by Greg Draiss

Created on: October 29, 2008   Last Updated: March 26, 2009

Time to Warm Up by the Compost Pile

Well here we are late October and you know what? It actually feels like October! October has been teasing us with a week of above normal temps followed a week of temps ten degrees below normal. It was 21* this morning and a killing frost did in my plants. I was hoping to get to bring in my Lemon Verbena but getting up at 4AM to catch a flight home from Atlanta put me to bed at 9:30 forgetting about my Verbena amongst other things. The last 150 or so of my bountiful crop of chilies succumbed to the frost on Friday night. I could not have done anything to save them since I was 900 miles away in Atlanta

Take notice that the colder than normal temperatures are not news worthy unless you are a gardener or winter sports enthusiast. Be prepared to hear for the next few months how October was abnormally warm. Meanwhile wet snow is predicted for my part of the region Wednesday this week.

I use obscure econometrics principles in my garden. One that always works is the chile pepper plant and composting corollary. This connection simply states that when your chile plants succumb to frost your plumbing goes haywire. No that's the "away on business trip chile plant corollary". The chile plant composting pairing simply states that when your chile plants are done in by frost your compost pile stops working as well. Meanwhile there is all that plant debris and leaves to get rid of.

Enter indoor composting. The garden debris leaves and such will have to remain outside and wait until spring to compost but you can still get rich soil indoors. Home made indoor composters are easy to build out of plastic storage bins. Ready made bins are available specifically for indoor composting but are quite expensive for what you get.

They major difference in composting indoors is the composting "agent" itself. Outside one can simply pile up any organic matter and worms, bugs, beetles and other creepy crawlers will find it and digest it. I don't know many gardeners who wish to have creepy crawlers all over their house looking for something to eat. "Hey beetle, I am not done with that salad yet do you mind?" Indoor composting agents of action are red wiggly worms. They resemble small night crawlers or large earthworms. These hungry tilling machines have been bred especially for eating garbage.

A perfect sized container for housing your worms is a plastic storage bin measuring 1' high, 2' wide and 2-3' long. Any plastic container with similar dimensions will do fine.

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