Wow, you can tell it's been a long time since I used this graphic, huh? It has the old domain on it! Goodness gracious, I'm going to have to do something about that. I wonder if I still have any sort of software. Probably not! No worries though. This is a minor thing in the story of life. Now...on with the proper Save the Planet Saturday post!

One of the things that the boys and I are doing this year is putting in a fairly good sized container garden. We're growing all sorts of things and while they're not as excited as I am, it really is a great family project. The boys each have a plant of their own and once summer rolls around, it will be their responsibility to care for it.

If you've ever planted a container garden, you'll know that it takes a few things to make it happen: containers, seeds and a lot of dirt. Did I mention a lot of dirt? To be honest, I've lost track of how many bags of topsoil and garden soil we've purchased this year and we're not close to done yet. I don't even want to imagine how much money we've spent or how much money, etc went into getting that dirt to a location where I could purchase it. Some of you may be thinking... but it's just dirt. How much could that affect the environment? Well, how about the plastic bags that it's all packaged in? The cost, not just in money but emissions, for transporting it to the various stores? Plus other things that I won't take the time to mention.

So, what's a girl with a garden to do? Compost. Now, if you're like me, you can't have a giant compost pile just sitting in your yard. It's not precisely attractive and they can take up quite a bit of space. My solution? Trash can composting. Keep reading for just how I did it...

 Step 1: Collect up your supplies. In this case, a 32 gallon or larger trash can with a lid that snaps closed and a cordless drill with a drill bit attached.
 Step 2:  Using your drill, drill holes into the lid of your trash can. These serve multiple purposes. To properly get your compost composting, you need to have air and moisture. Having the holes in the top allows rainwater to drip in and for air to circulate.
 Step 3: Flip your trash can over and drill holes into the bottom. Again, this helps with air circulation, but it also serves the opposite purpose of the top holes. It allows for excess water to drain out the bottom.
Step 4: Continue your drilling by adding holes all around the trash can itself. Be careful that you don't drill so many that you ruin the structural integrity of your container. After all, you want this to hold soil, not break open and dump who knows what all over the place!
 Step 5: Find a location for your brand new composter! You have a couple of options. What's shown in this photo is actually not a recommended one! It doesn't allow for air circulation or drainage. If you'd like worms to find their way into your trash can (and this is a good thing! Worms make great compost helpers!), place your new composter onto a patch of soil. This will allow them to wriggle their way up through your drainage holes and to start munching away at all the worm goodies that you'll be putting into your compster.
Step 5 continued: Your other option is to place your composter up on something like bricks. This is actually my original composter. It's almost halfway full of some seriously great looking dirt. Once it's full, I'll be switching over to my brand new one. This gives me a chance to pop into the store (or look around) for a few bricks. Having the composter raised allows for drainage and for proper air circulation. It doesn't allow for our friends the worms to climb up in, though. So, if you want some worm help, you have a couple of options. You can buy some or you can do what I've done and as you spot them in your yard, pick up the little wrigglers and move them into your composter.



Once you have the structure built, you're ready to get started! For my composter, I added a bag of old topsoil, a bit of water and then started adding the "gunk."  What defines gunk? Gunk includes fruit and veggie scraps, produce that's past it's prime and yard debris such as grass and leaves. Things that you don't want to include? Meat and dairy products because as they break down, they stink! Not only do they stink, but that smell is much more likely to call critters that you don't want hanging about. You also don't want to add in things like sticks because they don't really break down in this sort of composter.

A couple of quick tips: Compost does best when it's rotated to get a good mix. You have a couple of options for this. If your lid snaps down firmly and won't come off, take your bin, lay it on its side and roll it around a few times every couple of weeks and then put it back in place. If this won't work for you, do what I do..whenever I add something new, I take a shovel and mix it all up.  Also, if you can, chop whatever you're tossing in there into small pieces. This will decrease the amount of time that it takes for it to break down. Again, I've found my shovel is really useful for this, especially when I don't want to touch that science project veggie that I found hiding in the back of the fridge!

With any luck and a little patience, you'll have some great soil for your garden beds, flower beds or containers!



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 Ok, I admit it. I totally dropped the ball on posting the weekly challenges here on the site. I hope that you can forgive me. If you're ever wondering what they are (because I yet again forgot to post them), they all are up on the Facebook group. It's pretty quiet over there but don't let that put you off. Just jump right in!

