My Birthday Compost Bin

Thank you to everyone for my birthday wishes. I had such a great time with Ruby in London celebrating the last day of my thirties. We wined, dined, bought recycled jewellery made from old cutlery and took photos of bins.

Ooooh I know how to live.

But to celebrate my birthday today I decided to treat myself to something really special...

.....in the form of

.....a new compost bin!

For the last decade one compost bin has served us well.

But to see us through the next decade I decided we needed a second.

However this is no ordinary bin, as you'll see in the video below.



To explore its other exceptional features, have a click on my new You Tube channel....ooh the wonders of technology!

However, what worries me now is that all the fruit and veg peelings I throw in are at risk of being tossed back out.

Oh well, you live and learn.

Anyway, I've got a birthday to celebrate, cards to open and some presents too....not to mention all those candles to blow out.

Er...that's if Mr A has remembered the cake.

...is there a cake?

...is it home-made?

...or will it come with packaging?

Ooh the intrigue...the suspense...the anticipation...

...and a cliff-hanger to boot!

So will I have my cake and eat it?...

...all will be revealed next week.

xxx

_____________________________________________________

Is that a Dalek in your garden?

If you've been looking into composting this week (well it is Compost Awareness Week), you might have been considering which option is best for you: whether it's a beehive composter, building your own or perhaps getting one of those dalek types.

If you are still pondering, perhaps this little clip will help you decide:

...now where did I leave that sink plunger...?

Opening up the Bokashi

Today was D-Day as far as the Bokashi was concerned.

It has been left fermenting for the last couple of weeks. I hadn't dared open it and thought I'd leave it for a few more days just to be sure.

When I opened it today, I really didn't know what to expect.

However, what I hadn't quite expected was to see the food on top of the bin looking just like it did when I put it in two weeks ago. I suppose I thought it would be a bit more sludgy at the very least.

Hmmm. I wasn't sure whether I should leave it for another week, but without further ado, I thought it wise to ring Karen at Wiggly Wigglers and get some advice.

Much to my relief, she said it was normal and as long as I could smell something akin to pickle, it was safe to put in the composter or wormery.

Phew. That was a relief. It did smell like pickle, or even a bit like gone-off wine and it wasn't unpleasant at all.

So I ventured forth and started emptying the contents into the compost bin. As I dug deeper into the Bokashi, I could see how the food had started to break down into a more sludgy consistency that very much resembled a vegetarian shepherds pie.


I remembered that there had been some chicken at the bottom of the bokashi bin and even though I'd been reassured that it could also go into the composter, I thought I'd reserve it for the wormery. I don't know why, but driven by instinct I thought it would be useful to add some extra newspaper to both the wormery and the composter to help reduce the moisture from the bokashi contents.

I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

On a separate note, the wormery seems to be doing quite well and before too long I'll be ready to add an extra compartment to it. It's the equivalent of converting what is currently a worm bungalow into a two storey home. The worms won't know what to do with themselves!

Anyway, a quick visit to Jane Perrone's Horticultural blog reminded me that I should really be looking after the worms a little better than I have been and one of her latest posts prompted me to add some of the worm treats and anti-lime pellets (so thanks for that Jane, you are probably the worms' saviour). I also realised that I should also drain off any liquid that had filtered through into the worms' basement, before they run the risk of drowning.

So yesterday I drained off about two litres liquid, which I diluted in water and used as fertiliser on the roses and herbs in the garden. It was a little sad to see the rose of the watering can being clogged up with a few dead worms, but I am grateful that it wasn't the carnage that I'd been dreading.

In the end, I poured the dozen or so expired wrigglers onto the lawn as the dish of the day for the birds, who are probably delighted to get a change from the usual serving of bread.

So, fingers crossed, I think the combination of the wormery, composter and bokashi system has been a success.

And on that note, I'm off for a glass of wine to celebrate.
____________________________________________________________________

Zero Waste Week: Worms worms everywhere

"Worms worms everywhere,
under the flowers
and under the chairs.
Slipping and sliding
around on the ground,
just how many worms

can you see and count?"

I love this poem . It's called Counting Worms. This is only a snippet, but you can read the rest at the Reading is Fundamental site, where you will see that it has been penned by Sophie who is just 6 years old (yes only 6). My favourite part is :

"There's one in the soil
where he spends the day
munching a big leaf

someone threw his way."

Cheers Sophie, I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact if you look more closely at the photo above, you can see lots of the wriggly creatures nestled in the matting of their cosy wormery, where they had been busy munching on our kitchen waste until I disturbed them to throw in some eggshells. How rude of me!

They have been pretty easy to keep and when I looked in on them yesterday I noticed that some of them are growing nice and fat.

The wormery has been brilliant in helping us to avoid putting food waste into landfill. However, they can be as fussy as the kids when it comes to their diet. They don't like citrus fruit and adding meat products is also out of the question, which is where the Bokashi comes in, which takes most forms of cooked food including meat and fish.

