The Compost Bin

Lots of people come to my site looking for Compost Pictures. Maybe they've heard good things about compost but don't really know much about it or they just want to see what it looks like before deciding if they want to give composting a try. Well whatever the reason, I'm glad that they're coming to my website.

To make things easier for the beginner composter, I've made a quick slideshow/movie of my compost bins over the past few years. Most of the time it just looks like a big bin of leaves, but during the warmer summer months, with a little attention, it can get darker and more dirt like.

If you're interested in starting a compost bin why not start out with leaves and grass clippings. And throw some used coffee grinds in there sometimes too. By the end of summer, you should be on your way to making great compost.

Hey does anyone have one of these things? Being a big fan of compost and gadgets, it looks like it's right up my alley. It's priced way too high but it's still looks pretty cool in an AeroGarden sort of way.

Please leave a comment if you have any experience with the NatureMill Automatic Composter

People are always walking up to me on the street and asking me compost questions like, "Hey Compostman, what can I put in my compost bin?" or "Compostman, my bin isn't cooking, should I add something to it?" Well... people don't really ask me compost questions offline and no one ever calls me Compostman but a guy can dream, can't he?

Well even if people on the street have no clue that I know about compost, I still get questions here on this blog all the time. So I broke out my video camera and got to work.

Ahhh yeah, this is Anthony coming at ya from W-H-O-S-T-A and I've got another funky beat for you to get your groove on. This one is called "Hosta Pictures". Check it out baby.

Did you know that the average lawn mower produces 93 times more pollution than the average automobile? Don't believe me? Well I got this factoid from this NY Times article that talks about how the effort to make catalytic converters mandatory on lawn mowers is being met by resistance from lobbyists.

93 times is a lot. I've made my lawn smaller with mulched border beds and I maintain it organically and I'm sure that helps a little but I still need somewhere for my kids to play. My lawn isn't going away anytime soon and neither is my need for a lawn mower.

When my Black & Decker Cordless Electric Mulching Lawn Mower died, I decided to go old school and bought a reel lawn mower. That old mower served me well for 8 years without any problems but keeping it plugged in all the time to charge the battery probably wasted a lot of energy. Now the only energy I'm wasting is my own. And I heard that push mowers took more of a physical effort to mow your lawn that a gas power motor but I disagree with that. I really don't see a difference unless the gas powered mower is self-propelled, it's really the same amount of effort.

The best part about the new push mower is that there's no engine, no gas, no tune ups, no fumes and it's pretty quiet. In fact it sounds like it's cutting my lawn with lots and lots of scissors.

You'd think that with all the news about climate change and Al Gore and how everyone is going green that I would get some congratulations from my friends and family on this purchase. I wasn't looking for a parade or anything just a "good for you" or a "wow, that's cool, maybe I'll get one too" would have been nice. But I was just met with puzzled looks.

So I did what any decent blogger would do to spread the word that a reel lawn mower is a viable lawn cutting option. I grabbed my video camera and turned it into a Mower Cam.

I saw this video about a magic compost bin on GroovyGreen today and I'm not quite sure how to describe it. I'll just let these lyrics speak for themselves.

When Granddad died from drinking gin,
We put him in my compost bin.
I can compost anything,
In my Mama's compost bin.

At the end of winter or in early spring, it's a good time to trim your ornamental grass. Cutting away the dried up grass makes room for new growth.

You can trim your ornamental grass with hedge clippers, a very sharp knife or even plain old scissors just like I'm using in this video.

Do you love to eat peas but don't live near a supermarket? Have you wished you could grow peas in your own garden but never tried because it was just too complicated?

Well wish no more because with the Planting Peas instructional video, you'll be planting peas in no time.

What a good idea this Earth Hour is. In case you haven't heard about Earth Hour yet, here's what they have to say about it on their website.

It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?

The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour.

On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.

With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off, and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions of Sydneysiders, many major global cities are joining Earth Hour in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a global movement.

Sitting in the dark for an hour sounds like fun and I'm sure my kids will love it. I haven't heard much about this event but if more people participate this year (like me) maybe it'll continue growing. Remember that last year it was only Sydney.

