I’m new to gardening/composting and made this yesterday out of an empty Rubbermaid bin that I drilled some holes into. I added dry leaves and thin dry sticks on the bottom, soil and veggie scraps on top and then this morning I tore up a couple paperboard egg cartons and threw those in with a few more veggie scraps. Also sprayed some water in there and mixed it around. Any advice on improvements or changes would be appreciated!
by ThinkingBud
13 Comments
Looks good. Just make sure you have holes in the bottom and add plenty of browns. Also just a warning to keep your dog away, compost toxicity is a thing
if you are interested in composting, I’d skip the bin, and expand more. you won’t get much from that. most compost bins are 5 ft x 5 ft for good results.
At that size, you may as well use composting worms.
I’d cut out the bottom so it’s in direct contact with the ground, better microbial action. Also makes it easy to lift and toss.
Make sure you add more browns like paper, leaves and egg cartons than green foods. And while you are at it add a few composting worms and grounded up egg shells.
Looks great. I would bury it up to the lid though to make things happen faster
I’ve done 20 of these style bins and found no lid but heavy mulch seems to work best in terms of breakdown and prevention of escaping worms.
Edit: thought I was on r/vermiculture
Might as well make this a worm composter given the size.
Looks just like mine. I’ve gotten a few loads of dirt out of it over the years. It was going to be temporary, but it’s been working nicely.
I did bins. Until I had 20 bins that were heavy, cumbersome to deal with, broke, and took up lots of space. Nevermind the whole idea of plastic leaching. I tossed all my bins and just have piles on the side of my property. One day I’ll do a more proper pallet setup or something.
Kinda small but it’ll work just fine. Hard to do compost wrong. Just don’t throw animal fats in there
At that size Add worms, that’s how I started out many years ago same size bin and adding worms was the way to go. Also fyi keep your dog away from it, bacteria that grows in compost as it’s breaking down is toxic to dogs if they consume it. My wife is a vet and we live in a large gardening community and she sees it a few times a year of dogs coming in sick for consuming compost.
I’ve got the same thing as an overflow for my compost tumbler. It works well, I drilled the holes in the sides to allow for cross airflow instead of the top.
One note of caution – I did have a wasp or hornets nest grow in there once and I had to spray the nest rendering the compost unusable.
I made a controlled grow box for mushrooms out of one of those once. Mushrooms did grow.