Why I Oughta...

It was just 12 days ago that I posted a Fall 2024 update on our compost bins.  In that post, I showed the decomposition and compaction that had occurred over this season with all three bins just about leveling-out.  The 'finished bin' was spilling material out and the 'hold' bin was (surprisingly) decomposing despite not being properly mixed. #14 on my 2024 to-do list was to 'keep going on compost' .  And, over the past few months, we'd *mostly* done that.  We were certainly ADDING to the bins, but when I did my September check-in on my list, I marked this one as 'incomplete' because I had NOT (yet) turned the bins over for the season .  That changed this past weekend, when I went to work on all three bins plus our tumbler.   I started by looking at the tumbler - where I found BLACK GOLD.  I've emptied this tumbler each year after getting that lovely loam-y black gold.  This year is no different.  Below are a few photos showing the output of the

This past week, there was a bunch of online/tech chatter about a new (just emerged from stealth mode) hardware + services startup called Mill.   It is from the founder of Nest, who's thermostat changed that entire product category, so the history of success instantly gives this new thing - a composting bin + a service to take your food waste - some credibility.  Mill is a super-fancy kitchen composter that basically cooks your food waste to ensure the bin doesn't start stinking.   #13 on this past year's list was to do more with composting - including under the sink kitchen food waste .  I have the bin, I just stopped filling it in not for any particular reason. The Mill news was enough to nudge me back into the kitchen scrape food waste game.  It didn't take long to fill the little bin with vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grinds and house plant foliage.   I used a compostable bag to line the bin, but it was *so* compostable that it had already started to break do

This is the third in a series of posts related to the removal of our large, 70-year-old (but in decline) Norway Maple tree in our front yard.  First, I shared photos of the tree being removed .  Then yesterday, I showed photos and a video of the stump being ground out .  Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about what comes next.  After doing a little bit of digging on the Web about what to do after you grind a stump, I've come to the conclusion that I needed to think about both amending the soil with organic material AND....being deliberate about adding nitrogen.   The stump grinding left behind A LOT of small pieces of wood.  A mulch of sorts.  But, about two-feet-deep. I knew that we're going to plant a new three here, so I wanted to be proactive with the soil.  I also knew that I'm dealing with a LOT of hydrophobic mulch in this area, so anything I do here will likely help.  In fact...I'm pretty sure the act of grinding the stump - AND all the soil and mulch in th

On my 2022 to-do list were a few items related to compost that I've begun to address in the past week or so since the weather has started to cool down.  If you go back and look at this year's list , you'll see that #13 focused on MAKING compost and using what I have while #19 talked about improving the soil conditions in the front of our house.  This post is about how I've combined those two things by using the compost - or Black Gold - that is in our compost tumbler and applied it to our font porch beds.  First, have a look (below) at the makeup of the compost that is currently in our tumbler.  Do I turn this thing regularly?  No.  Is it in the sun?  No.  Do we still get a pot of black gold compost at the end of the Summer?  Yes.  Here's proof: I wanted to take it a little bit at a time (to start), so I began to fill a couple of five-gallon buckets with the compost.  See below: And, brought it up front to the beds where I'm dealing with a mix of hydrophobic mu