After discovering to my shock that compost bins actually cost around $125 unless you are getting some kind of deal (such as the local city buying 10,000 of them or something), I decided to make my own out of an old garbage can. Here's how I did it:



First I turned the can upside down, so that the wide part of the compost bin will be at the bottom. I then cut off the can bottom (now the top) using some sturdy tin snips. There was a mold line in the plastic there already, so I did not have to measure conveniently enough.



Building the lid was by far the most complicated part of the bin-building process. First I used the cut-off can bottom as a guide and cut a piece of scrap plywood to use as the body of the lid. The idea is that the can bottom will be the "plug" part of the lid, and the plywood will cap it on top so it can't fall all the way in.



Before I could screw the two parts of the lid together I had to put in some filler plywood in the can bottom so that the plywood circle of the lid would rest smoothly on the top and be fully supported. These scraps come to exactly the same level as the outer edge of the plastic.



Screws coming in from the bottom hold these plywood scraps firmly in place. These are just miscellaneous drywall and deck screws I had in the spare parts bins.



Here's the can bottom temporarily screwed onto the large piece of the lid for test purposes. I don't have photos showing what else I did to the lid but basically it consisted of cutting out the hand holes and screwing down the handle parts so the plastic would lie flat to the plywood there too, and I also primered and painted the wood a dark brown with outdoors latex paint. It matches the house trim.



One more step I had to do was to drill air holes in the can itself. Since there were many vertical lines in the plastic not a lot of measurement was required there to make it look relatively even.



Here's the bin in use. It looks oddly Mission or Prairie Style doesn't it? LOL

Last time I was at my mother's house I saw they were using a covered shallow ceramic bowl to keep each day's kitchen scraps for the compost and that seemed to work out really well. So I found such a bowl on eBay for about $5 and we have already been using it. It works great!



It is about 8" across so it holds a lot but doesn't take up too much space on the big center island in the kitchen. So from now on, each night after I've taken whatever the vermiculture bin needs, I'll throw the rest in the big kitchen scrap compost bin out back. w00t! One more job crossed off the list :D

Hello,

One of the projects I did in the last several days was that I did a "spring cleaning" of sorts on my vermicomposting farm. This is a small compost bin in which worms that eat rotting vegetable matter (red wrigglers are the breed in this case) are allowed to breed and thrive on kitchen scraps. It can be done outdoors all year round in climates that do not get below freezing, or in the basement in cold climates. My worm bin is an expandable worm tower which really isn't as scary as it sounds.



There are various different styles of bins. The idea with this type is that there are several layers, each with a mesh bottom. As the compostables in the lower layers are completely consumed, the worms migrate upward leaving pure compost in the lower bins to be harvested. Therefore the top tray is always the "working tray" and a new one is added periodically. My bin is about 1 year old and I still only have one layer on top. This is because I screwed up and underfed them at one point and they consumed all the newspaper lining the bottom of their tray, causing the finished compost to fall into the worm tea collection trough underneath. Er... don't ask about worm tea. You don't want to know. At any rate, that means my first harvest of compost came out of there instead of from an actual tray, so I opted to simply clean up the existing tray and put it back on over the emptied trough.



Here's a tray of fresh clean bedding. It lies on top of a layer of newspaper as mentioned above. The bedding itself consists mainly of fiber (shredded paper in this case but it can also be coir fiber, coconut husk shreds or whatever is cheap and available). Mixed in with the shreds is some black soil or other grit for their digestion (and to contribute needed microorganisms). It has to be exactly the right level of dampness. I use a pump sprayer to add water evenly, then mix it and feel it with my hand to make sure it's perfect.



I keep this cookie jar of pre-prepared dirt. It is used potting soil mixed with crushed dead leaves and some dryer lint. The lint is to provide fiber because I also include this mixture when I feed the worms their dead vegetables.



There is also a smaller jar of lint that is just the spare lint for making more dirt mix later.



On the new bedding I place some nice black soil containing my worms. Then when I feed them I scoop a hole in the dirt and bury about a handful of rotten or wilted veggies at a time. There is no odor really, though part of that is being clever about what kind of veggies go in. Broccoli is not suggested! After a few weeks the dirt will have expanded to hide a lot of the bedding. Once the dirt has filled the tray, but before the worms have resorted to eating the newspaper underneath it, I place another new tray on top for them to migrate to and stop putting food in the lower tray. This is the part where I messed up this last time... have to add new tray a lot more quickly next time. LOL



This was my first black dirt harvest... my worms made this and it is incredibly fertile, good for spooning into house plants or indoor grown vegetables. The mixing bowls shown are about medium size.



Here's what one of the trays looks like after the dirt is harvested out of it. It's ready for a good scrubbing with a stiff brush in the utility sink.



All done for now!

Last night and today I made good progress on webserver stuff. I got all the content transfered from Re and sorted out into the appropriate directories. I got all the users' FTP accounts configured and permissions set for the FTP server and for all the websites directories. And last night I switched all the DNS information for those sites to point at LMAO now. Then today I tested that all domains now come up in a browser on the new server, and I put in a lot of redirects for things that were going to be in different places (and tested a bunch that had already been on Garlen before and needed to be tweaked a bit).

Still to do on LMAO: get FastCGI and PHP running, and test that at least one CGI script on each sites will run. Test the individual FTP logins and make sure they work and I got their permissions right. Install log-viewing tools, PayPal access for easy payment (hehe, hey some people DO wanna pay) and custom spam filtering for each user.


