Here is the video and transcript for making your own compost bin from an old garbage can! (It's at About.com, after a little commercial.) The woman telling us how is Danielle Lessovitz, and she makes it look so easy!
It is so easy.
I now have a home made compost bin sitting in the sandbox under the old tree house, "cooking" up some compost from old leaves (stuffed by squirrels into an old Dogloo), fresh grass clippings, fruit & veggie peels, coffee grounds, and some newsprint torn into strips.
My variation on the video instructions is to use (or have your handyman husband use) an electric drill to poke the holes because 1) individual nail hammering would take two days and 2) my particular kind of plastic had too much give to take the nail.
Also, my can is not round, and I can't roll it, so I have to stir it now and then. Have stick, will stir.
In future years, gradually, I hope to build a little wall of flowers and blooming vines around the old treehouse to mask this compost bin. Wish me luck with that. In the meantime, it's still fairly unobtrusive behind a mature sweetgum tree, and masked from the neighbors by their big pine. I realize I could turn the treehouse frame into a grape arbor if I were really ambitious.
But I am not really ambitious.
Also, I can't really plant morning glory there, or let the sweet autumn clematis take over, tempting and aromatic as the latter would be, because electrical lines hang too near, and the power company would not be happy with me.
But wait! I've just imagined the tree trimmers for the power company coming, finding the vine, an incident involving electrocution on a metal ladder, and **Zap!** a new superhero: Sweet Clematis Man!
That's it for Slattern Day!
5 comments:
Bravo, Compost Poet! You are considerate of your utility workers. My dad once trimmed the pine trees on our lot line pulling down the power line and knocking out electricity for blocks around. After that the power company did dad's tree-trimming at no charge.
I am grateful to the tree trimmers for taking out the mulberry trees, much as I love trees and mulberries. We have a pine bush that needs trimming where the power line connects to the house (our responsibility) and where the cardinals love to nest (so we don't like to create a disturbance there). I think this will all work out.
Hey I think I will do that with my old garbage can too! It already has holes in the bottom...from what I do not know! Serendipity-doo! (Code word bednest!!!)
The holes go all over the outside, Kim. To aerate the contents and help the compost "cook."
Also, to follow up after stirring, this is very aromatic, in a good way, thanks to the coffee grounds!
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