What’s this Yellow Mold Doing in My Compost?

As with most newly built homes, my developer sold off all of the wonderfully fertile topsoil in my neighborhood and built our homes on the clay subsoil residing underneath. Unfortunately the builder didn’t put any topsoil back into the planting areas. Ever try to grow anything in clay soil? It doesn’t work very well.

Before I can even consider turning this dirt patch into a raised garden bed I need to mix organic material into the clay soil – preferable compost. Fortunately, sneaky person that I am I have a big ol’ composter making some fertilizer for me by way of a garbage can I made into a compost bin that fully complies with my Homeowner’s Association Rules. My first batch of compost came out well. After feeding the Covert Urban Composter food scraps all winter it was time to check how much Gardner’s Gold I had to work with this spring.

I mosey on over to the compost bin in the backyard. I take a look. I see this.

I get grossed out.

After some research I discovered that this yellow spongy, foamy and phallic looking blob is a slime mold. Specifically, Dog Vomit Slime Mold .

Aptly named don’t you think?

Dog Vomit Slime mold (gosh you just don’t get to type that several times in one sitting do you?) usually develops in damp, shady areas where there is a lot of decaying organic matter like soggy flower beds that use bark mulch.

This makes perfect sense because we’ve had a very rainy Spring. When I took the lid off of the compost bin everything was water logged. There was slime mold all over the top and sides of my compost. And boy did it ever stink! Bad.


How Do You Get Rid of Dog Vomit Slime Mold?

Easy. You don’t.

First off Dog Vomit Slime mold is not harmful to people, plants, or pets. In fact, some people in Mexico eat slime mold.

No thanks, I’ll pass.

It’s lifecycle is very short. When slime mold first appears it’s usually bright yellow and can grow as it chows down on the decaying wet leaves and whatnot (legend has it that slime molds were the inspiration for the kitschy 1958 sci-fi movie The Blob.) Next, the slime mold turns light brown and finally dries into dark, powdery spores. The whole process can take a couple of hours or a couple of days.

If this slime mold grew in the mulch in my flower beds I could just leave it and it would go away on its own. In this case I was advised to throw the moldy compost out.

Oh and just to you gross you out a little further, when I emptied the bin I found a nice big family of maggots in my compost.

Yummy.

Once the compost bin was empty I was told to clean it with either bleach (no thanks) or hydrogen peroxide (yes, please.) I mixed up a solution of hydrogen peroxide based “oxygen” bleach and water and used that to clean the compost bin inside and out, including the lid. I let the clean bin dry in the sun.

I emailed Gardener's Supply Ask an Expert and asked them how I could prevent my compost from molding again. This is what they said.

If you're developing mold in your compost pile it certainly sounds like the materials are too wet most of the time. Drilling more aeration holes would definitely help the ability of the pile to receive more air and should keep the materials more dry. Too much moisture will drown the microorganisms, and too little will dehydrate them. A general rule of thumb is to keep the material in your compost pile as moist as a well-wrung sponge.

To do their work most efficiently, microorganisms require a lot of oxygen. When your pile is first assembled, there will probably be plenty of air between the layers of materials. But as the microorganisms begin to work, they will start consuming oxygen. Unless you turn or in some way aerate your compost pile, they will run out of oxygen and become sluggish.

When your pile is very wet, try adding materials to sock up some of the moisture, such as paper, dried leaves, sawdust, or straw. Keeping a good balance between these "brown" ingredients, and the "green" ingredients such as grass clippings and food waste is very important

To make sure that I didn’t have moldy, soggy, maggoty compost again, I drilled more aeration holes in the bottom and sides of the Covert Urban Compost Bin. This last batch of compost was mostly kitchen scraps so I’m going to concentrate on adding more paper from my paper shredder for "browns." I’m also going to ask the lawn service to leave the grass clippings on our lawn so I can rake them up and put them in my compost bin. Oh, and this time I’ll try to turn the compost more often because last time I didn’t mix my compost at all - oops.

Looking for more compost options? Check out the following options - and more! - below!
Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to Condo Blues.

This is Condo Blues’ submission for the May Green Moms Carnival where our topic is gardening. The Carnival will be held at Green and Clean Mom. Please check it out after May 18th!

