I picked up my son Colin Cudmore from the Garden Tower Project warehouse at noon today. (This is not the factory where the towers are manufacturered. That’s in Indianapolis.)
He’s in the midst of prototyping new garden-related inventions, specifically during this month, his idea for a revolutionary new composting system that will generate “ten gallons of finished compost in ten days”!
I asked him what I could say about this invention, and he responded, “just say that it has multiple innovations beyond which people have ever seen.”
Well, with that promotion, it better be good, eh? (Colin is not one to exaggerate.)
He tells me that he’s heard from people who have been doing permaculture and making compost for decades. They all tell him that none of the composters currently on the market actually work. Why? Because they don’t get the material hot enough to kill off pathogens. His is designed to do just that — and then some!
So, if this thing works, it will be revolutionary, and probably have an even bigger market than the Garden Tower itself, which by the way, has just sent its first shipping container to Germany, joining the growing list of countries that are ordering the Garden Tower.
Colin worked for four weeks on cutting pieces for various sizes for the composter, witness the foam pieces in the background.
But then, he told me, the only one that was feasible was smaller than he had originally envisaged. Like this:
We talked briefly about how his architect/inventor father, Patrick Cudmore, used to figure out things the same way. When he had partially built the cabin he designed for my folks,
he realized that the the north walls of the bunkhouses (on the left) were too high; so he tore them down and started over again. At least this composter gets its size corrected while still in prototype design!
Nothing spurs us onward faster than “failure.”
