Second Year SFG in Canada

CapeCoddess wrote:I'm loving all your photos, TD!  You're a wonderful gardener and it shows!

I wonder if we could use a double thick box as a top hat...?  I think I'll try it next year just for fun.
cc

"Wonderful gardener"??? CC ... You are too kind. I like to experiment and play. Wait til you see what I did this afternoon.

The cardboard top hat is worth a try. I wonder if the cardboard will hold up when it gets wet. My thought on using the cardboard was that it would hold the straw in place and allow me to get the cage back on top before the straw fell out at the sides. Worked well.

TD, you are making me feel tired.

First thing I did today was cleanup the pond. I took out the plants, trimmed tops and roots, used what I took off for composting.  In the photo you cans see some of the plants (mainly water lilies) on the left. The roots were huge and covered in green slime/algae. 

Now for the second thing I did today.  TD has gone composting crazy. Yes, I actually built another compost pile.  This one is just thrown together using chicken wire, plastic hardware cloth and some stakes. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.



















And the starting temperature in the middle of the pile is 13.1C (44.6F) which was probably the same as the air temperature.



TD ... the mad engineer.

Nice, TD!

Wow, lots of work!  

I have a flat pile after repleniing my squares.  Will build with leaves, kitchen waste, straw, etc.  
It worked last year!  Fingers crossed.

I know from experience, you sure have done a ton of work to be able to get two compost bins filled and cooking.  Way to go.

yolos wrote:I know from experience, you sure have done a ton of work to be able to get two compost bins filled and cooking.  Way to go.

+1

Good work!

More than half done?

One more thing for the To Do list.

• Install Christmas lights on the SFG trellis frames"  
  

Thanks for the reminder about the lights.

The big day arrived. Today I turned the compost in New Bin #1. The temperature in the middle of the bin was 61C (142F) before turning. I found this to be hard work especially since you want to return the outside of the pile to the middle and middle of the pile to the outsides. 


In the first photo we can see how much the contents of the bin have shrunk below the top of the bin.




Here we see the center of the bin after taking off the front outside portion. The haziness is steam rising from the hot contents into the much cooler 12C (54F) outside air.




All emptied out.




Here are the contents in piles on a tarp. The stuff from the top and sides is on the left side of the tarp.  The stuff from the core of the pile is at the bottom right of the tarp.




The bin refilled and some additional materials added to bring it back right to the very top of the bin.




Red tarp (actually an old tent fly) in place and sitting right on top of the material to retain the heat. The white tarp is a temporary cover for the bin until I make a more permanent top.




The temperature in the bin after completing the turning was 20C (68F).

A very brief video of the steam coming out of the centre of the compost bin. Click on the image (may or may not work).

I think it worked, TD.   I could see the steam.

Isn't the steam exciting??

sanderson wrote:Isn't the steam exciting??  

It sure is.  

It's going to be interesting to see what happens now that the compost has been turned.  I think I am supposed to turn it every two days from here on. Yikes that's going to be a lot of work if I do it.

Yep The good thing is the weather should be decent. It's a killer here in the summer.

I turned the compost in New Bin #1. The temperature in the bin before turning was 66.9C (152.4F). There was a lot of steam rising from the material in the center once I dug into it.

This is what the bin looked like after I took off the top layer and the surrounding edges. What's left is the middle and hottest part of the pile.



Here is an overview of the scene. The dark stuff on the tarp closest to the camera is what was taken from the sides. The small lighter coloured pile of stuff on the far left of the tarp is what came off the top.

For Monday November 14, I focused on two main things and one side activity. The side activity was that a neighbor brought over three bags of semi-mulched leaves to add to my leaf bag collection which now numbers about 21 unused bags.

Main Item #1 was to cleanup and add compost to the two 4x4 old style SFG beds. Late in the season and for fun I planted (in one of those beds) a piece of potato which had some eyes sprouting. The plant grew but not very big so a few weeks ago I pulled it out and did not see any potatoes. Today as I was amending that bed I harvested the biggest smallest potato crop ever. Here it is:




Main Item #2 was to turn the compost in New Bin #2. The temperature was showing 59C (138F) before I turned it. I hollowed out the middle hot stuff and then refilled the bin putting the cooler outside and top stuff in the middle.



Here it is refilled.



Click on the image below to see steam coming out of this pile while it was being turned.

Well done, TD.  Next year you are going have  so much produce you will be able to take some to farmers' markets.  Or give it to the food bank etc.

You sure are a busy beaver, TD! Looks great and the rewards of all you labor will be plentiful, I'm sure.

My new pile received 10 more mower bags of leaves today. I don't like watering it with town water though, but have to. I hope the chlorine isn't killing any of my 'bugs'.

As an experiment, you could re-bury those potatoes and see if they sprout next summer. Getting any kind of potato harvest is encouraging for the following year.

sanderson wrote:As an experiment, you could re-bury those potatoes and see if they sprout next summer.  Getting any kind of potato harvest is encouraging for the following year.

Worth a try.

I should have been doing other things but decided it was time to empty the plastic compost bin and see what I can get out of it.

I got this from the sifted material.



Here are the leftovers starting top left (the driest from the top) and down to bottom right (the wettest from near the bottom of the bin). To reload the bin I'm just going to mix this stuff all together, add some dry chopped leaves, some wet coffee grounds and maybe some green yard waste.



The empty bin.