Compost Day

Well it's that time again. Compost Day!!!

The last time I screened out my compost and collected it was on August 8th. Today is (or was) the 27th of September. That's 7 weeks and 2 days. This was even faster than the 2 1/2 months for the last batch. I can only assume that it was due to the new container, the metal one, that holds in the moisture and the heat better. You can see by the black gold in my hand that this batch was much more moist than the last. Strangely, I didn't water it nearly as often as I had in the past and I also had quite a bit more in the metal barrel that I did in the first model that was plastic. After screening it I finished up filling one of the 20 o 30 gallon totes (I don't remember the actual size but it is in the background in the movie clip below.) and having enough left to fertilize the winter greens. I was wondering, anyone of you have any suggestions on whether I should add the compost to the garden and let it sit there over the winter, or should I bag and save it until the spring?

I built myself a new peice of composting equipment today that I thougt I'd share with you. It's a screening basket, or at least that's what I'm calling it. I picked up some 2x2 rabbit wire from the ranch store this afternoon. (That's rabbit wire with a 1/2 inch spaceing between the wires, or 4 holes per sq. inch.) I attached it to some left over oak strip from the flooring project, you will probably see a lot of this in the future, and bent in the ends to make it a basket. My 12 yr old and I then scooped out about a half basketful of compost and shook the heck out of it to screen out some of the big clumps, sticks and incomplete items. I took another movie of it to show what we looked like to the neighbors, oh yeah and show you how well it worked.

So what do you think? I've already got the metal barrel nearly filled with the stuff that I'd started collecting while this was cooking. We'll see, maybe I can get one more batch done before it's too cold. I can try!

P!