Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Making Stuff: Compost Bin

I have been thinking about composting quite a bit lately.  In Albuquerque, we composted all of our yard and food waste together in a passive bin.

Here in Northern Colorado, there are raccoons, fox and other wild animals that would be interested in food scraps and we didn't want to invite them over with the alpacas on site.  So we haven't been composting our food scraps.

Which brings me to those neat little composting bins that you can get from a garden or home center.  They seem to make composting easy.  They're tidy.  They're not beautiful, but they're not ugly and they speed up the composting process.

I wanted one.

But they are expensive.  I mean, really expensive for what they are.  I looked at several, but could not justify $100 - $250 for little more than a plastic bin.  So I decided to make my own.


We already had a trash can with a locking lid, but we were using it to hold trash.  So I went to a home store and picked up a new can on wheels for about $20.


I washed out our old can and drilled random holes in it with the largest drill bit we had.  There are holes on the side, bottom and top.


I put the can near the back door to the garage.  It's still not beautiful, but I don't think it's ugly either.  We've already started to put vegetable scraps and coffee grounds in it.

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3 comments:

  1. WonderWhyGalJune 1, 2010 at 6:38 PM

    Good call...I haven't done it because of cost but I like your idea. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Sarah {The Student Knitter}June 4, 2010 at 12:50 PM

    That's EXACTLY what we did for our compost too! We put it right on the dirt so that bugs could get up in to it, and umm... I may have gone crazy with the drilling. hehehe We just added a second so that we could rotate back and forth for turning! Great minds, perhaps? :)

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  3. Kathryn RayJune 4, 2010 at 1:31 PM

    @Sarah - I suppose you're right :-)

    I was concerned that I didn't put enough holes. I figured I could always add some if it seems like it needs more oxygen.

    Good idea about the bugs. We have a lot of worms, so when I find them I toss them into whatever compost or garden I happen to be near, but I still need to put a few in this bin.

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