Austin 1.5" of rain in the last hour

Thu, 10 May 2012 19:37:00 -0700

Only Drippign Springs has more rain ( 2.0" ) in the last hour. Here is a great site for weather nerds

http://hydromet.lcra.org/full.aspx

Picked up a Bokashi Bin at the Austin Garden Festival today.

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:34:00 -0700

I have been gathering kitchen food scrapes, coffee grinds, egg shells, etc from our kitchen and I collect them in a indoor compost container for about 2 years now. I have gone through several systems, simple rubbermaid containers, special plastic compost bins, stainless steel container with carbon oder filters, but all of them essentially have the same problems, they require frequent emptying outdoors, otherwise they start to stink and have a tendancy to attract fruit flies and other insects. This past spring has been especially bad with the fruit flies.

I have a 3 foot x 3 foot x 3 foot outdoor compost pile that I made it out of old wooden pallets 5 years ago. I have been using it to dispose of all my kitchen scraps, leaves, I use a pitchfork and have been turning the pile with good results, but with all the labor and sifting to get good compost, I typically only gather the compost once a year in the spring and use it for new planting or to top dress my beds. I thought there has to be an easier way and a better way to get more frequent microbial activity and nutrients into the soil.

I have considered worm composting, but the thought of having worms inside my house is slighly creepy to me, but extremely creepy to my wife.

After seeing the BOKASHI BIN INDOOR composting system at the Autin Garden Festival today, I thought I would give it a try. The concept is very similar to home brewing beer. The system consists of a plastic bokashi bin and bokashi bran with microbes. The bin has a spigot and a internal strainer to seperate the liquid ( fermented ) from the the solids and should be drained every 2-3 days. They also offer a 2nd 5 gallon pail bin with a twist on lid which can be used to transfer a full load of compost from the bokashi bin for the 10-14 final fermination process. Striking similar to a secondary fermintation vessel for brewing beer.

The biggest benifit, I think is going to be the frequent application of a compost tea to my plants

With the City of Austin moving towards a zero waste goal and typical trash waste stream beeing 30% food scraps, the city has every incentive to get residents to keep as much organic scraps out of the waste stream as possible. The city of Austin has a Green30 Challenge rebate which pays for 75% of the cost of a compost system, up to $75 dollars if you downsize your trash can to 30 gallon size.

20 years ago I started home brewing beer, today I started brewing compost tea!

Cougar Matt out.

http://www.microbialearth.com/landingpage/bokashi-composting/5

Austin 1.5" of rain in the last hour

Picked up a Bokashi Bin at the Austin Garden Festival today.

Subject: City of Round Rock water restirctions lifted

Camp Mabry more rain as of March 12,2012

Lake Travis gains 13.2 billion gallons in Monday nights 2" rain

Flash Flooding Monday Night/Tues morning

The highest soil moisture level

5 inches of rain in parts of Austin last night, only 19 inches of rain for Austin in all 2011

Heavy rain causes flooding.

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27 irritrol 204 vavle manifold

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