Choosing a Drum Composter That Really Works
Question from Jan:
I heard you speak @ Temecula Valley Garden Club (both times) and enjoyed it immensely. I recently moved and can’t find my notes (oh no!)
Would you mind refreshing my memory about the composter your daughter researched? I’m going to need to get one very soon!
Answer from Pat:
Almost any drum composter will work if the person making the compost follows the directions that come with the composter. The problems people have with drum composters usually come from adding too much fresh stuff into compost that is already well on its way to being done. The only solution is to have two of them so that as one cooks the other one can be filling up, and this can be expensive and also may take up too much room. Another problem may be that some of the composters sold in America may be a bit flimsy. Read the reviews and you will see that flimsy construction is a criticism of one drum composter that is otherwise very cleverly designed.
My daughter Wendy, who is scientifically minded, made a complete study of drum composters prior to purchase and discovered that there is a type made in Sweden called the Jora Composter. It comes in two sizes and all of them have two compartments. Both my daughters use this with great success and I have ordered a small one also. According to Wendy every household in Sweden has one.
You are truly wonderful (and quick, too)! Thank you so much!
I also purchased one of your books…SoCal Organic Gardening, and I love it.
I found a designer to design our landscape for us (about an acre). We will
do mostly natives and all xeriscape. I’m learning so much about this and
loving every minute of it.
Will certainly check out the Jora right away since it sounds like it
addresses the problem neatly! Thank you again!
Thanks so much for buying my book and I wish you great happiness with your
garden. Are you also going to have an area with raised beds for vegetables?
If so, just make sure it’s in full sun and away from invasive tree roots like
eucalyptus. Regarding xeriscape, I find many Mediterranean plants are almost
as drought-resistant as natives. I used to think one could mix them together. Now
I find it’s better in most cases to keep the natives separate, in their own little bio-system, planted
straight into native soil.
Good luck with the whole project.
I just saw this email (emails filling up again)! Thanks for the
additional info.
Yes, we are planning raised beds and it will be on a south slope getting HOT
sun in the summer all day long. I’m concerned that maybe I should make a bed
for more tender produce like chard and lettuce on a different slope…maybe
north? I am such a newbie to this. There won’t be any tree roots…we’re
preserving our view.
I just have one more question on the Jora, because I’m going to buy it today
(I found a great black Monday sale, or whatever they’re calling it). How do
I know whether to get the 125 or the 270? I have no idea how much compost we
will need. There are only 2 of us. We cook a lot and have a good amount of
scraps. I don’t know if the natives and Mediterranean plants will also want
compost? We will probably have about an acre of plants with maybe 4 or 5
raised bed gardens.
The deal is here, and the larger one is an amazing price. They tell me the
sale is off tomorrow!
http://eartheasy.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=jora
I would keep all your raised beds for vegetables in full sun. All vegetables need for sun during the months they can be planted and grown. If you wish to grow lettuce in summer, or to extend the season, it won’t grow well in shade but you can extend the season a little by placing a patio umbrella, or other shade system such as a frame for shade cloth, so that it shades the lettuce in the middle of the day or heat of the afternoon. Some gardeners use floating row covers to shade crops, and these also cut down on pest problems.
Be sure to nail 1/2 inch hardware cloth on the bottom of the raised beds before filling them with top soil. This is to stop gophers.
Regarding your Jora composter, I got the smaller one since I am just one person and I cannot do a lot of composting any more. In your case there are two of you and I would definitely get the larger one since you are going to plant a vegetable garden and you will need room at the end of each season and even during the season to put the “dead bodies” of the crops into the composter (along with all your kitchen trimmings.) I think it would be worse for you to purchase the smaller one and find you don’t have enough room than to get the larger one and sometimes think you don’t have enough room. As time goes by you will have to prune, especially if you have shrubbery and hedges. I actually have a whole lot of that sort of thing, but our city composts it, so it goes to recycle. I am no longer able to do that kind of heavy composting myself and have no one else I can rely on to do it right.
The main trick with the Jora composter is to read and follow the directions exactly. This one works if you do it right and buy the wood chips it says to have on hand. Eventually you won’t need them. So glad you were able to find one on sale!
Received the Jora before the rains…boy, was it tough to put together!!
Third time (third attempt on third day) was the charm!
Did you get yours yet? I can give helpful assembly hints!
Put our first “stuff” in it today. My first composting attempt ever.
Fun, fun!!!
Yes, I got my Jora Composter some time ago.(Instructions for assembly are
online. You’d think they’d be in the box but they weren’t.)
I’m not strong enough to lift and assemble such a thing. Fortunately I was remodeling
a section of my garden. Some fences built twenty-eight years ago had rotted and collapsed.
They needed replacement. We’ve now rebuilt them better than before. I hired a temporarily unemployed
contractor and his helper to do the work for me. One of their jobs was to assemble the Jora composter.
I had them built a platform for it and it’s now installed on top behind an arbor. I plan to plant a climber on
the back of the arbor, but also plan to have the men build a low fence to hide the composter. (The
new fence already built hides it from the road.)
Instructions for composting are also online. (I would have expected these to be included inside the
package too, but there were none.) I Googled “Instructions for Jora Composter, found this link:
http://www.smartsoil.co.uk/ and watched the video. My daughter Wendy also
suggests to put a piece of plastic over the composter during heavy rains. Otherwise, she says, water gets inside and
makes the compost soggy. Currently I’m still using my temporary homemade, low-tech composter. (Half-buried trashcan with bottom removed.)
Once the guys have finished their job I’ll then start using my new Jora, which I hope works for me as well as it does for my
two daughters. A daily ingredient of my kitchen waste is orange peels. (I’m addicted to fresh-squeezed orange juice from organic oranges.)
But I also eat a lot of veggies so i guess it should work.
Good luck with your composting. Thanks for letting me know you’ve begun the process!
Great video, thanks! And thanks for the tip about sogginess after the rain.
I actually asked the Jora guy today if I could sell the composters from my
website since it fits right in with what I’m doing (chemical-free products..
http://www.whitelotusliving.com ). We’ll see what he says.
Mine came with the scanty assembly instructions, but not the use
instructions. Thank goodness for online! I suggested a modification to the
assembly instructions and learned that they’re planning an “overhaul of the
JK line.” I suppose that means we’ll have older models soon. Ours should be
a later model than the one in the video, which has only one door instead of
two.
There was no way to put the Jora together without 2 people. My husband and I
had to use an electric screwdriver, too. No way to start the screws just
using muscle power. And the holes were nearly impossible to line up…we had
to put it on the ground and he had to put his whole weight on it plus muscle
strength to almost line the holes up while I slipped the screws in crooked.
It’s funny now, but it was frustrating then when all we wanted to do was
compost! We had to wait for the rain to stop, too, because we were
assembling it outside rather than in the garage.
I’m glad you got yours all set up, and I get the feeling that no matter what
you do in the garden, it works!!
Great comments! Thanks. I love it when people get back to me with so much
detail since it helps scads of people. I notice that another drum composter is
morphing into a two-bin system now. The insulation is unnecessary in California
in my opinion, but the sturdy, double-bin construction is a must. What cinched the
deal for me was when my two daughters, one highly scientific and the other not—
both succeeded in making excellent compost with this Jora contraption.