Well it's been a long time between posts but I have been very busy - both at work and around the house. Most of my time has been spent creating a chook-house for our new chickens - more on that in my next post. I thought I would make a quick post as to how I made a 2-bay compost bin for next to nix.

Start with these wooden pallets. I was lucky enough to get them for free from a business that I do some work for. They were going to take them to the tip anyway - so I saved them on tip fees! I was out driving on Saturday and actually saw a big stack in the car park of a business on a main road. It might pay off to go in and ask if any are available. Often time they are simply not needed once the goods are unloaded.

These ones are different sizes but that worked well for me as I placed the bins on a slight slope. As you can see, I placed them in the basic configuration of how the bins would look. In the end, I used the sides with the most slats to the inside to provide more stability. I used the palette with the most slats on both sides in the middle so it could withstand pressure from compost on both sides.

Here we hammered on some weed matting which is available from hardware, gardening stores and even crazy clarks. We used u-nails to hold it on . Not sure on the longevity of this but will report back. This weed matting will of course stop the soil going between the slats of the pallets.

Here you can see me standing up the pallets. We placed them adjoining a face to give them some more support. In front you can see the compost pile we already had. It has always been a mess with everything from the garden just piling up there. What you can't see in the photo is the larger sections of tree limbs and branches I took to the dump as I don't have a mulcher.

Hey presto. Its a 2 bay compost bin. As you can see the pallets are attached to one another.  We did this by pre-drilling and attaching with hex head exterior timber screws. There are 3 star pickets that you can see beside each wall. These hold the sides in place. I drove a few short screws through the timber and into them to hold them. The smaller pallet was used on the higher ground and they all joined up at the top, leaving some small gaps at the back. A few rocks were placed under the walls in parts to fill these gaps as the ground was uneven.

All that compost mix you saw in the second photo is now in the bin and ready for a much faster breakdown process. What was spread over 4 metres is now only 1 metre cubed. The pipe you can see in the pic is just some plumbing pvc. 90mm I think. It  allows air to reach the centre of the compost allowing it to break down faster. A little trick I learnt online. The mix will be getting a turn in a few weeks and some garden waste and vegie scraps to eat. As the compost breaks down at the bottom I think I will move the humus rich ready compost to the other bin. Otherwise I might try two bins at once. We will see in future updates.

The amount of cool bugs that live in that mix is just amazing. I saw plenty of witchety grubs and even an iridescent green millipede.

Checklist:

5 pallets
12 hex head screws (50mm-100mm depending on the thickness of the timber in the palettes)
3 star pickets 1.4-2m (2-3 more if you don't put it against a fence and want to support the rear wall)
6 self-tapping timber screws (to attach to star pickets)
120 u-nails (approx.) to attach weed matting
16 metres of weed matting doubled over (ours came in a 20 metres pack for $12)

So there you have it - took about 4 hours in total although we had a few false starts working it all out. An awesome large compost bin almost for free. Hope you have luck making one too as having a good supply of compost is essential to improving your soil and growing food for your family! Until next time.. remember...

Keep Smiling!

It is well into winter now and the garden is starting to come along. I'm growing: lettuce, kale, brocolli, cabbage (red and drum), radishes, turnips, rhubarb, spinach and a few other things in these beds.

As you can see from the pics, organic gardening involves a lot of work when dealing with pests. You can't just spray and kill everything like large scale production does. Therefore there is always going to be some leaves munched on overnight.

This is after and before photos. Above is about 5 weeks after below. Doesn't get sun all day unfortunately. You can see the watering system I put in if you look closely. It runs from the house underground using black irrigation hose to the boxes and then I have small spray nozzles on spikes that eminate from the centre pipe that water each part of the garden. It's all connected to a digital timer tap that give them 10 minutes every morning. Saves me heaps of hassle - especially when I need to get to work early in the morning!

I always seek out the caterpillars and squash them when I see them. The ones that eat the red cabbage seem to turn a purplish tinge like the leaves.

I built these raised garden beds using old railway sleepers from a sugar cane train. Took a lot of work - especially cementing in the posts, but the result was good and works really well for access to the plants. Also stops weeds from spreading into the beds and allows you to focus on building quality soil without it leeching out to the rest of the garden.

Being really old hardwood railway sleepers (60+ years) they don't have an CCA treatment in them. This can be a problem with hardwood available today - much of it is CCA treated - Chromated Copper Arsenate - chromium, copper and arsenic. You can usually tell by the green tinge in the wood.  Studies have shown that CCA can leech into your vegetables - kind of makes the whole organic thing seem like a waste of time if you are eating arsenic..! If you really have to use CCA treated then it is recommended that you use plastic sheeting to shield the edges of the beds from the containing wood. Of course I recommend that you avoid it altogether.

The centre box of the three has pumpkin vine which is developing heaps of female minuture pumpkins, but doesn't seem to get seeded from the male flowers - out of season for pumpkins I think. Might reclaim it for some more plantings soon. I also have some ginger and galangal growing here.

I decided to dig up my Yacon - Peruvian Ground Apple. The tops had almost died back which is apparently the right time to harvest. This South American plant isn't widely grown or known, although another local home gardener showed me her crop recently which suprised me.

Here you can see the two types of roots you get when digging this plant up. It is quite a prolific producer. On the left you can see the edible tubers. The tubers taste sweet like an apple and can be eaten raw in salad if you wish - although I think it has a slight gingery aftertaste. Apparently the sugars contained within yacon are ones that taste sweet but contain oligofructans which cannot be easily used by the body - so may be good for diabetics etc.

On the right is the rhizome which can be broken up and replanted to create more tubers. I am going to let this dry out a bit, give some of this to friends and plant some back in the soil in early spring for another prolific crop. 

This massive garden worm was living around the yacon. Maybe he had been eating the sugar because he is the biggest specimen I have found of his type.

Here you can see the complete crop obtained from just one plant. An enormous amount of rhizome too.

I'm going to test out some organic BFA approved fungus and bacteria compost tea in the next update. Sound strange? Stay tuned for the testing and results.