I’m tired of buying bagged compost.

We have had a synthetic fertilizer free landscape for the almost two years we have been in our first home.  I really started gardening this year (pictures coming soon!) and I’m using compost to jazz up the tender new plants.  Rusty and I decided to look into buying ourselves a composting system, and this week I got ambitious.

I did a lot of reading on GardenWeb’s Compost forum and figured out that I can make this as simple or as complicated as I want to.  I decided to go simple, for now.

I went to Lowes, looking for metal chicken wire but found an alternative that looks just like it, same size holes, but lighter and easier to cut – it’s some kind of recycled plastic that’s 3 feet high.  I’m going to put that on the ground in a circle that is at least three feet wide and fasten the edges with zip ties.  Then I found stakes that were four feet high so I can snake them through the holes in the plastic netting and stake it into the ground. I can fasten the edges with zip ties.  Done.

When you compost, I’m reading that it will go faster if you combine “brown” and “green” materials. For browns, I will have shredded paper from work and will bring in the cardboard containers to shred too, which my town won’t take for recycling (cereal boxes, etc.) so I’ll finally have a use for those. Shredded newspaper and fall leaves are also good browns that I will be able to get my hands on.

For greens, I’ll have lawn clippings, things that I prune like flowerheads and coffee grounds. I already have a garbage can full of this stuff, so I’m assuming one of the two bins I create will be full the first day.

From there, I could do things like add water to make it moist but not wet… Turn the pile… Sift the pile… Poke holes in it with a pitchfork for air circulation… But I don’t know if I will. I know I won’t have ready compost this year, especially since it’s pretty much dead over the winter. I can be patient. I’ll have something to look forward to picking up again in spring!

I will update with pictures when we build them and update as I go with the progress. 

Update:  9-19-09

Well, I was right, it’s easy!  I measured the bins 3 feet around…

I was gung ho the first week or so, with taking temperature and trying to sift the pile.  Then I all but gave up!  With fall and winter coming, I thought I would keep piling on the material and in the spring start doing some more sifting.  The compost will break down, just slower.

Since smaller pieces make for faster degradation, I bought a cross cut shredder on sale at Staples.  I also rip up leaves that go in there too.

That’s about it!  Feel free to ask any questions if you like, by comment or email.  I hope this helps!

Update:  6-5-2010

I have been consistently filling one bin and almost a year later, I am starting to harvest the compost from the bottom of the pile.  Instead of trying to find a way to free the whole pile, I just cut the chicken wire along the bottom and scooped it out with a trowel.  I didn’t go crazy taking the temperature, making sure the ratio was right, or turning the pile.  I bought a pitchfork and just shove it in and rock it back and forth, repeating a few times.

Now that one pile is finishing off, I am concentrating on filling the other pile.  I haven’t had any problem with smells, moisture, or animals rummaging through the pile.  I’d say this experiment is a success!

Share on Facebook