A New Rotating Composter

After years of DIY and hand-me-down composters, we've splurged and purchased a rotating composter.

The idea was inspired by Tom, an Oklahoma friend who posted a photo of his on Facebook. When I commented on it, he told me it came from Tractor Supply. I ignorantly said that Tractor Supply outlets were hard to find in urban L.A. He proved me wrong!

Now, I had been poking through Amazon's offerings with appalling results. I found one that cost $300 and reviewers reported that it took hours to assemble. Not for me!

The Good Ideas Compost Wizard Jr. was about half the cost, easy to bring home and took no more assembly than dropping it into place and cutting the bands holding its two parts together for transportation.

American-made, it has a seven-cubic foot capacity divided into two chambers. With curbside service at the Santa Clarita store, we had a rotating composter in about an hour.

An unexpected consequence of the coronavirus pandemic has been that when you can't go to a restaurant, you eat at home. And when you eat at home, you create garbage to feed the compost pile.

We've never been regular about tossing our compost. (We also never seem to get enough brown things mixed in . . . ) So our compost takes a long time to become dirt. The Wizard Jr. claims to make a finished batch of compost in two weeks.

We'll see about that. I'm certain it will be faster than what we've been doing. Now, it's easy to routinely give the composter a roll every time I drop a new batch of garbage in.

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