tumbling dissipates heat and defeats the purpose. It’s easy to understand why your tumbler should be positioned in direct sunlight. Sunshine will help heat up what’s in your tumbler. The darker the tumbler, the more it will heat up. We’ve found that a digital, remote meat thermometer (sorry, dear, I promise to replace it in time for Thanksgiving) is a great tool for assessing temperatures inside your tumbler. Any reading short of 130-140˚F means you’re probably not killing weed seeds or getting optimal decomposition (at their most efficient, compost tumblers and bins can generate temperatures as high as 200 degrees). Naturally, you’ll want to position your tumbler strategically so that the finished product is unloaded close to where it will be used. Tipping Point Following these procedures carefully will yield the promised results of finished compost in a month or so. How will you know when your compost is ready? My guess is that you know good compost when you see it. The original leaves, grass clippings and kitchen scrapes have given up their identities to become dark, rich humus with good clumping ability (no too much moisture), texture and particle size. The volume of the material inside the barrel will have been reduced to half (or less!) of its original bulk. No finished compost is perfect and most gardeners will screen their finished product to remove the inevitable small twigs, woody carrot ends or other non-composted material. Ignoring even one facet of good composting practice may mean it takes eight weeks or longer for your compost to be perfect. It’s said that a well-managed pile will produce compost just as quickly as a tumbler. Such results are obtained by turning the piles as frequently as the tumblers (every couple days) and constantly applying moisture to the piles, something tumblers don’t require. To get the same results from traditional compost piles as from a tumbler requires significantly more work. And isn’t that why we use tumblers, to save time and energy? One other benefit we’ve found our compost tumbler provides: it’s a great conversation starter. The gardeners among our neighbors come over and want to know how well it works. The most ambitious gardener on our block has a commercial, multi-tiered home composting bin and he’s constantly comparing the results (my tumbler — the EZ Tumbler — works more quickly, I suspect because I show it more attention; and delivers a larger volume of compost on completion, though he claims a constant, but small supply is always waiting at the bottom of his bin). I’ve even made some friends by giving away a pail of compost here and there. What have they given me in return? Zucchini! As if I couldn’t grow enough of my own… Recommended Products December 7th, 2012 2 comments Related Links City Farmer Provided by Canada’s Office of Urban Agriculture this site is… “a bumper crop for committed (or curious) city farmers.”Composter Connection A comprehensive source for detailed information and inside tips from successful composters.Composting 101 A composting guide for the home gardener. Here you’ll find all you need to know to start making nature’s perfect soil amendment.Cornell Composting Maintained by the Cornell Waste Management Institute, this site provides access to a variety of composting educational materials and programs. Ideal for the casual composter. 2 Responses to “Taking A Tumble: Making A Tumbling Composter Work For You” James Clark on May 1st, 2014 at 3:37 pm # I purchased a compost tumbler years ago and found that the instructions for getting “2 week” compost involved using sawdust and organic material. This was not practical for me so I began to “harvest” the fall leaves, grinding them to fine particles with my leaf blower/vacuum. I do not use grass clippings as I do not collect them. I collect my kitchen waste in a large bowl, when it is about half full I add water and use my stick blender to emulsify, then add that to the tumbler. Works very quickly in the summer. Reply Janice Cross on May 28th, 2014 at 9:58 am # People in Maine have been using plastic black trash cans with lock on lids for years. The kids find it entertaining to roll the trash can around in the yard. 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1. 2/1 greens/browns by bulk
2. Driptray or sealed bottom to catch tea
3. 24eur on ebay
4. rolldrum is quicker