From Silver Teapot to Flower Vase

Husband surprised me with a bunch of flowers for our wedding anniversary. I grabbed a vase from my stash (alas, poor me. He gives me flowers often so yes, I have quite a few empty flower vases in my cupboard. Don’t hate me OK?) and arranged the flowers.

Now Husband is a man who gives good gift. He knows I like unusual flower combinations in my bouquets. This bouquet is no exception – it needed an unusual vase and to tell you the truth this isn’t my favorite vase. It’s one of several free with delivery vases I have in my decorating accessory closet (OK, it’s a set of shelves in my utility room that holds candles and the like. I have space issues people!) One of these days I tell myself that I should spiff up the free vases with some glass paint but I forget about it until I need a vase for flowers. I also tell myself that I should just go out and buy a nice vase but I forget about that too.

I went back into the closet (heh) and came out with my silver tea set. Since most of my guests on formal occasions don’t drink tea, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve used this pot for the actual serving of tea. Seems fitting to use it as a vase for my anniversary flowers we got the tea set as a wedding present.

I left the table cloth off of the dining room table. I like the juxtaposition of the formal silver teapot on the
beat up table Husband has a sentimental attachment to and that I want to light on firerustic patina of Husband’s childhood dining room table.

What do you think?

Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to the Condo Blues RSS Feed  or to Condo Blues by Email.

Help Me Pick a Shower Curtain!

I painted the second bathroom in The Condo a blue that is a little lighter than the Caribbean ocean and a little darker than a Tiffany’s box. It goes with my plan of enlarging and framing some photos we took of the ocean while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Which I still haven’t done, because I keep changing my mind about what should go on the wall.

I hung the flamingo shower curtain from my old rental’s John Waters Memorial Bathroom (named by my gays, because I dealt with the 80’s pink wallpaper that we inherited by decorating the room with pink flamingos. This of course is the name of one of John Waters’ most notorious early films.) I’m not really trying to do a themey bathroom again, but I like the crisp white curtain against the blue walls.

Pink Flamingos - the shower curtain, not the movie.

Unexpectedly, I now have a choice in shower curtains. My real life friend Anthony of the TFormers Transformers Podcast was having a bad day so I brought Blitzkrieg over to visit so Anthony could lower his blood pressure by petting my dog. Blitzkrieg was happy to help out because Anthony is one of his favorite humans. Anthony always has treats for visiting dogs and he doesn’t even have a dog!

I saw a shower curtain in the package on Anthony’s dining room table. I pointed to one of stripes in the pattern and told him that I painted my bathroom that same Tiffany-esce blue. “Want it?” he said. Turns out Anthony’s mom had an I’m-Your-Mom-so-I’m-going-to-buy-you-things-I-think-you-should-have-for-your-house moment and bought him a new shower curtain to replace the one he already had and liked and that didn’t need replacing.

 Anthony's mom bought this

I put the new shower curtain up in the bathroom but I’m not sure if I like or not. I’m not trying to do a monochromic room. Some days I think it’s OK, other days I think its too much blue. What do you think? Which shower curtain should I choose?

“Don't worry. I'll make sure Lisa does something clever with the other curtain. Or else.”

4 Homemade Sugar Scrubs that Go from Your Pantry to the Bath

As much as I am all over power tools and DIY projects I really am a girly girl at heart. I like pamper myself now and again and using a sugar body scrub is an excellent way to do it. Sugar is as a natural exfoliate but is still gentle enough to be used on skin. The oil in the sugar scrub can protect your skin against moisture loss. Add a few natural essential oils and you have a wonderful way to make an expensive professional spa treatment from ingredients you may already have in your kitchen!

 Pin these sugar scrub recipes to your Pinterest boards for later! Share them with your friends!

Here are four of my favorite natural sugar scrub recipes. They make great gifts too!

1.Basic Sugar Scrub Recipe

What Can You Make From Broken Copper Pipes?

My cell phone rings. “We’re going to be at the farm this weekend. Would Blitzkrieg like to come over for dinner? We’d love to see our granddog.”