After two weeks of use, we have now managed to fill the first Bokashi bin. As well as the odd piece of cooked chicken, we have also added vegetable peelings, loads of banana skins, apple cores, sandwich crusts and some cooked pasta and rice. I've even thrown in some cat food, although I should really check whether that's actually allowed. I don't see why not! All I need to do now is just leave it sealed and unopened for a couple of weeks and then I can add it to the wormery or composter. In the meantime, the liquid can be extracted and used as plant food or poured down the sink to clean the drains. You can read more about the Bokashi system in a previous blog post here.

It's thanks to the Bokashi and the Wormery that Day 2 of Zero Waste Week has proven to be a complete success.

You see, I made one of my infamous Dragon Stews yesterday, using the remnants of meat from Sunday's roast dinner and if I hadn't had the Bokashi to hand, it would have meant quite a few slops going in the bin.

Even though it was delicious, there were a couple of teething problems, which didn't meet with Mr A's approval or indeed that of the Junior Posse. I think it was my flirtation with Celeriac that did it, an ugly vegetable, which I'd never used before but on a whim decided to experiment. In fact, it's been sat in the fridge for a couple of weeks, awaiting its fate. So Judgment Day arrived yesterday in the form of Dragon Stew. Adding some fresh ginger made it very flavoursome, but it didn't appeal to the kids (and I thought I was being kind, having left out the chillis)!

Anyway, Day 2 was a success all round, with no rubbish created, which is brilliant.

What's been amazing is that so many people are keen to share stories about their own rubbish. As well as the lovely comments that are coming in on the blog, a lady in the playground told me how she has been encouraged to reduce her waste this week thanks to a letter I'd put together for my son's school to send out to parents. She is tackling packaging and food waste in particular, which is great news.

A friend also told me how she played the recording of Monday's Woman's Hour broadcast to her 10 year old daughter and when they went out shopping that afternoon, her little girl refused the carrier bags offered to her in the shops. How inspirational is that!

I also had a great time on Newstalk's Moncrieff Show yesterday. It was a giggle, especially when one listener suggested I should get a pig for our garden. I mentioned that I had worms instead!

When asked by Sean Moncrieff to suggest a specific item that we should stop putting into our bins, I suddenly got nervous, scrambled around for an answer and blurted out "Sanitary Pads", yes indeedy, a topic which had previously left me feeling so awkward, it took me a whole month to even find the courage to blog about it! Yet it was the first thing that came to mind during a live interview for the Emerald Isle.

That's live radio for you and I guess now that I've tackled that topic in such a public fashion, I should be able to handle almost anything!

The unoffical "Rubbish Diet Radio Tour" continues today, but this time closer to home with a live interview on Radio Suffolk. If you tune in sometime around 11.15am, you should be able to catch me talking Rubbish to James Hazell. I hope James knows what he's letting himself in for!

____________________________________________________________________

Making Progress #2

I know there are a few days to go until the bin is put out for collection, but I am feeling pretty confident that by Sunday evening the black bin waste will be limited to just one bag, which includes some rubbish that was still hanging around in our kitchen bin the weekend before the last collection.

We've made a few changes, which have had a great impact on working towards Zero Waste.

Firstly, I have turned to baking bread (or rather, bunging ingredients into my faithful breadmaker) and have been enjoying waking up to the smell of fresh bread each morning. This has already made a difference because it has reduced the number of bread bags that we put in the black bin. If we've gone a day without bread-making, I now supplement with a fresh loaf sourced on my travels.



The arrival of the wormery has made a huge impact as we've been able to easily discard spare rice, pasta and bread, which would have otherwise gone into the black bin. The worms have now settled in and when I looked in on them yesterday they seemed to be quite busy working through the layer of food that we've added this week. We have had to be quite careful with the amount of food that we've put in and for the moment we can't add more than one layer. So it is a good job I am still being conscious of portion sizes and trying to reduce the amount of food cooked.


With a full wormery, we have been making continued use of our compost bin, However, it looks like next week might present a challenge, as even the compost bin is looking a bit overwhelmed at the moment.


I have also been busy cancelling junk mail that comes through the door. Even though it doesn't have an immediate impact on the black bin, it will help the overall reduction in waste. As well as cancelling the catalogues that have been sent by a couple of companies (in the hope of getting another order) I have also contacted Royal Mail to request that they stop delivering the leaflets and other unsolicited marketing bumph that normally gets pushed through the door.


Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert, provides some excellent advice on cancelling junk mail, including ways of reducing unsolicited calls and emails etc.

Things are still going well on the shopping front. However, having placed an online order from Waitrose, requesting produce to be placed in PAPER bags, I was a bit gutted when my shopping turned up with all the fruit and vegetables packaged in the flimsy plastic kind (including the grapefruit).

However, since then I've been picking fruit and vegetables while I have been out-and-about. My favourite shop so far is definitely the Aldeburgh Market shop, which is located on the high street of the lovely coastal town in Suffolk. It's the first high-street greengrocers that I have seen for a long time and is a real treat.


By the way, for anyone who still might be thinking that this is an impossible challenge, you may (like me) be encouraged by the progress of other families. Check out this link, which features the Brosnan family from Bath, who attempted the very same challenge back in 2006 and during their Zero Waste Week managed to limit their refuse to just a yoghurt pot, toothbrush and some plastic wrapping.

____________________________________________________________________