How do you make a compost bin? Composting is essential for organic gardening. There are ways to create compost, and it can be done in a compost pile, a drum or a bin, but having a container for your compost is important. You can even make your own rotating compost drum for almost no mo.
The things to consider is what kind of materials you are composting. If you live in apartment you may only have kitchen scraps to compost. If you live in a home and you have leaf litter and grass clippings then you have more to work with. Also, how fast do you want your compost?
You can start a compost pile in the ground. It's called static composting. You just dig a hole and keep adding organic material to it and then you will get compost usually in about a year. You can have a three-pile system that might take six months because you're moving the organic matter from one pile to another, and when you do that, you aerate it. By aerating it, you are getting oxygen to the microbes, which can breathe a lot better, so they will reproduce more and now eat more food. That system works well for a homeowner who is dealing with a lot of leaf litter and grass clippings. So, that's the static composting method. And another method that people use is a vessel system and that could be a little tricky. There are some in vessel systems that are basically a static pile inside a box. I advise people not to put their money into buying a $100 plastic box to throw your compost in because if it doesn't rotate, it's no different than having a pile. You just don't see the pile. So it's a little bit more aesthetically pleasing and some people want that.
The most popular compost bins are the rotating vessel drum systems, where they are on the stands and you can actually rotate them. On some of them, there is a hand crank ball involved and you can turn the compost pile with minimal labor. And those will produce compost like in a month as opposed to static pile, which is a year, and you can still handle a large volume of compost. I recommend the rotating vessel, and I also tell people that if you don't have $200 or $300 to buy a nice compost bin, don't let that stop you from making your own in vessel system. If you are handy, you could build a stand with a 55 gallon drum that rotates on a stand. You can get a 30-gallon trash can and poke holes in the bottom and the sides, and then raise it above the ground with bricks or an old pallet. Then you could use 4-inch PVC pipe, drill holes in it, and put it down in the center of the trash can and put the compost around the pipe. So, you can cut a hole on the lid and put the lid on and kind of put a chimney in. And what happens is that action of composting is going to release heat because it is releasing energy. Compost piles heat up to 130-150 degrees, and that is about where you want it to get. So when you're doing a chimney system like that it gets so hot that it does draw air in and then releases it through the chimney. So that's a very good static aerated composting system.
