Why I Oughta...

Over the weekend, I posted a couple of photos that showed the latest turn in our two-bin and one tumbler compost setup in our backyard .  Since last Summer, I had one bin (the one on the right as you face it) in 'cooking' mode.  That one has some pvc pipes installed for passive aeration and was (mostly) the right mix of greens and browns.  The second bin (on the left) has been my storage, inactive bin.  I almost everything in there that I had collected since last Fall.  That means, once the bin on the right was full of the final grass and leaves combo from early Fall, I started to put in everything on the left. In the post from a few days ago , I showed how I had emptied out the active bin and took the (mostly) finished compost and moved it to my tumbler for a final few months of cooking.  My plan is use that compost come Spring time and will use the rest of the Summer and Fall to get it finished.  I also took the rest of the (not quite finished) material from the active bin (t

I'm adding this entry to my [ garden diary ] to mark the date when I added this Jobe's Organic Compost Starter to our active bin and our tumbler in the Spring.  If you're not familiar with a compost starter, here's a good overview of what they are and what they do. There is some competing views on the value of a compost starter or booster, but if you believe the claims and buy one with 'microbes', then your compost starter - like the one above from Jobe's - is cultured to speed the decomposition of the materials in your pile. There are a bunch of people who say that they don't really do anything - but for less than $10, I figure...it can't really hurt, right?  It contains no synthetics and is made up of things that you can buy at a garden center like Bone Meal, Feather Meal, Potassium, and manure. I used this same product last year, but I don't think that I posted about it in the garden diary. Here's the listing on Amazon (note...