Trash Can Compost Bin

I have to say, I'm one of these people who love compost. Well, I should say I love the results of compost. If you want a beautiful garden, you ought to be taking advantage of the things around your gardener yard. Now let me show you how to create a compost bin. If you've never done this before, it's really a lot easier than you think. What I'm starting out with here is about a 40-to-50-gallon standard trash bin. And it's important that you get one that has a lid where the lids lock, and I'll explain that in just a moment.

Now, what I've done is, I've gone around it, and I've drilled these holes all the way around. I've used a 3/4-inch bit. And here in the top, I've used a 1/2-inch bit. This allows air to circulate through the bin itself. And you can see, I have it sitting on a pair of concrete blocks, again, for air to get inside the compost, which is an important component to making it.

Now, what you want to do is, you want to use green and brown and alternate them. And what I mean by that is green could be any sort of clippings from the garden. It could be scraps from the kitchen. Now, you don't want to put any sort of meat product or cooked vegetables in here, but things like the peelings of apples or carrots -- the tops of carrots, that sort of thing. That qualifies as green. You want to chop it up in tiny pieces and throw it in here with some brown. And the brown could be the leaves that you rake up or straw or anything or pine needles that you have. And so, by layering those, you're adding carbon and a source of nitrogen -- carbon the brown, nitrogen the green. Okay?

So, you start layering it, and then you can turn your compost quite easily. Just by putting the lid on it, locking it down, and rolling it around. Now, you want to make sure that you don't get too much compost in here, and it makes it too difficult for you to move around.

Or you can take a drill with an auger and turn the compost. You want to do that about every two weeks. In about 8 to 12 weeks, depending on what you put in here, you're gonna have some black gold that's gonna make your plants grow like you can't believe.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• green
• brown
• soil
• dirt
• kitchen garden

[Gobi512]

He makes it look very easy however we are still waiting for our compost bin to look like his.

[9raymondo9]

okay, here's what i'm wondering: how long does it take for the compost to complete?

also, during the process of composting, is it okay if i add in more daily organic waste?

[tthoy1]

I have to say this is the clearly the best compost video. Simple and easy to understand. well done thanks for posting it

[chickybumble]

can i put the sawdust/wood shavings i empty out of my rabbit hutch into this?

[meatsys]

Do you need to add water?

[Allen2045]

Thhis can does work. One draw back is turning the compost. It tends to settle down towards the bottom of the bin. Turn it when ever you add anything to it.

[tappakeggaday1]

do you add any worms for the castings to make this a bit better?i was watch some videos about worm casting and it looked like it would be the perfect fertilizer in compost that looked like that you have in there