I bought 2 32 gallon trash cans and I’m about to start. I have a nice pile of food scraps, grass clippings and raw cardboard. Should
I put more holes on the sides and higher up and down?
by nirvroxx
I bought 2 32 gallon trash cans and I’m about to start. I have a nice pile of food scraps, grass clippings and raw cardboard. Should
I put more holes on the sides and higher up and down?
by nirvroxx
13 Comments
So long as there are also a good number of holes in the bottom to drain excess liquid (if need be) this should be good.
Please update with your progress! I wanna start but I’m scared. 😅
Good big ones on the underside. I’d make the side holes uniform, make them as common towards the top end and bottom end as they are in the middle.
That’s about what I have on mine. I will say over time due to being out in the elements you’ll probably put a few more holes in it with your shovel while you’re turning it but this looks exactly what I use. You’re going to want to find some kind of spring clamps to keep that lid from flying away in any kind of wind.
Unless you are planning on adding biochar and “washing” the result, I’d highly recommend against using a plastic container like this. Microplastics can be absorbed through the roots of plants.
And here I am overthinking and dragging my feet when this reminds me that I have a couple of 30 gallon totes sitting empty with a huge pile of leaves in the middle of my backyard.
No holes on top
Put some stainless hardware cloth over those bottom holes or you’re gonna get rodents in your bin.
Looks like you’ve got plenty of holes. I have similar garbage can setups and I don’t have half the holes you have and they’re doing great. They’ve been setup now for over a year.
I flip the lid so it funnels water in.
I have these same bins for about 5 years now. Work great. Go ahead.
Looks good to me. I have a similar setup. You’ll want to have a way to aerate it, as you can’t turn the pile conventionally. After my first year I bought a second bin. You’ll aerate the one, but it still needs to sit a while to really break down. So 1 bin gets fresh scraps and the other one sits until spring, then it gets sifted and the contents of bin 1 go in upside down (if that makes sense).
That was my biggest issue the first year. You can’t let it break all the way down while you keep adding to it. YMMV though, I almost exclusively container garden, so larger chunks of decomposing food will just invite the wrong kind of critters.
I do try to chop up scraps, but a few stabs of the shovel into the pile works too.
I would scrape the holes clean, get the small loose pieces of plastic off