Shiny New ComposTumbler Toy

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my partner and I are in the process of transforming our yard from lawn to food production. We have mainly been doing this on the cheap with some elbow grease, newspaper, used coffee grounds, and the help of family and friends. Recently we decided to splurge on a new item…a compost tumbler, aptly named ComposTumbler.

Although the City of Seattle now awesomely requires composting of yard and food scraps– I say don’t give them away. Use them to grow a garden. Of course that’s easier said than done. Putting together the Tumbler was a three day affair.  Count ‘em: THREE DAYS.  But after we put our first bucket of food scraps into this bad boy, we realized it was all worth it!

The Tumbler makes composting super easy: dump in your food and yard waste, occasionally mix up the bin, and wait.  But there are plenty of other ways you can compost. You can have a simple compost pile in your yard. We have too many brazen raccoons around here for us to do that.  They just stroll around in broad daylight with their creepy humanesque fingers, clutching their parcels and climbing up steps, practically knocking on doors. Look at these creepy things.You could also use a worm bin. We have a Can of Worms, which I got from Freecycle. I’ve never gotten around to getting the worms, so that’s on the backburner for now. But it’s the same concept as the Tumbler. Feed the worms your (food) garbage (no meat), and in return they will give you liquid gold for your garden, squirming their way up the can, leaving casings behind.

You could make your own compost bin in any number of ways and with any number of recycled materials.  You could use a rain barrel or old food grade plastic drum. You can often find barrels or drums on Craigslist. How to Build a Tumbling Composter is the best website I found with instructions and a snappy how-to video on a DIY compost barrel. We almost tried this, but wanted to focus our attention on some other yard projects, so we went with the ComposTumbler.

You could also buy one of the many different tumblers that are on the market. Keep in mind that if you simply keep adding more food scraps and yard waste, you’ll always have unfinished compost mixed in with your finished stuff. For this reason, we got the dual bin tumbler. You could also make two tumblers, starting to add your scraps to a second one once you fill the first one, to achieve the same goal.

The Tumbler comes with a promise that finished compost will be ready in 14 days. From my research, I read that it’s more like a month, but this still sounds great to me.  We splurged on the barrel, but we won’t need to spend $10-$15 per bag of compost anymore, and we need it for a fairly large space.  I’ll keep you posted on the progress of our rotting food as the weeks progress. Don’t get too excited!

The Tumbler was definitely a project to put together. Great when finished, but the laborious process was a long day’s journey into the depths of my soul. OK, not really, it had detailed and fairly easy to follow instructions, it was just a little overwhelming and time consuming.

Here’s a quick photo essay of our Tumbler building experience:

Holy cow! I kinda thought this would arrive assembled. Naive or hopeful?

The bag of screws and bolts alone was enough to make a grown Briggsy cry! I needed to quickly learn how to use a wrench. I realized I had never picked up the handy skill of using  a wrench. Finally with the help of a wrench tutorial from Double S’s uncle, we finished up the barrel.

The frame never actually seemed that sturdy, but the heavy barrel keeps it doing what needs to be done.

Finally finished!

About the author: M.J. Briggs grew up in St. Louis, then spent seven years living it up in NYC before moving to Seattle. Now, finally with some space to give it a shot, Briggs is going to town with urban agriculture. Converting lawn to food, then canning, preserving and cooking the heck out of it! And maybe keeping chickens? Briggs blogs at ohbriggsy.wordpress.com.  Drop Briggs a line at ohbriggsy.gmail.com.

Related posts:

1. August Mid-Month Meanderings
2. Revolution of My Yard Part 2: Kill The Grass
3. (R)evolution of My Yard Part 4: Raised Beds

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