I've come back to snow and very cold temperatures, so I am not even going to worry about tumbling my compost tumbler until the weather breaks. The rabbits are inside the warmer chicken coop and I am thinking I can put some of their fresh manure into the tumbler to warm it up. Maybe I should put the whole tumbler inside the chicken coop too!

2.8 HP Electric Chipper/Shredder

Last week of October, 2009

This late in the year plants are drying up and the garden is trying to go to sleep. The greenhouse is still going strong, but the shorter days are telling everything it's time to quit. Once the squash plants and corn stalks are brittle dry, I will compost them. This year I have ordered one of 4seasongreenhouse.com's electric shredder machines. It should be here by the time the plants are ready.

Last year I spent a lot of time and muscle cutting up the long parts of the plants to help them compost faster. Since I am smarter this year than I was last year, I decided to get the shredder to do the shredding of all the big pieces. The smaller the parts that go into the composter, the more quickly they can decompose. You can run your horse pucky and cow pies through the shredder also. It will all mix much better that way. And of course, the endless leaf supply can be shredded.

This electric shredder is quiet to run, so it won't disturb the neighborhood to run it, and there is no gas to buy or fumes to smell. It will be a perfect partner to work along with my Compost Tumbler. I hope it will speed up the composting I do during the winter months.

I'm visiting family in Virginia. Virginia is full of leaves-everywhere. On the grass, in the streets, in the driveways, in clear bags piled up against the houses. Some of the neighbors are using leaf blowers to blow them into the streets, but the wind is going to blow them right back into the driveway tomorrow. I want to take them all home with me. They don't appreciate them here in suburbia. Nobody here owns a compost tumbler. They all have three cars in their driveways. I think they may not have heard about carbon imprint yet. But the city does have a recycling program for just about everything man makes. The also have 'free cycle' where you can give stuff away to someone who wants it. I think it is a great idea. It doesn't have to go to the dump and it doesn't have to be made again. It's so easy to help others reduce their carbon imprint.

One troubling thing I saw was a so-called "health-food store" with every vegetable wrapped up in plastic, exotic foods from all over the world, all at a premium price. They had a coupon for $1.00 off a particular brand of butter, so I went to check it out. The price of the butter is $6.99 for one pound. I decided that the coupon would not help me to want to spend that much for a pound of butter during the holiday season when we will be using it all up quickly.

So far, no butter from the health food store and I'm not going to be able to take all the leaves in the city home with me either. But, I did meet some people who have a black walnut tree and they don't like black walnuts, so I gathered them all up to take home with me. This city has redeemed itself a little in my book.

I left my compost tumbler full at home. I hope someone is tumbling it for me while I'm here in suburbia drooling over leaves.

Saturday before Thanksgiving

Debris waiting to be shredded and then composted

While I am waiting for my shredder machine to arrive, I am cleaning out beds and letting the plant debris dry out thoroughly. I even removed the long stringy zuccini plants from the compost tumbler so they would dry out. I will put them through the shredder and return it all to the composTumbler with the other material I have waiting to be shredded.

Well....sorta...

Nov.13th, 2008

I let everything dry out, but then we got 6" of snow and I totally forgot about the drying out process, so now it is all wet again.

But, the chipper/shredder arrived yesterday, only 5 days after I ordered it. So I put it together. You can see how that went in the How To section-look for How to put together the electric chipper/shredder.

The only thing I had that was dry was a bin of leaves, which really don't need to be shredded because they are so thin they break down easily in the compost. I managed to shred up some soft twig and filled the composter with dry leaves, a little rabbit manure and cow pie that was close by, adding a bucket of water and a little bit of wet sand/dirt. I tumbled that around good and now it just has to do it's thing. If I can locate that bag of activator in my garden shed, I will sprinkle some of that into it, as it is pretty cold outside.

Freezing temperatures...

Are definately keeping me from doing anything with my compost tumbler out in the garden. I have been adding kitchen scraps to the Backporch composter tumbler on the back porch. The morning sun hits it full on. Some days it thaws out, but most of the time it is a frozen brick. I put the stuff in the composter anyway, so that when it does thaw, it will be turned a few times. It will all be there waiting for the mid-winter warm up that usually comes along in Feb. If not, well it can just wait til the Spring thaw.

Jan 27,2009 update:

The weather has been roller coaster-ing up and down, but mostly it's been colder than normal. The compost inside the composter doesn't thaw out every day. Turning the composter when the compost is frozen is a hoot. It will start to spin out on you real fast, but nothing inside moves.

Spring will get here...eventually.

October 24, 2008 in high plains of Colorado.

I really love my ComposTumbler compost maker. I use it year round to make quick compost out of all my garden materials. It is so satisfying to empty out the finished compost and have to decide what I am going to do with it. Since there is usually a new bed, pot or raised bed to amend, none of it is ever wasted, I never have too much, but sometimes I have too little. This year I made two very narrow, long row beds in an area that wasn't getting any use inside my garden room. That spot is on a slight slope, so I terraced the rows. Now it is easier to navagate the slope, and the rows are narrow enough that I can step over them if I want to. I planted low growing vegetables in them so they don't shade each other as they run N-S.

My soil is nearly pure sand, very high in minerals, but absolutely no water holding power. It's great for growing onions and carrots, but it does need compost added to it to help feed the roots and hold some moisture near them. I put one wheelbarrow load of compost into both of these new beds, which are about 12" wide by 20' long. They need more. Behind the onions you can see another board under the legs of the rabbit hutches. I catch the rabbit pellets and compost them to add to the beds also. It is a good source of manure to have handy for adding to the composter in order to create the balance of 'green' material to 'brown' material. Fresh manure is a 'green' material to use if you have no fresh grass clippings or prunings to put into the mix. Since I compost year round, the fresh grass is not always there for me, so we use manure. If I run short, I also have a pile of cow pies to use.

This picture shows a late planting of sweet peas after most of the beets are gone, and it looks pretty dry and in need of more compost sprinkled over the top, which was done, by the way.

My ComposTumbler is like a good soldier, always standing at the ready. It is the destination point for garden debris, sits near the water hose, and in the sun. The little shed outside the garden protects it from most of the harsh north winds. I just planted some trees on the northeast side of the garden border for more winter protection eventually. Even most winter days get sun and warm up the composter.

For me, composting is part of the gardening cycle.