I turn chicken poop and veggie scraps into food for my garden. What’s your superpower?
Composting is something everyone can do, no matter if you live in an apartment or with a couple of acres or on a full-sized farm.
Simply pile up some greens (fruits and veggies, grass clippings, coffee grounds, tea bags, old flower bouquets, chicken poop) and some browns (dry leaves, plain cardboard, wood chips, straw). Add some moisture (if it doesn’t naturally get a lot of rain) and heat (partial sun works well). Turn it every few weeks to let some air get in.
In a few weeks to a few months you’ll have free, beautiful, dark, rich, healthy soil! Use it in your garden, landscaping, or houseplants.
An ice cream pail or rubbermaid tub will work if you’re limited on space, but if you do have a place to put it, a larger compost pile will provide you with enough free dirt to replenish the nutrients in your garden each year. A pile is 100% free, but can quickly become unruly, especially if animals are around.
Here’s how to build a cheap, contained compost bin.
Find free pallets.
This might take a bit of patience and searching. Check Facebook Marketplace, ask in your local Buy Nothing group, or just drive by company dumpsters. Free is obviously best, but some places will sell pallets for $5 each. You’ll need a minimum of 3 pallets (see the options in step 6 below).
*Note: Be sure to check the pallets for the “HT” symbol, not “CT”. To make pallets strong enough to hold tons of weight, they are either heat-treated or chemical-treated. HT are what we want for our compost bins — CT has the possibility of the chemicals leaching into our soil (not good for the garden or the produce we create from it).
Get a roll of chicken wire.
Most pallets are either 48″x40″, 42″x42″, or 48″x48″ — so rolls that are 3 feet or 4 feet tall will work. The wire does not need to go from edge to edge, and you can even piece together scraps you already have on hand. A 3-sided bin will need a minimum of 3 ft by 12 ft of wire.
Choose a location for your compost bin.
I considered putting mine closer to the house and garden, for easy access to dumping scraps and also transporting the finished dirt. But ultimately we put it next to the chicken coop instead. Sometimes a compost pile can smell in the beginning as food starts to break down, plus I wanted to be able to easily haul chicken waste to it. The spot we chose gets enough sun to keep it warm, but not too much sun to dry it out.
Staple chicken wire to the many-slatted side of the pallets.
We want air to flow through the bin, but don’t want our scraps and dirt making messes.
Connect the corners of the bin.
If you purchased a brand new roll of chicken wire, it often comes wrapped with a single strand of thin wire – which is perfect for threading through the corners of your bin to attach them together. Other options could be zip ties or twine. It just has to be connected enough to not tip over.
Options for the front of the bin
- A 4-sided bin: Easy to toss scraps into, difficult for chickens and other animals to make a mess on the ground around the bin. However, it can be difficult to reach in to turn the pile with a basic pitchfork (but there are tools available for digging straight into this sort of pile). And when the compost is finished you’ll need to disassemble one side to easily scoop the dirt out.
- A 3-sided bin: Very easy to turn with a pitchfork, but also easy for animals to scratch and pull and make messes out the front.
- A 3-sided bin with some sort of door: A fourth pallet could be cut in half or attached with hinges.
- We found extra cinder blocks on our property, and stacked those along the front as a sort of removable door. As the pile got bigger we added more rows of blocks. The chickens can still get in and scratch around, but we can also easily access the pile. And the blocks were free.
Ready to up your compost game even more? Attach 2 (or 3) more pallets, to make a two-section bin. One side is full, being turned, and will be ready to use on the garden in a few months. The other side is being actively added to, and will take its turn to sit and bake and be used later.
Reducing waste through composting is a small, frugal, but mighty step in the right direction toward sustainable living.
Do you compost?
See my follow-up post “Composting 102: Frequently Asked Questions” here!
For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.
Isaiah 61:11
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