Let's see, with all the LCD clocks on every appliance in the house, I'm going to have to flip the main breaker. Otherwise I'll be pulling out plugs for the entire hour. And anything with a remote control is also using power even while it's off. The stuff in the fridge should be fine for an hour as long as no one opens the door. It'll be interesting to see the electric meter actually stop spinning for once.

I guess the hour after Earth Hour is reset your blinking clocks hour. But for a good cause like this, I really don't mind.

Here's a video from the TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) of
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. This speech really made me stop and think. The idea that we could farm or raise animals on a piece of land and actually improve the land in the process is just awesome. More people need to start thinking like this.

The video is a little long but it's worth watching.

Some home owners avoid growing mint because it tends to spread all over the place. Well I say let it spread. You can never have enough mint. And does anyone know where I can find a hardy lime tree?

In this video, Bentley “The Compost Guy” Christie is being interviewed by GreenerBusiness about compost. I recently discovered his blog and have been glued to his Bokashi updates. I've been meaning to try Bokashi for a while now but couldn't really find any good instructions until I found The Compost Guy blog.

In the video he discusses starting compost, worm composting and Bokashi. If you're like me and starved for any form of gardening and sick of the cold weather and snow, then it's definitely worth a view.

After my Aero Garden post, I decided to hit the search engines and see what I could learn about this thing. Well I don't know how much I learned because it looks like two of the three videos that I found on YouTube are actually from the Aero Garden people. I guess that's what you have to do now a day to market a new product. And I still think the Aero Garden looks like a cool gadget.

Has anyone seen the Aero Garden? The ads call it the "World's First Indoor Smart Garden." For those of you who haven't seen it, it's an appliance that makes it easy to grow herbs and vegetables right on your kitchen counter. You take a grow pod that has seed in it and drop it into the Aero Garden where it's treated to a "near perfect rainforest growing environment." It has it own lights that are on a timer and it'll tell you when it needs more water or nutrients. These nutrients come in tablet form and you just drop them in. So it's really a hydroponic setup with no dirt involved what so ever. And the Aero Garden people claim that you'll get maximum growth from your plants in a lot less time.

Now, my fondness of compost should be apparent to my regular readers. Getting my hands full of dirt and working in my yard makes for a good day in my book. Not only do I make my own compost but I do my best to keep my yard totally organic. So you'd think that I'd be appalled at growing seeds without dirt in a bath of water and nutrients, right? Well I am, but I still totally want one.

I tried to hate this thing because the idea of growing plants without dirt sounds kind of test tube babyish to me but my love of gadgets won out on this issue. And the idea of having fresh salads and herbs right there in your kitchen, even in the winter sounds great too.

If anyone has any experience with the Aero Garden, I'd be really interested to hear from you. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. There's a good chance that I may find one under the Christmas Tree this year. It'll probably be marked, To: Anthony, From: Anthony but there's still a good chance that it'll be there.

While I was stumbling around the internet the other day, I discovered a new site called MonkeySee. It's a YouTube-like video site but they seem to focus on How-To videos. So, in order to test it out, I did the same thing that I do at all the new websites that I visit, I type "compost" in the search box.

And unlike the time that I was looking for compost at Disney.com, MonkeySee actually had some search results. I was pleasantly surprised to find Ed Bruske's Video Series on Composting. You really don't see a lot of videos about compost or even gardening on YouTube either.

Ed made 15 short videos about everything you'll need to know about compost. He's no Paul James, but he definitely knows what he's talking about. I've embedded a sneak peak below.

Google has just announced a cool new sandbox type of place where Blogger.com bloggers can try out new features before they're ready for primetime. It's called Blogger In Draft and it's sort of a beta, laboratory type of environment. And the first new feature that they're testing out is video upload. I don't know about you but when I think of uploading video the first thing that comes to my mind is compost.



What better way to test out this new video feature than to post a short video of my parent's Compost Tumbler. With regular images it's hard to capture the true beauty of making compost. Now with this new Blogger In Draft feature I can post a tumbling tumbler video all from within Blogger. No more uploading to YouTube or Google Video and then adding the codes to the blog posts. Everything's all in one place now.

Yes my Mom and Dad are turning into quite the green parents. In fact my father is planning on installing a 40 foot, 2KW wind turbine at his house in CT this summer. And raising the tower will definitely make for an excellent video too.

I'll be sure to provide windmill updates this summer but this video is of an Urban Compost Tumbler after I gave it a good spin.