I mowed another 1/3 of the yard today. As the picture above illustrates, the leaves are falling fast and furious. The leaf bag on the lawnmower fills up in about 1 row of mowing, meaning there is a lot of emptying involved. Luckily the bag is easy to remove and put back on, and quite light enough to carry across the yard when full. I like to bring the wheelbarrow when I am on the front side of the house, because it will hold 3 bagloads and the full bag on top. Here's all the leaves I have accumulated so far:



The compost bins are all full now, so I'll have to build the other 2 hoop bins I guess. For the time being the extra leaves go in a heap nearby:



Sorry, I once again worked until dusk, and apparently the camera is not as good at seeing in the dark as I am :-p That is why all these pictures have black backgrounds even when they've been Equalized fairly brutally.

One of my wooden compost bins had been inaccessible due to the fact that two avocado trees "volunteered" to grow in it and I didn't want to harm them. Well, it is now getting so cold only the heat of the decomposition below them is keeping them alive, and I needed the space so it was time to bring them in. Two more to add to my avocado grove!!



I try to do a little something extra each day besides just mowing so I don't go nuts. Yesterday and today it's been trimming. The front bushes in the yard are very shaggy. They already were when we moved in and I didn't dare mess with them last year. It's getting so out of hand now though I really had to give it a shot. I feel like I am a bonsai artist, trying to find the best place to snip for maximum beauty.



The above is fairly typical of the untouched portions. Long branches shoot off every which way, and tiny nubs of future growth are clustered down lower, leaving room for the getaways to run. The overall effect was kind of cool up to a point. That point was reached this year alas.



The above is a closeup of one part I worked on. I got the face mostly done and took the worst of the top. It still needs more but this is where I was as of tonight. And:



That's a wider view showing the trimmed front with the still-shaggy top. I think it looks nice! Of course the front was a lot easier than the top will be. Hehe.

This morning I worked diligently on the weather page and managed to get the webcam image a lot better. I moved the camera up to the top window so it wouldn't be looking through the screen, and adjusted the balances. It still needs something though. I think it is focusing too close. Maybe that is what the dial on top is for. I was afraid to experiment for fear of messing up my excellent (and totally accidental) framing of some sky and trees which I had taped the camera to the sill to retain. Of course, now it's the middle of the night and the image is black again. I need to remember to post one here tomorrow mid-day.

I decided the weather software is way too much of a kludge job to use for generating a full web page. So what I will do is program it up to send just the different images, then write a regular web page to use them all. That will be a pain too but at least it will look exactly how I want! For now I put pretty much every possible choice of dial and chart up there so I could see what all the choices are. It's a bit overwhelming as it is, but some of them are really interesting. The wind direction scatter chart is fun and so is the one that shows wind speeds over X amount of hours. That could be used to design a wind turbine for that spot.

Well, I'm off to bed... enjoy! :)

Today I started out with a bit more attacking the jungle (you think I'm exaggerating??) on the back lot line. One of the most fascinating thing to me about the yard this year is the large amount of edible "volunteers" that have grown without any input from me. There are many Sunflowers (all kinds, some edible, some decorative including one amazing looking maroon one), 2 stalks of corn right in the middle of the walkway, and a pair of Avocados growing out of one of the compost bins. No, I did not put avocado pits in there. So far my best theory is all these seeds were brought by squirrels who stole them from people's bird feeders or gardens and dropped them by accident. Er... except for the avocados. Passing student disposing of snack remains? In addition to all that the strawberry vines were expanding like mad and trying to infiltrate the compost heap from last year.

Here's a picture of a couple of the new, incredibly cheap (4 for $25) compost bins I built for this year. Let us hope they last long enough for my budget to find room for more of the nice cedar ones.



Here's what one looked like under construction. I did it in the dining room (also under construction) because it was really boring and that way I could watch TV at the same time.



I also took about a half-hour and made a tool rack for one half of the shed. Holy moly, I'm always amazed at the difference a little organization makes. No, you don't get a "before" photo on this one!



There is a massive mound of firewood in the back yard that needs to get thrown down the wood hole (read: coal chute) to the wood room (read: coal room). It was delivered yesterday and I threw one load down yesterday and organized it onto the wood rack last night, and so I threw another load down today. Look at this stack of wood. Hopefully I will have it all moved and stacked by next Friday when the 2nd load comes.





On a side note watching the guys deliver the wood was truly amazing. They had to maneuver a huge dump truck into very tight quarters and I don't know which was more impressive, the driving ability of the guy behind the wheel, or the bravery of the fellow who was giving him the directions. At one point the latter had his back to the neighbor's garage and the truck lurching straight toward him. He was perfectly calm, but I was a bit nervous seeing the front wheel was about 3" from his foot when it finally stopped. I can only assume these guys have worked together for years.

Yesterday I had also gotten my iPod Shuffle beaten into submission, spurred on by my mother's glowing tales of the wonders of listening to PodCasts for free on it. Every time I got frustrated I kept telling myself, if she can figure it out, you had damn well better be able to! Well ultimately it turns out my iPod had old firmware that upon updating itself with bug fixes, suddenly cleared up all difficulties I'd been having.. go figure. At any rate, today during the yard work I listened to a couple of military history Podcasts, took a lesson in beginning Mandarin Chinese, and listened to a very interesting discussion of some artists and other professionals in the hip-hop music industry on the subject of the importance of the internet to the musicians of today. There was a decidedly anti-Label bent to those elements of the discussion where that came up... why am I not surprised!