Today was the first day in the summer break I actually composted the college's food waste. It was a good day for it. The last of my compost in my car has been dumped in the compost bin maintained at the Board of Trustees, Vicky Ford's house. I got rid of these bins because they were too much work for the amount of compost they were making :(. It was really sad, but I did it because I want to compost more for the amount of time I'm putting into it. The tent I ordered was way too big. :( Now I have to find a way to sell it back or return it. I did get a nice device though that can pulverize the new food waste quite efficiently and thus allow it to break down faster. I had to return the first device I got and exchange it for a tool I liked more. It's really simple, it's basically a spade which I just slam down into a five gallon bucket and it chops up all of the food waste in the five gallon bucket and turns it into a slushy mush. I then tear up nonrecyclable paper (non recyclable because it's wet and covered with food waste) that then gets mixed with this slush and gets added to the compost bin. I am finally finding something that looks like finished compost at the bottom. It's very watery, sticky, and so on, but it smells pretty good. I also am using the compost water at the bottom. It smells very earthy so I'm testing it on some new basil plants I got. I'm going to go next door next week, write the neighbor Ron Major who is curious about my bin anyway, and ask him if he'd be willing to test out my compost tea on his plants as well. The worms are still alive and kicking, they are resilient little guys. I hope the heat wont kill them because they are what keep this composting going!! There is some old worm castings I had that smelled awful because Vicki didn't let the soil get any air. Now that's draining a lot better and smelling much nicer!! I'm excited. It was a little dry on top though. Still it's exciting.
I read my first article on Methane digestion. There are several more downloaded, and I ordered a book on it. Today is the first day I actually managed to get a post on this blog I've been meaning to start in a while. Pictures are coming. I always take lots of pictures and I never take the time to actually upload them. There was a bunch of mushrooms growing on my compost. It was an entire mushroom forest and the entire bin smelled like mushrooms. If only I had a field guide to recognize these guys because I'm starting to recognize them by looks but I don't know their names. If only there were a way to google images with images rather than just words.
Okay Actually July 1 was the first day. July 4 was just when this was published.
ReplyDeleteThere is a way I recently heard about to search google with images. Not exactly as good as pictures, but worth a shot: http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi and click on the camera in the search bar. You should be able to upload a picture. It mostly just works with landmarks and commercial signs.
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