The Roma tomato plants have set their first fruits! There is hope for tomatoes this year after all. After the cats ruined the first tomatoes set out in the spring, I wasn't sure that we were going to get any tomatoes at all. That's what happened last year, when the tomato plants sulked in our clay soil even with time-release fertilizer to encourage them. One plant set one fruit which grew slowly to about the size of a golf ball, and then a hungry squirrel or rat ate a hole in it. More marauders later attacked while the cats lounged in the shade until the lone tomato was gone.

The only things that the cats generally catch in the tomato patch are the poor bees trying to gather nectar from the plants. The cats wait expectantly until the bees are coming in for a landing, and then spring out of hiding to swat at them until the disoriented bees flee for their lives. The tomato flowers remain largely unpollinated and fall off.

This year's tomato patch is thriving under its blanket of compost mulch, which the cats do not like for some fortunate reason. They are staying out of it and leaving both plants and bees alone. That is yet another reason to make more compost mulch, its deterrent effect on our beloved but occasionally naughty cats.

Both Rapunzel and the baby are filled up with their loads turned very nicely brown and looking like they will be ready to unload again soon. Rapunzel is definitely more efficient at composting than the baby, and if you wish to get a barrel composter and have enough material to fill one, I would recommend going with the bigger model. It turns as easily as the smaller model because of the gear system, which had been the big concern since I have health problems that limit my strength. I can't say how easily the biggest model would turn since we don't have one of them, but I can definitely recommend either model we do have depending on how much material you have to compost.

The baby was designed for composting kitchen scraps and small amounts of compostable materials and does do that pretty well, but if you have even a small yard you may well be surprised just how much compostable material you have been throwing out. I was astonished at just how many peels and rinds and other compostable scraps I had from preparing a meal. I started collecting them in a plastic gallon ice cream pail beside the sink instead of dropping them into the garbage can so I could see what I had to put in.

That container filled up rapidly; and if I was making juice, I might have to empty it several times before I finished. That would be a good test to estimate how much you have to compost, to roughly measure your scraps and weigh your other compostable materials that you usually accumulate in a week's time. If you are interested in composting, you are probably using a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits instead of canned or frozen, and buying a tumbler too small and having to get a bigger one later is not as good as getting one big enough for your needs to begin with. It is fortunate that we have enough to keep both tumblers busy.

You should also remember that the tumblers only work when the temperature is high enough, so the composting season follows the gardening season unless you can put the tumblers somewhere warm in the winter so that they aren't chilled too much which will stop the composting. I don't know if I can housebreak either one to bring it indoors. Even though I've gotten better about not overwatering them, they're still a bit messy since it is better to water a bit too much and let them drain than not water enough and not have any composting happen in the dry materials.

That's why I'm putting in the time to hand shred the paper into small pieces about one or two inches on the side. I'm rushing to get as much paper turned into compost and onto the beds before the cool weather stops the composters. You shouldn't use paper with a shiny finish in compost because it may have toxic materials in it, but many papers are recyclable with non-toxic inks which also make them acceptable for composting. I would rather get that paper turned into compost than have it stack up waiting for the next season.

I was also surprised at just how much of that we had, even though we had been taking in to the recycling bins that the city supplies. Once Steve waited for me to sort out the compostable paper before taking in the non-compostable paper, the recycling corner quickly overflowed with piles of paper. The tumblers just do not like long strips because the tumbling action rolls them up into balls. The paper pieces are mixing in much better and quickly vanishing in the brown compost.

Speaking of tumbling action, there are even more tips I can give you about that. Don't ever fill the barrel completely full. It is tempting to think that you will get more compost more quickly that way, but it actually works against you. You need to leave several inches of headspace so that the load will mix when you spin the barrel. I try to leave it about an inch below the air screens at the ends of the barrel, which gives you about four inches of empty space at the top.

When you do spin it, spin it slowly enough that you can hear the soft rumble of the load breaking over as the edge passes the top and then drops to the bottom, mixing the material as it churns. Think of it like the surf, where the water piles up in a big wave and then falls to churn with the water beneath the crest of the wave. When you turn the barrel, the material that is lifted to the top of the barrel breaks away and falls into the lower material. If the barrel is so full that there is no space for it to move anywhere, it won't mix the load.

There are several benefits from mixing the load. The composting is being done by microorganisms which tend to grow best in the warm, moist, cozy center of the barrel. They need more food and water and air brought to them as they use up the materials where they are. Tumbling the load mixes the outer material in along with more air to keep them happily gobbling it up and producing the compost. You are duplicating the natural process by which dead leaves and plants are recycled after they fall to the ground, only you are pampering the microorganisms to encourage them to multiply and make compost faster.

Tumbling the load also makes it easier to judge when you need to add more materials. That is one thing that I had to watch about the baby. Any excess moisture settles to the bottom of the load and is supposed to drain out. The baby has its drain on the opposite side of the barrel from the door, whereas the bigger tumbler has its drains installed in the door. When you finish spinning the baby, its door is up so the drain is down, and it is easy to assume that the baby needs more moisture because the top of the load drains and dries. With the bigger tumbler, you have to leave it with the door down and spin it up half a turn to open the door to check the load, so you see the damper side of the load.

When you want to check the temperature, moisture, and headspace each day to see if you can add more material, you should check the temperature when you first open the door, then close the door and spin the tumbler several times (I use five spins) before you open it to check on moisture and headspace. That fluffs the load and mixes the moister material with the drier material, so you get a better idea of how much water and material you should add.

That was the biggest discovery that helped me to stop overwatering the baby. It also helps to prevent overfilling it, since you do need to fluff in the air and leave headspace to allow mixing. A load that is a bit too damp can pack down and look like you can add more, when it actually needs a chance to drain and dry out a bit. It may take some dry paper to help with that, but you have to watch out for overfilling as those microorganisms need their air to work.

With a new load, the material shrinks down rapidly and you may have to add quite a bit of new material to fill the barrel again each day. However, as it turns dark brown and the finished compost accumulates among the new material, there will come a point when the volume doesn't shrink much each day. That's when you need to add only soft scraps and newspaper which will break down rapidly, or else finely chop or mulch anything that goes in. The point is to try to finish the load as quickly as possible since you don't want any large partly-composted scraps left when you remove the load. It will finally reach the point when the load almost stops shrinking, and then it will need a few days of tumbling without adding new materials to finish the last scraps. The smaller and softer the last scraps, the fewer days to finish them.

It helps to remove only about two thirds of the load to leave a healthy batch of microorganisms to start the new load. The bigger tumbler is supposed to be rinsed out between batches, but you can save some compost from the center of the load and add that with the new materials. The more microorganisms you start with, the sooner the new load heats up and breaks down faster.

I've been making compost mulch by mulching leaves and other garden waste finely and mixing it into the compost from the tumbler, partly to save space as well as to deal with the fiber problem. The instructions did say to keep pine needles and other fibrous materials out, but it is hard to sort all of it out. Mixing in more mulched leaves helps to soak up any excess fertilizer in the load and gives the microorganisms one more feeding to break the mulched leaves down faster. It seems to be working quite well and looks nice in the garden.

With the garden cleanup going on, there is a lot of compostable material that we won't have later when the unwanted shrubs and trees are gone and the rest are pruned, so I don't want to get another tumbler just yet. I'm hoping that these two will be enough once the yard is under control again.