This is a quick update on the composter I picked up back in early May. Was eight weeks enough time during a cool spring to create a batch of usable compost? I wondered.

Yes and no seems to be the answer. When to empty a compost pile or bin is always a balancing act. The most ephemeral scraps have long passed the point where they’re most beneficial. At the same time, the woodier clippings are only partially on their way to being ideal compost. You can screen the compost and use what will go through a half-inch screen. Or you can take the lazy way out and dump out most of what you have and pick out the egregiously big chunks for further breaking down.

I opted for the lazy/impatient method. A couple weeks ago the pile had started to cool down, and I didn’t want to keep feeding the pile more scraps, only to have to wait additional weeks to empty it. In total I netted about twenty gallons of gorgeously earthy-smelling black gold. I’m not sure how much I fed the composter, though I know I came close to filling up the 80-gallon contraption at least twice, only to have the clippings compact as they broke down.

I emptied the buckets around various veggie plantings around the yard. At this point the compost will serve as mulch, with some of the nutrition leaching into soil as the beds get watered. When it’s time for the late summer changeover of crops the mulch will get worked into the soil and serve more as an amendment. By that time I hope some of the bigger, crunchier bits of yard waste will have broken down even further.

If you want fine compost to mix into planting mix or to start seeds, you’ll want it broken down further than this, or you’d break out a screen to take out the bigger chunks. But for how I used the compost, this approach seems like it’ll work just fine.

Once I emptied the composter it was time to start the next batch, mixing some of the leftover scraps from the last batch with the new materials. I kinduv liked this photo with it perky colors and many layers. (I think it’s worth clicking on to expand.) Still I’m not the first one to turn a camera on a compost pile: I linked back in December of 2007 to Very Rich Hours of a Compost Pile, a photo project by John Pfahl. It’s worth a look.

Facing an empty bin I suddenly felt the urge to do some tidying around the garden if it meant that I’d be generating yard wast that I could feed the composter. Stop number one: one of the towers of Echium wildprettii that had collapsed spectacularly over a walkway and against the side of the house as it reached the end of its blooming. I’d lived a couple of weeks with the plant in this condition, stepping over it as I went back to my studio. But it was time. To avoid being inundated with hundreds of baby echiums, however, I only clipped the lower part of the plant for my bin. The top, with its myriad seeds is now in the greens recycle bin, on its way to the city recycling facility. The city facility caught fire in the 1990s from the high heat in their compost pile, so I have no doubt their facility will be able to break down seeds like this.

Overall, this has been a composter: it generates no unpleasant odors, and being a tumbling model it’s even fun to turn the drum a few revolutions to keep the clippings mixed. The last few days have actually been warmer, so I’m hoping the next batch will cook even quicker than the first.

Arleen of Camissiona’s Corner asked about how I made the little bogs where I’ve got various swamp and other moisture-loving plants. Here’s a quick rundown of the three different methods I use to keep these plants happy.

The most straightforward is the classic water-tray method. You basically take your potted plants and stand them in a tray of water. It keeps the pot moist-to-wet as long as you have water in the tray. I like to let the tray dry out for a day or two so mosquitoes don’t start breeding in the water.

My method number two is to grow plants without pots in undrained tubs. Here I’ve buried the tubs in dirt at the level of the tub to distract from the ugly container. Since I’m primarily growing sarracenia, American pitcher plants which detest rich soil, the mix I’ve used here is a low-nutrition combination of one part clean sand to one part peatmoss.

Here you see the plants from the side. The ugly tub practically disappears.

This technique has the disadvantage in that the bottom of the tub can develop anaerobic conditions as the water sits. I’ve heard of some growers installing watering tubes that deliver new water to the bottom of the planter. This lets fresh, oxygenated water occupy the place of the old, stale stuff. Other growers don’t bother with it. This is my first year with this system, so I can’t comment on how well it does.

The third method I use is similar to the last in that it uses a basically impervious container this time with some drainage. In this case, I converted a shallow concrete fishpond that was the constant target of neighborhood critters. I drilled several drainage holes in the bottom and attached little plastic “snorkels,” short lengths of tubing that fit into the drainage openings and extend up to near the top of the soil line. In theory this keeps the bog from turning into a submerged swamp in the wettest weather, though so far we’ve never received that much rain at once in the three seasons I’ve had this bog. The fit around the little snorkels isn’t perfect, so over time all water will leak out the bottom anyway, keeping this setup from going anaerobic like the method above.

I’d guess that you could accomplish the same result by drilling a few tiny holes in the bottom of the tubs like I’ve used in the second setup. Or you could use a commericially available plastic pond insert. I didn’t do that in my second method because that was yet another failed pond. In this case plant roots invaded the pond and caused it to leak. I didn’t want to encourage the roots again by supplying them with more water.

I’ve never tried growing vernal pool plants in these bog setups, but I think method one and three might be good ways to make it happen. Unlike these bogs you’d want to let the vernal pools go dry during the summer and fall. Choice of soil mix would be another difference to consider. Vernal pools around here form in the thick clay that caps our mesas around town, so the plants would probably want more nutrition that classic bog plants would prefer. Watering with something other than Southern-California water out of the tap would probably be a good idea too unless you’d want the pools to turn into alkali swamps. If you have experience with constructing a synthetic vernal pool, I’d love to hear from you to see if my guesses are close to the mark!