I’ve had my compost tumbler now for about a year and this was my second harvest. That doesn’t sound so good but for the effort I’ve put into it I’m quite happy. I could have harvested the first batch a good month or two earlier than I did. It was forgotten about for a while. This time I ran out of carbon materials. My solution worked but it wasn’t ideal.
I have the Lifetime 80 gallon compost tumbler which is really quite big! (Actually I have two of them now). I’m always trying find lots of dead leaves in the fall. I usually score enough to last me until the next fall but last spring I built a lasagna garden bed. That used up the last of my leaves and left me hunting for another carbon source for my compost tumblers. So I headed out to our local Master Gardener orchard which has free wood mulch for the taking. I knew this would take longer to break down than leaves but it was better than nothing and I wanted to keep those compost tumblers working! I really increased the green material to help break down the wood mulch but it still took a long time. It didn’t help that I wasn’t actively turning it and keeping an eye on it. I’m sure it would’ve been much faster if I had been more proactive. But ya know…life is busy. Things come up. Luckily, compost will be just fine if left alone. It just takes longer.
I dumped it out this week and was surprised with how much compost I had after I screened it…3 cubic feet! I use a 1/4″ wire screen over a large plastic tote to screen the compost and get the big chunks out. I just shovel in onto the screen and push it around. What doesn’t fall through gets put into a 5 gallon bucket so I can get an idea of how much still needs to decompose. Usually it’s not much at all. Compost is finished when you can’t tell what the materials were originally.
I ended up with 15 gallons of bark and small twigs from the wood mulch that still needs to decompose. That’s a lot more than normal due to using the bark mulch as a carbon source rather than leaves which break down faster. I tossed most of that 15 gallons into my other tumbler that I’ve been filling and some back into the one I just emptied. I’ll add a bunch of coffee grounds from Starbucks and a few more weeks of kitchen scraps to the tumbler I’m filling and then it should be ready to cook.
I LOVE having two of these. I let one finish decomposing while I fill the other one. This way I always have a place to toss my kitchen scraps. These tumblers have made composting so easy especially when plans change and you stray from the “ideal” materials.
Lifetime 80 gal Compost Tumbler – Screened compost with unfinished bark tossed back in.
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