Compost Bins

COMPOSTING

As promised, I am posting the results of Wanda's Whispers work party on Saturday.  At the work party, the garden crew cleared out a plot for children, cleaned up the garden, and organized straw bales.  

Some of the straw we moved.

 

We also organized the compost piles at the garden.

I got an early start on the compost bins on Friday.  

On Friday, I brought all of my power tools, including screws, a power drill, and a circular saw. Unfortunately, the construction crew at the Unitarian Church was using all of the outlets, so I started the compost bins using just hand tools.  I had to pull old nails, hammer them straight and then hammer them into place.

On Saturday, I was able to run an extension cord and finish the bins using my drill and saw.  The left-most bin was fairly impromptu.

I plan on making engraved aluminum signs to direct where to add to the compost and where to take from the compost.

  

Here are some decent sites on how to compost:

http://www.mastercomposter.com/ 

http://www.composting101.com/ 

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/rrr/composting/index.htm 

The finished compost bins.  The bin to the left is the add bin, and the other two are actively composting.

Cortney (sp.?) and Joan made nice layered piles of N-rich material and C-rich material.

A close up of the "add" bin.

We bought an under-the-sink compost bucket to add our food scraps to the pile.

---

PLOT UPDATE

We planted our onion and brussel sprout sprout today.  We also planted some garlic cloves.  We covered our newly planted crops with our hoop house.  Our other plants that we planted seem to have died. We have a couple of spinach plants hanging in there.  A construction trailer is blocking a large portion of our light.  

We plan on adding spinach and kale starts (store-bought) next weekend.

Before

After

---

INDOOR GARDEN UPDATE

My cucumber plants are looking extremely rough.  The leaves have speckled brown spots on them.

The cucumber plants are creating flowers and little vines.  The vines are slowly winding around the cord I strung up earlier.

My basil and tomato plants are growing slowly.

The squash plants are outgrowing the peat pots and will need to be replanted soon.

I have several pepper plants that are growing well.

The pole beans are trying to vine up my light chain.  I am going to have to figure out what to do with these.