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At Last New Homemade Compost Bins

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Aah, we love our garden compost here at Casa Dirty Boots.  But, the one thing we don’t – well didn’t love was our compost bins.  Oh they were fine and dandy when first created.  In fact we were rather smug that we’d used scraps of wood from the house that were good for little else to make them. Five years on though and what once was merely wood-wormed was starting to dissolve a little.  The whole bin arrangement needed reinforcements to keep it all dog proof (essential when you are composting humanure).    I shuffled some spare blocks that had […]

Make Some Real Compost

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We have now been making compost for years, especially since we began a more self sufficient lifestlye. No fancy setup although I would still have a compost tumbler if we did not have such a large plot that we can use, with pretty much unlimited space. Many people come to this site looking for various snippets of wisdom about how to make compost, what to compost, can you put this, and can you put that on the compost heap. Here I would like to dispel a few myths about what exactly composts and how many people may be missing out […]

Gifts for Gardeners – Kitchen Compost Pails: Compost Pails For Kitchens

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Here at Dirty Boots HQ we try to be as Self Sufficient as possible.  Part of that frugal living is an abundance of jam giving at birthdays and Christmas.   Last night the ‘Chrimbo Conversation’ began and we decided to make a concerted effort to organise gift production and even a few gift purchases in plenty of time for the big day.  The ever spectacular Spanish postal service may well still ensure our family’s gifts arrive late but at least this year we will know we tried. Click to View the Compost Pails I’m Lusting After! As you can imagine we […]

Manufactured Self Contained Compost Toilets

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We’ve looked at cheap and cheerful home-made DIY compost toilets;  waterless, sawdust toilets which are basically a bucket you need to empty yourself every few days.  These systems work, speeding up the action and fertility of a conventional compost heap and providing an extremely environmentally friendly way of dealing with human waste.  But, being of a ‘back to basics’ nature they really are not for everyone. If you prefer a less hands on approach to the waterless toilet you can buy self contained compost toilets instead.  These self contained systems are a very glamorous version of the bucket compost loo.  […]

Compost Toilet – The Sawdust Toilet

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The compost toilet can be as complicated, expensive, cheap or basic as you like. As far as indoor compost toilets are concerned none are more simple to create, use and understand than the sawdust toilet. We have a sawdust toilet and I really cannot recommend it enough.  Even if you have no intention of ever foregoing your luxurious plumbed in conventional toilet, you should at least know about sawdust toilets.  Then, the next time the water supply is disrupted or you are remodelling the bathroom you can use this simple composting toilet system until your preferred poo receptacle is functioning […]

Urban Compost Bin Tumblers

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As any regular readers know we have a very basic, but effective form of composting. We use three compost bins that are rotated every few months. Made frorm pallets, they are cheap and effective. I previously wrote about how to build a compost bin and what I thought was the best composter system. Lately I have been hearing about the rotating composter and how you can supposedly make compost in 14-21 days. Well, I just had to investigate. It seems unbelievable to me that these compost bin tumbler machines can be that effective. I have always said I didn’t believe […]

Do You Use a Moon Cup? The Menstrual Cup Review

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menstrual cups

This is a post for the girls. Since I’ve been writing a lot about cleaning lately and generally being a bit ‘girlie’ I may as well air my dirty laundry completely, and talk about the mysterious menstrual cup. Thankfully since first writing this post these have become a lot more common and are finally losing a little of their mystery. But if you don’t have a BFF who uses them to explain the details read on… There are a few different brands out there but personally I am a fan of Mooncups.  And, though I don’t have ‘self sufficient‘ periods, […]