What I found was that I had a tumbler full of nicely finished humus-like compost! Rich, black, and chock full of nutrients, I put a handful on my screen and rubbed it through. It was finally done!
I hadn't planned on it, but I ended up emptying the contents of the tumbler, screening the compost, and filling a storage tub with the black gold-standard of garden goodness. As with any home made compost, there were a few things in there that wouldn't screen through. I found a few small rocks (?!?!), which I tossed to the side. There were some mango pits, which I put back into the bin, figuring they would eventually break down in subsequent rounds. The same for some avocado pits and not-quite-broken-down squash stems and things like that. There were some avocado skins that still looked like avocado skins, but they crumbled pretty easily and most went through my screen accordingly. Anything that didn't screen that I determined to be "eventually compostable" went back into the bin for the next cycle.
I found some interesting things besides the rocks though! The picture above isn't everything, but it's a representative sample. What are those things? I asked myself the same question while I was sifting the compost, but I finally figured it out. Those plastic sleeves? Well, I am 99.99% positive they are the linings of oatmeal and tea bag packets! Those instant oatmeal packets and the paper wrappers around tea bags are apparently lined with some pretty durable stuff. Hopefully it doesn't leach into our food too much! I also found several small strips of clear plastic (you can see one in the picture). I knew almost immediately what those were--the remains of a shredded debit card! I knew a few pieces of it went into the bin at some point when I was adding shredded paper. The interesting thing is that all I found were the little strips of clear plastic, which means the rest of the card--the colored plastic, etc., is apparently made of some kind of biodegradable plastic. Cool! What's that other chunk, though? It is one of two synthetic corks that I found in the mix, somewhat broken down, but generally recognizable.
In the end the compost is nice. It should drain pretty well because there some pistachio shells mixed throughout that didn't break down much at all. I suspect there are still some more or less viable squash seeds in there that might sprout, but those are easy to spot and eliminate should it come to that.
I am quite pleased with the results and am looking forward to having a second tumbler in the future. My friend Ryan, who supplied the first barrel, is keeping an eye out for a second barrel for me.That way my compost will work on a nice schedule of filling and tumbling one barrel till it's "full," then letting it just tumble and cure and finish while the second barrel moves into filling and tumbling mode (after yielding excellent compost, of course).
I am still amazed that the kitchen sCRAPs and miscellaneous things like toilet paper tubes and shredded paper bags from sandwich shops and weeds from the yard can turn into something like this. I know there are some cities out there that have implemented curbside composting (some of them mandatory!) and can only imagine how great it would be if every community did this. So much usable waste goes into the landfill where, at best, it will, hopefully, yield some usable methane that could more immediately be used to propagate growth and nourish food crops and maybe, just maybe, eliminate some of the unnecessary and harmful use of artificial nitrogen-based fertilizers.
