All I got done in the garden today was to hopefully fix my compost bins. I had 2 big bags and one little bag of coffee grounds. I started with the old bin and fluffed it. Not hard since I fluffed it last weekend. It was warm, but not hot. So after I fluffed it, I hollowed out the center by moving the center to the outter walls of the bin.
Then I took one big bag of grounds and started sprinkling it on top of a thin layer of compost. I wetted it all down and spread a few inches of compost over it. Then I repeated the process with a thin layer of grounds, water and more compost until it looked like this.
It's very similar to lasagna soil building where you layer stuff on top of each other and it composts down into great soil. That's what I'm trying to create here, beautiful humus with roughly a CN ratio of 12:1, which is essentially fertilizer per Steve Solomon.
The whole process took about an hour for both bins. I'm hoping the old bin and new bin will both heat up above 140 and continue composting. I really hope that the old bin will break down some of those wood chips. I shouldn't have put them inside all at once. Joe said I should have stored them in buckets and added them in layers a cup or two at a time. I'm still seeing pockets of sawdust. So I tried to move that and some more complete compost over to the new bed to help jumpstart the new bin. I can't wait to test the temps tomorrow.
While I was out there I just had to take a picture of my plum tree. It really looks great after pruning it massively last year and adding the compost to the base.
And here is a representative cluster of plums growing!
It's tough to see but I counted five plums in this photo. Not bad considering two years ago we got squat for harvest. Funny that the only tree I didn't compost is the pear tree and thus far I see not one pear growing. Drat since we love canned pears on cottage cheese. I will definitely use some of that compost from my bins around the base of the pear tree (my bins come within 6 inches of the trunk so it's not far to carry it).
Finally, here is a great pic of my Butte potato bin now. Look at the massive amounts of foliage!
The Yukon Gold bin isn't nearly as full, but not bad.
I just hope there are litterally hundreds of pounds of potatoes growing inside that space!
Tomorrow I hope to get my SWC fixed. Gonna be fun. Oh yeah, I'll end with this. We had another day over 86, so we are up to 4 or so. I'm trying to get us raised from an AHS zone 2 to a 3, hehe.
Enjoy your garden!
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