This week's challenge was to tackle our hobby supplies. Since I feel like the queen of hobbies, I chose just one and decided to tackle it. Since it's going to be getting cold here soon, I decided I ought to try to make some sense of our barn/garage. It's a total disaster and you're lucky if you can find a path through it. Don't believe me? Here's the corner that I decided to turn into our gardening/tool area before I started:

See what I mean? Things are stacked everywhere! Right after I took this picture, I spent about 20 minutes just rearranging things and throwing some stuff out.  This got it to here:


It's amazing what a mere 20 minutes can do to a space, isn't it? I created a path and discovered that there really was a workbench under all of that, just like I remembered! The next steps required three..yes, three trips into Lowes. I decided to tear down the old peg board (it was cheap and filthy and badly hung) and replace it with some new and improved peg board. Then, I decided I didn't want it to be brown...and here's where I made my mistake. For some unknown reason, I thought it would be easiest to spray paint it. So, I bought one can of spray paint...yep, just one...now you see where this is going right? One can got me this far:



Another trip into town and 4 more cans of spray paint later and I had this :



Yep, this required a 3rd trip into town and 2.5 cans of spray paint more and finally all of the peg board was painted :


Then, I grabbed the gallon of yellow paint that we had bought for the kitchen (right before I decided I wanted to paint it red!) and I painted the top of the work bench. It took 3 coats and needed a 4th but since it's a workbench, I don't mind it looking a bit scruffy.

Today, I headed back out to the barn and after...well, we won't say how long or repeat a few of the words I may/may not have said...I managed to get the peg board hung up.  It's not the prettiest job but my nails kept bending and I was trying to hammer and hold at the same time :


Ta da! Badly seamed peg board! That's ok because I promptly went to work covering all that up. First, I added this cabinet that I picked up on the side of the road last summer. It was missing an interior shelf, but a quick look around the barn/garage and I came up with a scrap that fit perfectly!


Up next was sorting out the tools and getting things onto the workbench itself.

Last but certainly not least, I hung up the tools that I saw laying around (I'm sure there are more somewhere!) and put those pretty flowers into a larger vase. They probably won't survive too much longer but I'll enjoy them while they do.  When it was all said and done, here's the final look:



Oh! I forgot to mention that I did do one little side project while I was doing this. I had 2 partial and 1 full bag of potting soil laying around. Since nobody has invented a bucket on wheels, I bought a 5 gallon paint bucket, wrote potting soil on it and put it on top of a plant dolly. Now, whenever I need potting soil, I can just pull it out. I filled it with both of the partial bags. The full bag is going to end up in my composter as soon as I drag it out back.


My thanks go out to the guys at Lowes who good naturedly teased me every time I walked back in the door to buy just a few more cans of spray paint. I hope y'all enjoyed this little step by step walk through of the first but certainly not the last of the home improvement projects I have scheduled for around here!



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I bet everyone has pretty much given up on me getting a post up today. Surprise! I made it! I had a great day with the boys but I'm still fighting a sore throat and feeling a bit drained. I'm thinking it's just the change in weather and I'm not getting sick. I'm certainly hoping so, anyway.

I was pondering what to write for today when inspiration hit in the most obvious of ways. The boys and I went out to the wonderful Swede's for lunch and I watched in awe as Ben packed away one of their 1/2 wet burritos and ate part of mine. Only those of you who have had the delight of eating at Swede's knows just how much food that is. When we got back, the boys and I were talking about books and I happened to look down and see a UB bookstore bag at Roger's feet. I pulled it up to see what was in it and discovered 3 new books! Yay! Then, I caught a wiff of something nasty smelling. I looked back down in the bag and saw a Subway sandwich bag with umm...the liquified remains of something. *shudders*

How does all of this related to today's post? Well, one of the books was a really nice book on organic gardening. Sadly, it now smells like a compost bin...and tada! We have a topic!

One of the things I want to do very soon is start a compost bin here at the house. I can't afford to buy one so I'm going to make one. Are you ready for how I'm going to do this? It's super easy.

Step 1: Find two containers with lids: a smaller one to sit in my kitchen and a larger one that will be the main compost bin.

Step 2: Set up the kitchen bin. For this, I'm thinking one of those big gallon tubs of icecream. We'll enjoy the icecream and then use the plastic tub w/ the lid. Setup basically means tucking it under my kitchen sink w/ the lid on it.
Step 3: Set up the main compost bin. This will be a larger bin w/ a lid. I'll poke small holes in the bottom for air to get in and put it up on a couple of bricks. I'll also need something to stir it with.

Step 4: Make sure to mix the main bin and add a balance of browns and greens to keep the compost happy.

Step 5: Enjoy the "fruits" of labor in anywhere from 3-6 months, depending on how busy our bin is.

And there you have it, a quick and easy compost bin that any of us could put together. Once I get ours setup, I'll try to post some photos and let you know how it works! For now, I'm going to try to figure out how to defunk my really nice gardening book.