New compost bin

On Saturday, April 23rd, 17 people came to the garden and we managed to follow these building plans (more or less) and put together a 3 bin compost unit with untreated, cedar wood. For the kids, there was flower pot painting (with predictable results) and then a lot of running around enjoying the park and Liz Queathem's dog. Those that weren't working on the bin used the time to add soil to the raised beds, a seemingly never-ending task we have finally finished after adding 50+ cubic feet of topsoil.

The bin still needs some finishing touches so that the slats on the front of the bin will slide into place and stay there, but its looks beautiful and should serve the garden for years to come. We have a pile of unfinished compost from Grinnell College Dining Services that we moved from Howard McDonagh's farm down the road from the garden and hopefully we can use the bin to make finished compost by the fall while still putting in new materials as the season goes on. That's the advantage of a 3 bin system - it allows you to keep compost at different stages of maturity separate and continuously composting.