Building a Compost Bin
Aug 11I keep writing about how important it is to compost your leaves, but I haven’t really talked much about the different types of compost bins you can make to help turn those leaves into valuable soil. Here is how you can make your own using simple and easy to find materials.
The best compost bin I ever saw was one my father made for my mother fifteen years ago. It was composed of four pallets standing on their side and held together with some hinges left over from a remodeling project. He joined three of the sides but left one corner unhinged so he could swing it open and add leaves or take out compost. It was about four feet wide by four feet deep and four feet high. That is a perfect size because it is big enough to generate some heat but not so big that the edges cool off.
I have a nice one at my house that was made from leftover pieces of a chain link fence. I had five posts and about eighteen feet of fence. I sat the posts in the shape of a “C” with the back edge about 10 feet long and four foot sides. It is a double size bin where I stack the fall leaves on one side, the grass from the summer in the other corner and blend them into the middle to speed up the composting process.
We built a very nice compost bin a few years ago as a demonstration project using 48 cinder blocks placed in the same “C” shape. I alternated the side of the blocks to have a solid side with the holes so it would have strength and yet allow for plenty of air holes. On the top row we used the alternating holes to make little planter boxes where we grew flowers and some leaf lettuce in season.
I have seen a really nice compost bin in a friend’s midtown backyard that was chicken wire put in a circle and another friend used a door hole blade to make little circles in an oversized plastic trash bin. I have seen compost made in sideways barrels, horse troughs that won’t hold water and backyard cookers that had seen better days. All these types of homemade compost bins had two things in common: they worked just fine and didn’t cost much money.
