Time to restart the composter experiment after a very long time 


15 june 2012 

my composter has sat in the back garden for close on a year without doing anything . this was in part as last year i spent most of that time looking after my dad who was terminally ill and past way on December 18th 2012 .  

His care was my priority and i looked after him in his home till the end. we said our goodbyes 2 days before he past away. 

my father was always  tinkering with things and tought him self to strip are car down and repaired everyone else in his neigbourhood . 

I know he would be disappointed  if i do not carry on with my experiment. 

so on examining what was in the drum was very wet. my solution to this is adding newspaper and cardboard to soak up the excess water and hopefully get the aerating going to get the bacteria to get munching in a happy environment. 

today i have found plenty of dry cardboard around the bins in our square and have torn it up into small peaces the buity of cardboard being corrugated it allows more air into the heap. and should start warming up quickly .. i now need to go and get a thermometer to check the temperature   

i have rotated the drum several times throughout the day to mix the compost and cardboard to soak up excess water in the drum it appears so far to be doing the job as i can not hear the trickle of water.

the temperature in the heap is 16 C  the outside temperature is 16c

i suspect it will take time to get working as the compost is very wet tomorrow i will be rotating it several time again and decide if i need to add more cardboard to help it dry out more.

i have asked my local gardeners to save me some grass cuttings as this would raise the temperature quickly tho i am keen to see if i can get some heat out of the existing material just by drying it out a bit.