Compost or Bust

I’ve been doing a lot of gardening around our new home. We have an insane amount of palm trees, hibiscus plants, and other random things the previous homeowner added to the property. This has led me onto the path of landscaping and gardening education.

This hobby is extensive and expensive. Since we have just purchased a new home and spent Christmas spoiling ourselves and our children, I don’t have much money to throw at my new interest. This is totally fine with me, since this adds a new challenge to the experience and I LOVE a challenge.

I plan on removing certain plants and adding my own. I want to do a little raised vegetable garden in our backyard, and since this is Florida, growing season is upon us. My husband has graciously offered to assist me with building my planter and picking out plants. He has an incredible amount of experience in gardening due to his background of working at a hardware store and his personal gardening hobby.

What my husband is absolutely not helping me with is my little composting obsession. I’ve researched and read many, many, many websites on the subject; I’ve watched videos and looked at pictures. There are numerous ways to compost; compost tubs, trashcans, piles, mesh/wire composters, underground, specialized tumblers, homemade contraptions, and many more.

I completely realize that my compost fixation is not sane. It will take months to make any usable compost, unless I spend an exorbitant amount of money on a specialized system. But my composting obsession is not logical and I’ve decided to create my own composter with random things I have around the house.

I found an old hamper and some bricks on the side of our new home and cut the bottom of the old hamper out. The bricks I positioned to allow for the removal of one without disturbing the pile. I placed the hamper, cut side down, on top of the bricks and am using an old 5 gallon bucket with random plant cuttings on top to keep animals away.

So far, my little experiment doesn’t seem to be doing much “cooking” as they say, but my hopes are high and I will carry on. We’ll see how it goes and I will update my site as time permits. Wish me luck!