Pivot Time

 For almost all of last week, the weather forecasts had been predicting hghs in the low to mid 70"s for most of this week. Then, on Thursday, all that changed abruptly. We went from those highs to highs in the mid 60's early next week to 59 by Wednesday. So much for extended forecasts. So, instead of having another 7 days to work on several outdoor items, I was down to one or maybe two days. Time to get moving.
I cut my back lawn extra low Friday as my dog had a tick digging in on him Wednesday night. I was only able to partially pull it off so I had to take him to the vet just to be sure. He needed to have the wound cleaned out to make sure an infection didn't result. So, by cutting the grass as low as I could gave me alot more bulk for my composter.
So Saturday, I decided to work on getting the composters set up for winter given the impending weather. I came across a soil seminar Friday night on Youtube and decided to watch it. They pointed out that you should be making two types of composts. One with woodsy materials and one with kitchen wastes. I never had heard anything like this before.
So after reviewing the podcast, I decided to do just that with 2 of my composters. One point they made was to have an aerator in the compost pile. So, I looked around and found a heavy duty cardboard form used to create a concrete column in the gound. Figured it would fit the bill. But first, I had to drill holes in it to allow air to permeate the compost mix. This way, the materials didn't need to be turned so much if at all. I cut the form in half so that it would fit inside my unit.
Here is a picture of the form after cutting and drilling the holes and its placement in the composter.
  
I pulled the leaves and grass cuttings I had on my tarp over to my composter along with two bags of semi-composted woodchips that I had in black plastic bags.
 
Before loading the unit, I figured out that I would need to block the hole at the top of the tube so the compost wouldn't fill it in. I found a plastic bottle that covered it.

I then began loading the materials by alternately layering the pile with the leaves/grass and then the woodchips. I watered each layer so that they would be moist but not soaking. In order, here are pictures showing the first layer of each material, then one with the unit almost filled with two more layers of each and then one with the final layer with wood chips finishing it off. I watered the layers each time with water to insure micro organism growth.
  
At this point, I ran out of both materials so I covered it to let the process begin. It could take a year but that isn't an issue. As I have a still ample supply of leaves thanks to the warm weather we have had, I will add the leaves until the level reaches the top of the aerator. Any excess will be loaded into my leaf compost bin to overwinter and decompose.
My kitchen compost is beginning to take shape. I emptied its' contents out in Mid August as an amendent to the composted manure when I was beginning to plant my winter rye. So, after cleaning it and letting it sit for awhile, I began adding the various scraps to it. It will take some time as we have a house of 2 people. Not many scraps coming from that. I will look in the area to run down some coffee shops and locally owned deli's to see if I can get some scraps from them.

I also still have the floweres and such that my neighbor gave me. I am going to keep them in the wheelbarrow, cover it up somewhat and let it rot in place. With an occasional slicing and mixing, they may disentegrate in place. Here's how they stand as of Saturday.

And as a follow up, remember my onion experiment? Well, there's life and growth as you can see in this photo. I am surprised to tell you the truth. I have viewed many podcasts where they tell you this or that will grow if you bring it home from a grocery store and plant them appropriately. So perhaps, they aren't too far off the path.

Well, this is all at this time. I will be writing about my indoor growing on my next post unless there is a major change. So, until next time, Happy Gardening Everyone!