The Compost Pile

I have had several compost piles in the various yards of the houses we've lived in, and I think the one we have here is my favorite. I would show you pictures, but alas, the camera remains in the shop, much to Pip's dismay. She is as lost without a camera as I would be without a way to write.

For its sides, or walls, our compost pile uses some wooden pallets, the side wall of our garage, the existing backyard fence, and a few old fence posts.

The three bin compost pile backs on our garage wall. Where the backyard fence meets the garage wall is the end bin- separating it from the middle bin is a pallet over two fence posts on each side. The middle bin shares one pallet with the first bin.


Here's how we keep it- we save all kitchen waste except meat and dairy scraps- I keep a plastic bucket with a lid on the kitchen counter (other places I have put it under the sink. Into it, I toss coffee grounds, coffee, tea bags, vegetable peelings, moldy bread, slimy lettuce leaves, leftover bits of salad too far gone to use, the remains of dead flowers, sometimes hair from our hair brushes, all kinds of odds and ends, mostly from the kitchen.

I do NOT put the lid all the way on it- that makes it stink*. I just leave the lid loosely over the top, or sometimes put a cloth over the top to keep bugs out, but allow it enough air not to reek. Every day or two that bucket gets emptied into the space between the third pallet and the fence- we'll call that Bin three.

Periodically we toss a shovel full of dirt, old leaves, old stall shavings, or grass clippings loosely over that stuff. When it's gotten pretty full, then we take a shovel and move all of it from bin three into the middle bin, bin two, turning it over as we go, perhaps adding another shovel full of dirt.

We continue adding to the bin 3 from the kitchen bucket- we don't add the kitchen peelings to the stuff in the middle bin.

The next week my 11 12vyear old son goes outside and takes a shovel and turns out the contents from the middle bin into the first, empty bin. Meanwhile, we keep adding new stuff to bin 3. The next week he takes all the stuff in bin one and shovels it back into the middle bin, bin 2, turning it over as he goes. Meanwhile, we keep adding stuff to bin 3.

In a surprisingly short time, I have a bunch of good compost which I promptly and not so promptly use in potting new plants, perking up sad plants, supplementing the sandy soil of our tire retaining wall, and starting another vegetable growing in a five gallon bucket. And then the stuff in bin 3 is read to be moved to the middle bin and the process begins again.

The Key Ingredients for MY Success (You can have a successful compost pile other ways and in less space) :
Three bins- one for constantly adding new materials to, one is always empty, and one has the 'old' compost which is now in the final stages of breaking down. Having an empty bin makes turning over the compost much easier.

Regular turning of the finishing compost. Which leads us to what has been, for me, the spinach for Pop-eye element of successful composting:

An 11 `2 year old boy to turn it over every week.

Linked at Smockity's Frugal Gardening link up

P.S.  *My husband, bless his gift giving heart, thought I'd be pleased with an official white enameled compost bucket It has a charcoal filter in the lid of its pretty white enameled top, and it will never break or leak.  It is also not free, like the cheap plastic buckets we were using.  You could duplicate this frugally, perhaps, by punching holes in the lid of a plastic ice-cream bucket and taping a charcoal filter, or maybe just a coffee filter over the holes, and reinforcing the bottom with duct tape so it won't crack.  But I haven't tried it.  Because I have a pretty white enameled compost bucket with replacement charcoal 
filters.
=)

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