Composting

I meant to post this when I posted pictures of our garden, but I don't think I had downloaded the pics to the computer. This is a picture of our compost bin. We had tried vermicomposting (composting with worms) in SC, but it didn't work out too well for us and yielded a low amount of compost in a long period of time. So we decided to go another route here. We researched some compost bins and decided on this one, called an Envirocycle Bin, which tumbles around in a circle to circulate and aerate it. It's been working well so far. We just fill it up with our fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, and yard waste, turn it every few days, and in about 6 weeks we have beautiful, rich compost material for our garden. Hopefully adding this dirt to our garden will help our veggies grow big and healthy! An added benefit is that I can collect compost tea from the bin. There is a spout that I open and drain the "tea." Then I mix the tea with water and water my plants with it. It's like free miracle grow! (I know, it looks gross, doesn't it?)I just love the fact that we are recycling our food waste instead of sending it to a landfill, or even grinding it in the disposal. We actually get to benefit from it.
In case you were wondering, we have a kitchen compost bin under our sink that works great as a holding place until we empty it in the bin. It looks like this and has a carbon filter in the top to keep odors away:The only problem we have with our system is that we fill up our bin and then have no place to put compost while that first batch is "cooking." We've resorted to using an old garbage can in our backyard to hold waste while we wait for the stuff in the bin to finish decomposing. Maybe we'll get another bin so we can have two going at the same time.