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Posts Tagged ‘compost’

Beautiful Compost

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 8, 2026| 1 Comment »

This post is actually about an argument. We both knew the old compost bin was done for: the door no longer stayed on and I had to place a pot in front of it to keep the critters at bay. I think I bought this compost bin around fifteen years ago, but I won’t swear to that. We’ve added things from the kitchen, ashes from the fire, early grass clippings (before the weeds start to bloom), and little else. It has stewed, produced soldier flies, and been a haven for red worms for a long time.

The only thing that doesn’t compost quickly is egg shells. But egg shells are vital to compost for the calcium they add.

I knew I could build my own compost bin and we probably have instruction in several books, but it would be a Jaci project with little to no help from my husband. He has other things he worries about and works on. Other than adding to the compost and supporting the effort to compost, it really isn’t his “thing”. And I am overwhelmed by things to do.

Buying a new bin was the only option left, but – Boy Howdy! The prices for a pre-made compost bin are astoundingly high in 2026. And not one of the local big box stores has a demo model on the floor: you can only order from Lowes or Home Depot ONLINE for a compost bin. That seems ludicrous in this day and age when we are supposed to be environmentally aware, but there you go.

Want a compost bin? Buy it sight unseen online and have it delivered to your house or the store, no other option. We looked. We walked aisles and asked questions. It’s ridiculous.

old on the left, new on the right

I turned to Amazon: all I wanted was a bin of comparable size to our original bin and for a lot less money than most manufacturers are asking.  I wasn’t willing to spend $100 for the thing and I didn’t want a rotating one: just something similar to what we already had. And Amazon delivered: the one I bought is $76 at a big box store and I paid $49. Same capacity as the former bin. (Old on the left, new on the right)

Now came the hard part: moving debris from the old to the new. I ran into an issue almost immediately, and that issue led to a minor spat between husband and myself: the debris in the former bin was already heavily composted, dense, black, gooey, wormy. I moved about six inches of garbage before I ran into the issue. I tried screening it, but it was muddy, wet, wormy, thick.

Not smelly. This stuff was pure black gold, beautiful compost with uncomposted egg shells. I tried to explain this to my husband one night when he was not interested in my story and we ended at an impasse. My verbal skills were lacking and his interest had waned. I dropped the subject.

A day later, however, I managed to get him to walk over and look at what I was dealing with. And he was awed by the state of the compost in Bin #1. And he offered a solution: Just keep it in Bin #1 and use it up. We’ll start a whole new collection in Bin #2, no hard labor on my end.

Well, except for moving that beautiful black compost to flower beds, egg shells included.

Annnnnd – after I wrote this, my next door neighbor GAVE me a compost bin just like the original;, so now I have TWO compost bins and one that I am still emptying. I’m putting the beautiful black stuff into old bird seed bags and will mix it into the soil of flower beds as the year moves on.

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Notes From Last Week

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I wrote last week’s garden post without remembering that I own a manual tiller. I don’t use it for tilling which is why it didn’t register on my brain. I use it to help turn the compost. I do have a compost turning tool, but between the pair of them, I can get quite a bit of things turned and mixed inside the compost bin.

Here’s the tool. You are supposed to press it into the ground and twist, but I never had much luck with that maneuver. The ground needs to be soft, to being with. Compact grasses and sod are too much for it. It does work well in muddy soil.

I tried it out today with varying degrees of success. The most important thing to remember is that it still requires a lot of twisting which eventually screws up my old back. I got it to work in mossy grass, in already loose soil, and in muddy soil. Bottom line is: it is only going to work to a moderate degree and I still need to purchase a motorized small tiller of some variety.

While I was at it, I turned the soil inside the compost bin with the official compost bin tool. You push the tool deep into the compost and pull it out. The little blades open and pull up stuff from the bottom of the compost. I pulled up a lot of decomposed matter, soldier fly maggots, and red worms. The latter two creatures are extremely beneficial to compost and a sign that one’s compost bin is working.

I purchased the bin for a small fee from Metro. The tools I bought online. The compost comes from several areas: the kitchen, the lawnmower, and the firepit. We compost eggshells, rotten vegetables, leftovers from vegetables, and whatever we pare from fruits, onions, potatoes, and the like. Grass clippings get added in the early part of the growing season, before the grass goes to seed. Flower discards, but never weed discards. Charcoal and burnt ends from the barbecue and the firepit. It takes a couple of years to heat up enough to create soil or mulch, but that’s just that our yard sits in the shade for six – eight months of the year. The bin gets as much sun as possible.

Soldier flies are only one of the major composting insects we harbor, but they are probably the most important. They are large flies, don’t come into the house (except by accident), and live only to mate and lay eggs in the compost. The compost keeps the eggs and maggots warm, then they pupate, and more flies are born. It’s a very cool life cycle. The red worms are great for bait fishing, but they seem to stay inside just the compost bin: we have a yard full of earthworms that aerate the soil and feed the few moles that dig through the yard in search of a meal.

Earthworms and moles are both beneficial to the yard, although moles do occasionally upset some plant roots whilst they search for their favorite protein: earthworms. Moles also prey on crane fly* larva and cut worms, both very destructive insects.

*We used to call crane flies “Mosquito hawks” because they look like giant mosquitoes without the proboscis. They don’t eat in their adult stage: that’s for mating and laying eggs, hovering around outdoor lights, and scaring the bejesus out of people who don’t know what they are.  It’s their larvae that damage the roots of grasses and plants, but mostly grasses.

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