Composter

Finally got a real compost drum.  I prefer a pile but our yard really isn't set up for such a thing.  This will have to do.  These are quicker though so I'm thinking eventually I'll get the hang of it and it'll be fine.

One thing it won't do is attract ants to it but it also won't have some of the beneficial bugs that help till it together and further leave organic compost material.

I've transferred the contents of the laundry basket that I had put compost stuff in into the barrel and gave it a few turns.  The other thing is the slosh.  It has a bit of moisture in it.  I hope the screws account for that. There are over 60 of them holding it together.

At the previous house there was a good location for a pile.  One of the things you have to keep in mind is that they create heat and can be flammable even if they seem wet.

Dung Beetle

I always imagined a dung beetle was bigger than this.  It was barely the size of a pencil eraser. These guys are vital in the conversion of waste into usable material.  They are like the insect version of a mushroom.

Much like any other bug, if you see one of them then there are likely thousands of them in the area. Like the saying that you are never more than ten feet from a spider, they're everywhere.

Composting Growth

Composting used to be the way folks would get rid of scraps. Growing up, my grandmother had a bowl which sat on the counter and she would toss whatever needed to go into the compost pile into it throughout the day. When it started getting dark outside she would have one of us kids go out and throw it on the pile and the bowl would be washed for the next day. Of course dinner was already underway at this point and no more cutting of vegetables was needed.

By the time they moved out of that house and back up north there were two very big piles of compost. This is what was used to sustain the garden out back and help in the pottings that were done.

In our area there is a lot of effort by local clubs to encourage composting. The main problem being the lack of a place to compost at. Having compost is lovely but the pile of leftover vegetables, fruit peels, grass, leaves and whatnot doesn't smell very good. Pair this with the relatively small lots we have and how close our neighbors are and the incentive doesn't always convince people to do it.

My compost pile has gone through phases and apparently I didn't always throw stuff in there that was too far gone. Sometimes we have onions or potatoes or whatnot that start to look kind of old and spotty so out they go. Just yesterday I looked back there while watering the plants that really do think it's already spring and there were onion tops springing out of where the compost pile used to be (I moved it over 4 feet). Who knows what else might be trying to grow. Possibly pepper plants since I throw the seeds out there too.