To restate a popular phrase : "compost occurs" and indeed it does. Make a mound of shredded leaves and grass clippings, stir it up now and then and so long as it is getting rained on infrequently you'll at last get compost. Worms and minute creatures will do their thing.
While this process is easy enough it does have downsides. Not everybody has a good location for this pile of compost hopeful. Another problem is it is tough to control the moisture level of an open pile of composting material which you don't need to wet or too dry. With the open pile design you cannot immediately remove some compost when you're prepared for it, you want to hang fire till the pile has finished composting.
So you can finish up with multiple masses of compost in your bin that are at assorted stages of completion. To help address a number of these issues we have come up with tactics to boost the method. Many of us use upright bins to compost.
These can be as easy as a frame of shipping pallets on their sides to form a box. This kind of composter will actually help in making your composting more than a spreading pile. This kind of composting will also permit more urgent oxygen to reach all areas of the composting material. You'll also find it fairly simple to mix up the composting material. 2 issues still remain. First this is still essentially a batch process and 2nd, moisture control is tough unless you tarp the container. There are more recent made bins that come nearer to getting it right, with the idea being that you add the material in the top and remove compost from some form of drawer in the bottom as you want it. The tenet sounds excellent but with many of those composters it is tricky to correctly mix up and add air ( aerate ) the compost. Whether or not you're able to do a good job stirring it up you are back to fundamentally a batch process without the intended downward and out flow. Yet if you don't stir it up well and just keep adding material to the top, the absence of oxygen will significantly slow or halt the composting process with this sort of composter. A new big step in composter evolution was to head to a straightforward drum style compost tumbler. Fundamentally , a barrel was attached to some kind of stand that permitted it to be revolved.
This was a genuine jump in composting technology as you now could monitor and control moisture content, comprehensively mix and aerate the composting material and the composting could occur on a neat enclosed space. For all of the benefits, one enormous downside still stayed. This was the ongoing problem of the batch nature of pretty much all composters. How could a composter be designed so the composting would continue as a continuing process with finished compost removed as it is required? The answer was the development of a composter with a drum inside a drum. This double drum system allows material to be added through a door in the side of the outer drum and as it breaks down into compost it'll exit out a discharge port at the end of the rotating drum. This development has solved the last of the major hurdles to effective yard composting.
No more batch composting! With this kind of composter, a good mixture of greens and browns, and a little water, you'll get your first compost in a fortnight and keep making across the warm part of the year or all year long in warm climates. When you are looking for the quickest most effective yard composter, you actually need to think about a composter that incorporates the double drum technology. Another benefit we've found is that youngsters love to discover how the compost appears to magically appear from the output port although it was grass and leaves for example. That was added to the feed port.
moments before rotating the drum. This has allowed these high tech composters to be an interesting educational tool to help us impress upon children how they can be involved in the stewardship of our fragile earth.
Derrick Walters MBA has degrees in biology and chemistry. Derrick is a partner in a business that markets "green" products. To contact the newest in high tech compost tumblers you can visit http://midstatecomposters.com where you will find top rated composters and lots of composting information and tips.
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