There. I said it. It's not for lack of trying. I've been trying to compost for more than four years now and so far have only been able to produce either (A) a stinky, fetid mess that I had to dispose of, (B) a hot, stinky mess that I had to figure out how to recover from, or (C) a cold, static mess that has some parts that resemble compost and other parts that still look like solid pieces of eggshell and peanuts.
I started with one composter. The Envirocycle promised to make delicious, compost as well as a "compost tea" for our garden. I read the directions and fired it up. And things went pretty well for a while. Our kitchen waste diverted away from the garbage, and thus the landfill, and was on its way to making "black gold" for our plants. And then, apparently, I forgot everything I had read in the tumbler's directions. First off, I neglected to add dry material. Or maybe I neglected to add enough dry material. For what was fermenting in my composter was not crumbly soil-resembling bits of compost but rather a wet clumpy mess of goop with some dry-ish clumps mixed in. Sort of like how pancake batter gets when you're not quite done mixing out the lumps completely. So I desperately tried throwing shredded newspaper in there to balance out the moistness. And that seemed to help a little--until I made the fatal error of adding a protein kitchen waste. Not just any protein either, but the most vile protein you could add: fish. That's how I ended up with the stinky, fetid mess that I had to dispose of.
A few more failed attempts later and I decided that I wasn't giving the composter enough time to "cook." After all, there was some evidence of real compost in there (in hindsight, maybe those were just the coffee grounds...), but there was also fresh kitchen waste mixed in with it and I wasn't about to try to strain that out so that I could get the two pints of compost out to throw under the roses. So I ordered a second composter thinking I would have one cooking older waste while I had another one to receive fresh waste.
Dumb idea. Now I have not just one tumbling composter producing nothing but a home for grubs, I have two. At least they don't smell. But every time I see them I'm reminded of just how bad I am at composting. They mock me in stereo and no advanced noise-cancelling headphones will prevent me from hearing them tell me I'm an ineffectual composting boob.
In truth, my wife is the gardener in our family. I took on composting as a way to eliminate throwing out perfectly good kitchen waste. My patient wife supported my effort and was excited to see the contents of our trash can diminish. But as each week passed without any black gold result, she was left to wonder at the folly of my effort, too. She gave me a book on composting for Christmas one year. The book made it seem simple enough. And yet even with the "Even Unicellular Organisms Can Compost" reference guide, I came up with nothing my wife wanted to put in the garden. She even said, "Well, I can throw it over the back fence to feed the plants on the other side."
And now, to add to the arrogant mockery that my two dormant composters inflict on me, our local waste services company is starting a program to accept kitchen waste. I can't wait. I just hope they can recycle these big dumb composters of mine.
