Well, one of.
We have a "decent sized" garden, and in that "decent sized" garden, we have a number of fruit trees, and when we moved in last year the fruit hadn't been picked or collected from the ground and so there was a massive slippery carpet of rotting apples which made it very difficult for the mobility challenged being developing her own centre of gravity due to how big she was (me...) to get around the garden or to the bottom of it, which is sad because the river is at the bottom and I like the river and I missed it.
In order to address the issue of the apples, which I worried would attract floods of rats (they didn't) I wanted a composter because our lovely council are one of these that have decided you need to pay extra for a garden waste collection and it wound me up so I said no (in hindsight, massively stupid decision.) So I bought a composter and my dad dug up a patch of grass so it could go onto the bare earth, and then a rat (only one, not the armies of them I had imagined) got into it, so we dug down, pressed it into the ground a bit and then the rat got in again, and I got annoyed... but we collected a reasonably large number of apples more than once - like a couple of washing baskets full of apples on at least three occasions - and tossed them in before realising that whole apples in a composter don't rot down amazingly well, so it's like they're sitting there and waiting for the rats, so we got an apple scratter an put it on the end of my partners SDS drill. For the uninitiated, we got a drill bit with a propeller like blade on it and put it onto my future husband's REALLY BIG drill, and we minced those rotting apples like they were going to become the worst cider ever invented. And then we chucked them back into the composter with a bunch of shredded paper and cardboard and other things which get classed as "brown" no matter what colour they are. And then it was winter so nothing much composts but apple season was over and we couldn't get everything off the floor but it gave the birds something to eat, and the rodents something to eat which gave the birds something to do... And it gave the cats something else to do other than trying to get the birds.
As the windfall apples started to come down this year (and the pear and the blackberries and the elderberries and before this gets too romantic sounding, the nettles, the thistles and all of the other weeds...) I looked at that composter and thought, well, that's crap. Let's try something else.
That bin collection I never wanted to pay for, well, we have two of the bins going spare, so why not start a composter in one of those. Because my partner said no. But then I found a great video about how you can produce compost in a wheelie bin in 30 days so I told him I was doing it and it was fine because if or when we decided to use the bin, it wouldn't take too long to clear it out. Except it's not bloody working.
I was aiming to get it going to a good, hot composter and then I could chuck all of my seeded weeds in there and cook them and it would have been great, wouldn't it, except I did basically everything right like leaving space for ventilation - I even propped the lid open for a few hours a day to get oxygen into it, I tore up cardboard and was careful to only add the non-plasticy cardboard in, and I didn't dump all the wood ash into it - I didn't put any in - and I mixed the green and brown stuff and I added an accelerator and it is not moving. At all. I even turn it. I don't do it every day (to help it build the heat) but I turn it, I poke it, I get oxygen right into it and keep it the right level of moist and it's just not playing ball.
So I ask my partner to get me the water butt from behind the garage so I can check why it's empty (spoiler alert: it was cracked, which should have been expected) and then he says, why don't you make that a composter? And I say because the tap is broken and he looks at me like my label has dropped off because he doesn't give a shit about compost. And then I say, I could make it into a womery, and then it's too late because I've ordered the worms and we'll just see how that goes, right? Well, first problem, yeah, the tap is broken and in trying to remove it, we broke it worse and I then couldn't find the new tap I bought so worry that the worms, who hadn't arrived yet, would try and escape through the hole. So partner plugs the hole where the tap was. There's still the crack on the bottom so we need to place this carefully, but we manage, and then it's ah, what if the "worm tea" - not edible or drinkable, but it feeds your soil - doesn't drain quickly through the crack? No worries, I've layered ticks and leaves at the bottom and it's letting the oxygen in, too. Plus there is a big hole in the lid where the gutter used to go in...
Then the worms arrive. So they're in situ and I'm hoping for the best, but when I went out today to check on them, one was near the top of the bin and I can't see any more of them... And then I emptied one of the hoovers into it because it's full of dog hair and a spider from the nursery which somehow survived being vacuumed up and has made clear that the wormery now belongs to it so I'm not sticking my hand in there, gloved or otherwise, to dig around and see if they're just hiding... But I'm also now worried because the hole in the top which is great for ventilation or for just dropping bits and pieces through will also let in a lot of rain and let the cold in when the weather turns, so now I'm wondering if I should attach a piece of gutter pipe with either a corner or a U shape on the top to stop the rain getting in... Before I do that though, I want proof of life on the little wrigglers and more than just the one of them.
It may be that I just haven't got the patience and I need to wait for the good bacteria and the rest of the food chain to move in, but I also kind of wanted rolling composters, but they're expensive, or a biodigester, but that's silly, and I do wonder if I need to get some cow or horse manure to get it started like you do with biodigesters, but I think they do anaerobic no aerobic breakdown which isn't what I'm going for, because it stinks, so not sure if that would help. Honestly, I've been tempted by an entire zoo of animals, but it's mainly to keep on top of the bloody garden waste.
It's a project. We always knew it was a project and it's just proving that it is.
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