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matthannan

Making compost lemonade from composter lemons

matthannan
11 years ago

Hello, all.

My wife and I are sliding deeper and deeper into gardening and one aspect that I seem to be gravitating towards the heaviest is composting. Even seeing the odd banana peel on the sidewalk makes me think that it should be composted. Our town recently had the curbside lawn litter pick up to bring everyone's yard waste to the town compost center. Seeing all those bags of leaves nearly broke my heart. I wanted to grab a couple to build a pile for leaf mold. ;-)

A couple of years ago, when we first got started, we purchased an Envirocycle tumbler. I'll be honest, the results have been mixed with that. Last year we picked up an Earth Machine bin from our town. Again, our results are mixed.

We live in a single family house with a very small yard...which seems to be filling up with raised veggie beds. The one area that made the most sense for us to put the composters was on the far side of the garage in an unused 8'x10' space. This Spring, I did our neighbor a favor and built privacy blinds, as our compost bins were pretty much right outside his kitchen window. The upside of these blinds, for us, is that this formerly unused area of the yard is now heavily trafficked! Both bins are full and, after seeing the available space, my wife has agreed to a third bin.

It is this third bin that has brought me to you fine folks.

She doesn't want a traditional three bin system (somehow, she thinks they are ugly) and being in the 'burbs, we get a fair amount of critters roaming by looking for snacks. So whatever we get, it needs to be covered.

I would like to start doing three stage composting, but I want to leverage the bins that we already have (a bin and a tumbler). Would any of you have a recommendation for a bin that I could use for the first stage? After that, I think I would then move the material to the Earth Machine bin for second stage aging. Then would it make sense to do third stage finishing in the tumbler? Like the post title says, I am trying to make lemonade from a couple of lemons. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Matt

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