Tumbling Compost

Apparently it's Compost Awareness week this week, so to keep in with the theme I will show you all our lovely compost!! Mmmmm not very exciting maybe but looky we have a new compost tumbler...... These can be bought but seem to be ridiculously expensive, so in true Blue Peter style here's one we made earlier....

We have had a problem with rats in our garden and due to the fact that they are not one of my favourite things in nature (understatement!) we decided to give a tumbler a go instead of the usual compost heap.

We are fortunate enough to have a food manufacturer near to us who get ready made sauces delivered in these big blue barrels and are quite happy for people to take them off their hands once they've emptied them. These make great water butts and of course composters! Dave and the kids  drilled some air holes, put some long screws through some of them to aid the tumbling process and made a stand from an old pallet where it can be spun around like a tombola....voila!   

Every time we have something to compost,we just open the latch door, throw it in and spin the tumbler around on it's stand a couple of times to jumble it all up and in theory this will make us some lovely compost for our veggies. There is some debate whether this process works faster than compost heaps but anything is worth a try and it seems to be working quite well so far... with a little bit of help from some wee of the male variety (a good compost activator so we're told!)