Tuesday, March 26, 2013

dirty mind

Not that kind of dirt. The kind ya grow stuff in, sheesh.

For a real long time now, I've been hoping that a compost bin would appear somewhere in my yard, and that I would be able to amend my icky Florida soil with black goodness free of charge.

Well after three years of grimacing whilst chucking kitchen scraps in the trash, and waiting for the compost fairy to arrive, I've decided enough is enough. I've got acres of oak leaves, mounds of coffee grounds, eggshells out the wazoo...not to mention a big ol' pile of chicken poo sitting useless under the coop. I've got to stop hoping and procrastinating and just make a compost bin already.

I love the idea of a tumbler like this one, but I admit I am averse to all that plastic.



I love how pretty this bent willow one looks but seems impractical.



This beehive inspired bin is super cute. But I'll be honest--it looks complicated to make and my goal is to get this done soon.



Honestly I'm probably just going to get some pallets and build something like this one. Because it's easy. And cheap. Did I mention easy?



So my question for you is this--Does anyone out there compost, and if so what kind of bin do you use/recommend? Would you do a separate bin for leaves to make leaf mold? I'm a total amateur so any advice would be great!!


2 comments:

Jenny Squawk said...

We have two earth machines. We got them at a discount locally and bought a number of them and gave some to local friends.

One for ourselves and the other was unclaimed. We put the other one into use after getting the chickens. The coop and pen is deep litter so we only need to clean it twice a year. One bin for each cleaning.

I did a lot of research on composters before deciding. The rotating barrel composter isn't the best because in ground is better. I love how the earth machine has a bottom door for compost removal. Very easy to use.

Amy Seven-Stitches said...

We tried the pallet compost bin and were not impressed. The bin was quite large and there was no way to keep the rats and other vermin out.

We now use a system of two black polythene bins - one for filling in layers and one for letting the compost just do its thing. Chicken mesh to the underside appears to keep the vermin out too. We turn both regularly, about once a month. it is working well for us.