Composting

Today is the day. I've been planning on making some sort of a compost system ever since we moved into our house (which was about 2 1/2 years ago!), and it just keeps getting pushed aside. But not anymore! I now have a nice compost barrel in the back yard. Yippee!
I have looked at all the different plans and ways to do composting both online and in the composting book I have (The Rodale Book of Composting). I think that may have been part of the problem. There were just so many ways to do it. So many ideas. What were our needs? How much space do we have? Do we want a 3-bin system? Or a tumbler? Wood? Or cement blocks? Ack!

Finally, the other day, I was skimming through the book again and happened upon the Garbage Can Composter. Why hadn't I seen this before? To be honest, I am sure I have, but in my perfectionism probably overlooked it thinking, "If we are going to compost we are going to do it RIGHT! We need to build bins! A garbage can is too...simple."
Well, yes, a garbage can composter is very simple. But guess what? It still makes compost! And simple, it turns out, is just what I needed. I needed that first small step to cross the thresh hold into the composting world. I finally realized that if I was ever going to have a composter that I needed to start somewhere.
So, today was the day. I picked up the drill and made holes all over my lovely new garbage can. Then dumped in a little bit of soil, some yucky kitchen scraps and some leaves. And hopefully in a few months we'll have some rich, black gold for our garden if all goes well. And if not, I am sure there will still be something we can learn from it all and try again.

My lovely garbage can composter!