It’s my mother in law. And yes, she just invited the dog to her house with the implied invitation that Husband and I would chauffeur the dog to his dinner date. That’s what happens when your dog is more popular with your friends and family than you are I suppose. (Although it is heartwarming that the in-laws have realized that Blitzkrieg is as close as they are going to get to an actual grandchild from us for awhile. Don’t feel too bad for them. They have five grandkids from Husband’s other sibs, so the in-laws aren’t exactly hurting in the grandchildren department.)

We drive to the little farmhouse. Surprisingly we find it in disarray. Big chunks of drywall are missing from most of the walls. “Hey! You’re just in time! Mom says. “We’re celebrating a bit tonight. We just got the water back on.”

What?!

Turns out that when the renters moved out of the house in January, instead of turning the heat down to 55 degrees like you should in a soon-to-be unoccupied house during a snowy winter, they turned the heat OFF COMPLETELY. They didn’t bleed the water lines dry so let’s do the math, shall we?

Below zero temperatures + standing water in copper pipes =

One might think that the previous tenants did this out of ignorance. Chances are no. The renters were asked to leave after not paying rent for oh, say, the last 6 months of their stay. Hmmmmm...vindictive much? Consider yourselves formally crossed off our Christmas card list.

Once the big pool of standing water was removed from the floor, the burst pipes needed to be found from behind drywall all over the lower level of the house and replaced. Even though my father-in -law has much more experience in a whole lot more DIY areas than me, this job was much more than evn our DIY skills combined could handle. It was time to call in a pro.

Fortunately the man who lives next to the little gray farmhouse is a plumber. The job kept him quite busy for several months. At $22.00 an hour, the plumber’s family isn’t going to have to worry about being able to pay their rent anytime soon.

As the dinner party progressed and Mom and Dad entertained us with the trials and tribulations of fixing up the house yet again and I think - blog fodder! I started snapping photos of the broken pipes. Suddenly Husband appeared over my shoulder.

Husband: What are you going to make out of those?

Me: Money? Scrap copper prices are pretty good right now.

Husband: Yeah, but knowing you, you’re going to do something cool with the remains, right?

Me: No. I’m going to blog about the broken pipes.

Husband: Oh. That’s disappointing. I expected something cool.

Looks like I’ve trained him a little too well in creative reuse department.

What do you think? Is there anything I can make from burst water pipes?

How to Save Electricity While Heating Your Hot Tub

One of my very best friends is now the proud and happy owner of a hot tub thanks to Craigslist. His partner on the other hand, isn’t as happy because he said that he was concerned about how much more electricity this little extravagance was going to cost them.

I get questions about saving electricity a lot because I now have quite the reputation among by friends and family as an Energy Savings Maven (hey, there could be worse things, right?) I wondered if there really was such a thing as an energy efficient hot tub. I asked J Williams of Hot Tub Works that same question and one of his staffers offered to write a guest post on the topic for me.

Here you go my friends, this post’s especially for you!

Sink Yourself into an Energy-Efficient Hot Tub

By Jayne Hawkins


With the cost of electricity skyrocketing, it’s no wonder that we are constantly looking for ways to cut our utility budget. Saving money does not have to be difficult, and often requires just a few small changes within our homes. Even if you are new to the latest techniques, it’s never too late to make changes to keep your hard-earned wages in your wallet. Unfortunately, cutbacks and downsizing are causing many of us to reconsider our dreams and goals for the future. For many, this means saying no to a remodelled kitchen, summer patio, or relaxing hot tub.

Can't Compost? Use Coffee and Eggs Instead!

In Central Ohio Mother’s Day is the unofficial frost date. Plant anything before Mother’s Day and an April frost or two or three will most surely kill it. Plant after Mother’s Day and your plants should live.

Mother’s Day is several weeks away and after looking at this dirt patch for the last 6 months or so, I’ve been jonesing for some flowers.

“This is pathetic.”

I don’t want to spend a lot of time or cash on spring flowers because I’m going to turn the dirt patch into a raised garden bed. Any spring flowers I plant now will soon be sacrificed when we rent the jackhammer (yes, I said jackhammer -yahoo!) and start chipping away at the cement in the garden bed. What’s a gal to do?