Every week lately, when I’ve emerged from the den after writing my column, I’ve been met with a cold, hard stare and the question, “Did you do it yet? Did you finally come clean?”

The grand inquisitor is my significant other, who is relishing the fact that the ComposTumbler I bought last year has been a complete and total bust. The record I’m now setting straight is a column I wrote in February, in which I announced to the world that I had plunked down $265 plus shipping on a 9 1/2-bushel ComposTumbler in hopes of cranking out “brown gold” by the bucketful in two weeks, just like the advertisement promised.

For those who don’t look at the ads in gardening magazines, the ComposTumbler is basically a round, sheetmetal barrel that sits on top of a tubular steel stand. It has a crank in one end for turning the drum and a hinged door for making deposits and withdrawals. It is painted green and has two large, round air vents over the door, to make the neighbors think the insect from Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is standing in your yard.

Not only did I not get finished compost in 14 days, I didn’t get anything you might call finished compost at all. That’s right. Nada. Everything I put in the ComposTumbler during a period of about six months is still in there, in one form or another but no part of it looks anything like compost.

My husband thinks this is hysterically funny. That’s because he wouldn’t spend 300 bucks on anything that didn’t cut wood or mow the lawn.

It’s also because he’s a diehard advocate of the open-air pile and thinks natural processes like composting should just happen without having to be surrounded by an overpriced container. As a matter of fact, during one of those conversations in which we discussed end-of-life issues (as in cremation or burial), he expressed a preference for being composted himself and isn’t terribly happy that state laws won’t allow it. He gives the funeral directors lobby low marks for that one.

A couple of times this summer, when no compost was forthcoming from the belly of the Tumbler, the expert even opened the door to the contraption to check it out. It simply did not seem possible that decomposition wasn’t happening in a meaningful way and I had to be doing something wrong. Even he scratched his head in disbelief.

As it happens, I was doing just about everything by the book. I got my friend Jack, who has goats, to give me manure and I turned the drum faithfully. I had the thing set up in the direct sun, and yet I didn’t see the thermometer register a temperature above 110 degrees even on 90-degree days. Go figure.

I never had trouble making compost on an open pile, which I always viewed as a rather mindless activity. I didn’t pay much attention to the carbon-nitrogen ratio but just threw stuff on the pile mostly kitchen scraps, grass clippings and dry organic matter, such as straw turned it with a fork now and then, and carted the finished compost off in a wheelbarrow.

If I personally short-circuited the process in the ComposTumbler, it was probably in the C/N department. The ideal ratio is about 25-to-1 and there were times when the amount of manure, grass clippings and kitchen scraps were too high. While that may explain some of the temperature problem, it can’t be the only thing that went wrong.

My own theory about this stunning failure is that bugs can’t get to the compost when it’s encased in metal three feet off the ground. The inside of an established open-air pile is alive with roly-polies and other busy little insects that assist with decomposition. With the exception of a few gnats that buzzed in through the air vents, the inside of the CompostTumbler was insect-free.

I now have a decision to make: keep the thing as a conversation piece or send it back and cash in the one-year, money-back guarantee. Even scrubbed out, I suspect a used ComposTumbler would be a nasty thing to ship. If I ask him, I bet my UPS guy says that Kafka’s bug would make a fine piece of yard art.