We recently watched a show about Australian restaurants . . it was something special, probably not your every day restaurant, but I’ve never been to Australia so I wouldn’t know. It was so interesting – so many of the restaurants they featured had their own gardens and grew a lot of what they served. We saw some very interesting compost bins . . elaborate to very simple.
I got to thinking . . I have red wigglers making compost but I can’t give them all the scraps we have, plus with all the garden waste . . lettuce that’s bolted, broccoli that isn’t going to make, peas that were too damaged to continue growing . . I needed a bigger compost bin.
Greenhouse Table
We have some plastic pallets and Vince made greenhouse tables.
Cat’s Platform
Vince made a platform for Cat with legs down in coffee containers with water in the containers to keep ants out of Cat’s food.
Why couldn’t he make a compost bin out of them?
Compost Bin
Yesterday when he got home, I said . . hey, we can use the plastic pallets to make a compost bin and in no time at all . . I had a compost bin. I had this elaborate plan to put it on a slope and put the end of the tarp down into a gutter that would flow into something so I could capture the “tea” but he nixed that idea. He said . . let’s just get the bin done and we’ll get fancy later.
You can see on the right side that I have a small compost bin and it’s ok but, having a big one that I can stir and see what’s going on will be great. We’ll probably put a divider in the middle so we can have two batches . . a newer one and an older one . . going a tall times but for now . . we just have the newer batch.
Compost Bin
It didn’t take me long to get stuff in there. I pulled up a few of the snow peas and dumped the bucket of kitchen scraps. I see lettuce, egg shells, eggplant skin, strawberry hulls – whatever we’ve had over the past few days that can go in there is already dumped and hopefully it will be the beginning of an amazing compost bin.
shirley swift-bruner says
Now you need to add some grass and leaves…and a pitchfork close by so you can turn it. covering it with grass will keep the pesky flies away. but be prepared for birds and squirrels to have ‘lunch’ from your bin. haha when i empty my bin onto the garden in the summer i get some volunteer plants from all the seeds. have fun
JudyL says
I will not add grass because we mostly have weeds here and I don’t want to add any more unwanted seeds to the garden. I don’t need any more volunteer plants . . I’ve learned from the compost from the red wigglers about that. Every where I’ve used it, I have tomatoes growing. The leaves we have here are thick and chunky and it takes years for them to break down. I’ll add a few but mostly they’ve all washed away with the heavy rains.
We rarely see squirrels but we do have plenty of birds.
It’s far enough from the house that the flies aren’t going to bother me. I wish we could use grass clippings but . not from this horrible yard. I will throw in chicken waste from the coop, but then I will have to wait 6 months for sure before being able to use the compost.
With my recent back issues, at least for a while, turning it will be Vince’s job.
Kate says
enjoy, Judy – compost is really fun….. and easy to turn with a pitchfork. great use of the pallets !
diana in RR, TX says
We splurged and got one that rotates. It’s big enough for our purposes. Very careful about not putting in anything with seeds like watermelon or cantaloupe when cutting the up. Have had it for about 5 years now.
Bon says
Don’t you have to worry about critters getting into it?