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   • My husband and I just made a compost tumbler this weekend. It was a fun experience that I can’t wait to share with you guys. We live in a kind of country area, the yard is big and it takes 15 minutes drive to a grocery store. Well, I know, for most Americans, 15 minutes on the road is nothing. American live in the car, their kids grow up in the cargo. But for me, 15 minutes driving is really a hard thing. I wouldn’t get into the car unless I couldn’t find anything edible in my refrigerator. So we started a vegetable garden on the back yard,that I wish I don’t have to go grocery shopping that often still able to have whole food instead of processed food. Plus our diet riches in fruit and vegetable, which contributes to a great amount of kitchen scraps. In summer time, the waste gets stinky and gross in the trash can, and it attracts bugs, releases nasty juice. So, one day, after rinsing off the gross trash can, I decided to cancel the trash service to start compost on my back yard. We compost all the organic material, then bring the rest of trash to recycle center. After that, no more fruit flies in my kitchen, and my garage is a breeze. It might sounds like a lot of work to do, but if you try it, you would find out it is such a easy, simple solution. At the beginning, I looked around a kitchen compost collector, then it turned out a little trash can would cost 20-30 dollars, some of them requires biodegradable bag, which also sells at a ridiculous price；some of them has a complicate filter, would broken over time… Then I saw this little this little compost collector on amazon.com: Full Circle Scrap Happy Scrap Collector and Freezer Compost Bin It’s a simple plastic bin you can put in the freezer, so it doesn’t have chance to attract fruit flies. I almost committed my money to this compost bin, all of sudden, I realized: “why do I pay $13 for a tiny plastic container? It’s a brilliant idea to freeze the perishable waste, but I could use whatever container I have to put in the freezer.” So I rummaged through my garage, found out a small bucket, used it as my compost collector.   It has been a month since I use this bucket as my compost collector, so far, it worked perfectly. Everytime before you dump the waste in to your outdoor compost, just fill some water in it to help the ice melt from the inner side of the bucket, then rinse it off. Composting in a pile works slowly. Because none of us want to turn the pile, so we just see the pile shrinking, then add more stuff in it. So far, our vegetable garden hasn’t been fed any compost. That’s something I should be ashamed of. We’ve been planning about making a compost tumbler for month, then we finally put this plan in action this weekend. We bought the treated wood, 10* 2-1/2 out door screws,wheels, hinges and latches from Lowe’s, which cost about 20-30 dollars in total. The water barrel was brought from craiglist at $25. The guy who sold it to us said it was used for concentrated apple juice. So it’s good for using as compost container, I don’t want any chemistry product in my garden. The reason we mounted two lumber in the barrel is those would help the compost mix better. I got the inspiration from front load washer. Without them, the tumbler would be difficult to flip the compost.We saw a lady used metal fins on her compost tumbler on Youtube. But we were worry about if the metal fins could rust, so we chose treated lumber instead. We’ve considered about install a handle on the door, but the handle would be too tall, then stuck in between of tumbler and the wooden stand. We are still thinking about why the door couldn’t be difficult to close. It might be the plastic bending after been cut, or we mount the door to close to the barrel on the hinges side,may be leave a small gap would be better. We will make some adjustment on the next tumbler. I will keep this updated. I read this book about how to composting: How To Compost: Everything You Need To Know To Start Composting, And Nothing You Don’t! This book only took me about two hours to read, instructed different methods of composting, and what we should do, what we definitely need to avoid. Cut and dry solution, very efficient. It was free when I ordered the kindle version. It seems like Amazon.com rised the price of it. Comment down below if you have any question or suggestion. Thanks for reading! Share this:EmailPrintFacebook1Twitter1Google +1TumblrStumbleUponPinterestReddit This entry was posted in How to & Style and tagged compost tumbler, DIY, home made, how to on July 28, 2013. Post navigation ← Dry fried Green Beans/Szechuan Green Beans 干煸豆角 Meta Log inEntries RSSComments RSSWordPress.org Search for: 中文版博客 逍遥游 Subscribe to Blog via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.Join 1 other subscriber Follow me on facebook Recent Posts How to make a compost tumbler Dry fried Green Beans/Szechuan Green Beans 干煸豆角 Zucchini Pancake Baked potato with skin on Oatmeal porridge with green eggs and ham Recent Comments烤箱版干煸豆角 | 逍遥游 on Dry fried Green Beans/Szechuan Green Beans 干煸豆角烤薯皮 | 逍遥游 on Baked potato with skin onArchives July 2013June 2013April 2013 Categories baked goods culture grain How to & Style poultry seafood vegetable
   1. needs more browns 60/40
5. 60deg celcius
6. fill to 75% and add no more
   1. turn every 3 days