Sustainable Scott

December 27, 2015

Compost Tumbler !!

Every Gardner knows how essential compost and fertilizer is to growing healthy plants. Currently I spend an upwards of 100$ on fertilizer per year. That stops today. Why spend money on something you can make for free yourself? Traditionally to make compost usually you would just take all your grass clippings and old veggies and salad that are leftover from the table. You put it all in a pile and turn it with a pitchfork every couple of weeks. Then after a few months you have a nice compost to add to your garden and feed your plants.

Another good method is to get compost tumbler and use it to make your compost. The only issue I found with compost tumblers is they are hella expensive. With a quick google search you can see they range from 80$ to over 400$. Spending that kind of money on a tool for your garden could be a good investment and if you make good money then it would be worth purchasing it. For me its all about being sustainable. It is a far better investment to use the money on paying off debt and just build your own compost tumbler for free.

Here is how I made my own free compost tumbler. First I looked at some designs to get a idea of how I wanted to build mine. The design is pretty straight forward. It's essentially just a large container that can be rotated, when you by them from a dealer, your getting upcharged for all the bells and whistles. I personally don't need it to be able to make me coffee or anything so I think the more simple the better. Got the picture now its time to get started.

Remember last week when I got these free crates? Time to put one to good use!

The next step is finding a container, I found this old steel barrel in the woods and my local disc golf course. I had walked past it hundreds of times over the last few years. So one day I woke up early got my wheelbarrow and went to pick it up. This thing was insanely heavy. Loading it in the wheelbarrow was a struggle. I suspected it weighed close to 200lbs. It had one cut in the side and was filled half way with dirt. I dropped it out when I was pushing it in my wheel barrow up a hill and had to load it several times to get it to balance just right.

It was a good 1000 meters from where I found it to my truck. I was sweating my butt off, and had to take multiple breaks. I even thought to myself, "This is totally stupid, I should just go buy a dang barrel." But for sustainability, and mother Earth I found the energy to drive on.

Seriously, I tried for several minuets to get this barrel into my pickup. I was standing in my wheel barrow, balancing and got one side of the barrel up and then it fell and ripped the plastic off the top of my tailgate. At this point I thought dang I don't know if its worth it. Then out of no where a hipster walked up to me and said, "Hey dude let me give you a hand." I lucked out because the hipster was there and he totally saved the day. We got it loaded up, shook hands and I went on my way. I had to drink two bottles of water on the way home to replace all the water I lost during the hour it took to get this dang barrel, lol.

It sat in my front yard next to the garage for two days, then my neighbor kindly helped me get it to my back yard, and it rested for two weeks until today.

When I was telling one of my friends about this project he laughed and jokingly asked, "what if you find a body in there?" I said I would definitely call the police. Lord, please for sake of my blog please don't let there be a body in here. If there is, Police, know I at least have all of this documented and as you can see from the pictures this is the first time Its being opened. Let's Proceed...

As I suspected just dirt inside. From the years of being rained on and the gash in the side I aim to guess it was critters of the Ant Species that brought this dirt into the can. It was of the same consistency as the dirt inside the side of my house I found a few months ago. Obviously I was careful not to touch it or breath any when I dumped it out in the yard. If my grass dies then Ill know if its something toxic, but for now I am not worried about it.

Here is the video!! Enjoy.

This is it the Finished Product. For now I will only be rotating 3/4 turns back and forth to keep to opening facing up so nothing falls out of the cracks. Eventually I will seal the opening so I can rotate full turns.