General – Page 206 – Crazy About Compost

Does Adding Urine Heat Up Your Compost Pile?

Over the last week, I started experimenting with new items in the compost tumbler. I saw a video a few months back about adding urine to compost...it's high in nitrogen and water, which your compost wants. Right? Normally, when you add a bunch of food material all once, the pile gets super hot for a few days before chilling out a bit. Is this the same with adding urine? Let's find out. I had my compost tumbler about a quarter full with new material for about two weeks. I took the temperature at the start of the experiment: 70 degrees. Every day I take the temperature of the compost at 530pm. I then added a pepsi bottle full of urine (only at beginning of the experiment). The results were as…

Condoms in the Worm Bin: Update 2

It's been about 6 weeks since I started the condoms-in-the-worm-bin experiment. There's not really much to report other than that the condoms are still in the bin. They're covered in springtails and what looks like mites. I've caught worms sitting in them, but it's a rarity and it's definitely leading towards my initial guess. It looks like the condoms will be there until the microbes eat them up. Worms don't appear to be all that attracted to natural latex...I don't see any real munching marks on them. Although it doesn't seem like much, I'm still wagering that they'll be degraded within a 6 month time frame. What do you think? All in all, who cares? The fact that they didn't drive my worms out of the bin is a small…

Introducing the Black and Decker Leaf Hog!

Every once in a while I get an urge to pick up a new toy, so recently I snagged the Black & Decker Leaf Hog. It was long overdue for me to acquire a tool to further shred up my leaves for the compost pile...what a difference! Before that, I was merely ripping up leaves by hand...definitely not feasible. While I would never consider to use its primary function as a leaf blower, its vacuuming/shredding ability is awesome. I was surprised how ergonomic and quiet this thing was during operation. The vacuum bag snaps on and off easily with one hand, and it can hold a fair bit of stuff. While one run over a leaf pile will tear them up nicely, I found that it works better to empty…