Post date: May 11, 2020 2:50:42 AM
Poongothai
Long post warning....
The compost story.
It was about 12 years ago. I bought the biggest compost bin available from Costco - the whole family was excited. We found a wonderful location far enough away from home (too ambitious) near the edge of our lawn and placed it successfully. My daughter made small stairs and planted some annuals flowers on the sides leading to the bin (yes...I was planning to climb down those small cute stairs to dump the kitchen waste 😊).
Fast forward about 13 years - it's 2018 summer.
I begged my husband and son to rescue the barely used bin from under the ever growing wild plants and I placed the bin nearby so that I could dump the kitchen scraps every day. It went well - for maybe 4 days.
So, I came up with a 3 step process. I kept a small bin near the kitchen sink to collect scraps that would fill up a small bucket that was on my deck. At the end of every day I would empty that bucket into the compost bin. I was so happily dumping the kitchen scraps into the bin and eagerly waiting for the black gold (that every garden enthusiast hopes for) to appear magically.
And then, I heard all the garden waste can go in there too. Wow! I thought. I dont have to bag them for the trash collection? I can turn that also into black gold?
My son was trimming the bushes in my yard. I asked to just dump the whole thig into the bin. He did. Voila! The compost bin was full now. That's it. It was almost there. When should I harvest it? I don't know.
Whenever I opened the bin to peek inside I'd see flies and creepy crawlies. I'd still see all the scraps I dumped. I'd poke the content with all my strength. It wouldn't budge. I wondered if it was all a hoax.
Then, one day when Uma was teaching about composting, I told her, "my compost bin is always pregnant but no delivery". She asked about food, air, and moisture. Definitely there was lot of food and maybe moisture (that would explain the maggots). But what about air? I didn't know.
I was explaining all this to my son, and we decided to examine the bin. We could feel that something was stopping the content from going down. After poking and prodding around, we realized that all the tall stems and branches from the hedge clippings had become a barrier in the middle of the bin. Then he made a very scary suggestion - we empty the whole bin and clear them out!
I was very hesitant to do that. The bin was huge! But my son asked me (naively) "What's the worst that can happen?"
We dumped out the whole bin.
And there it was - big and tall sticks, half composted scraps, maggots, whole egg shells, just a giant huge wet smelly mess. It was so disgusting, but now I was determined to redo it properly.
We removed all the big branches, crushed all the egg shells, added lots of shredded paper and dry leaves, and dumped the new balanced content into the bin.
For the next 2 weeks, I didn't put anything into the bin.
At the end of the 2 weeks, I poured out the content into the wheelbarrow. It was dark black... but there were lots of shiny things. What were they? Ha ha! They were the shiny stickers from the fruits and veg!
My son and I sieved the dark matter, and there it was! My very first harvest of black gold.
This year, after about 7 months of collecting the kitchen scraps, I wanted to see how the bin had progressed. I opened the top door, hoping to find half done compost.
Wow! About half of the contents were composted nicely. It was still wet, some fibrous material from the dumped sugar cane waste, but no big sticks or branches, no maggots, no whole egg shells. And guess what? There were lots of earthworms! I was so happy.
It is such a big improvement... but I guess I should have have added a bit more brown matter.
Hey! I'm still learning.