A Video of Me and My Compost Bin Construction Assembly Projects

So when it comes to the compost bin in my garden, I tend to be pretty practical. I mean, it's something to hold rotting vegetation - how fancy do you need?

Here's my take on this kind of thing. You can see the video below that shows you how I made my main bin. It's a square made from four old skids I salvaged from the free area behind a big-box lumberyard so the price is right. A few coat hangers got it all hung together and the front is set to be able to remove and swing easily.

In answer to your questions - nope, I don't dig and turn the material in the bin (too lazy).

I'll fill up this one and then build another one right beside it. Fill that up and build a third. I do fill up one a year between the kitchen and the garden trimmings.

In the spring of year four (with three full bins - one from each of the preceding three years) I'll empty the finished material from bin one first thing in the spring of year 4.

Yes, there will be unfinished compost in this fancy compost bin but the material that doesn't compost (mostly on the top) will be laid on the bottom of the bin and covered over with the clippings from year four. In this way, I have a no-work compost system that spans 3 years and I only clean out one bin a year.

That compost is mostly used to make compost tea or to be worked into those new garden areas that need this kind of material.

And no, I don't depend on compost for all my organic matter. I have far too many gardens and far too little compost for that. I tend to use peat moss to top up the organic matter in my gardens (and yes, I understand there's a politically correct alternative but I live in Canada and our bogs are regenerating faster than we harvest it.)

A Low-Cost Compost Bin

Compost Drum Kit

This second video shows me putting together the compost drum kit This kind of compost bin system makes excellent compost but you have to follow directions closely and carefully. The first year I tried it, I didn't get the green to brown ration right and wound up with a mess.

The second year I got it done better and made some pretty good stuff.

This compost bin is a lot nicer looking - check out this rotating compost bin to see if it fits into your garden thinking

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May 18, 2013

A LOT of Plant Reviews Coming

Friends - in the next week, I'll be adding upwards of 25 new posts about review plants in the garden. So you'll get a lot of email updates about them - my apologies. What I do is post how-to-grow information about each plant - and then as the season and trials get underway, I make ongoing notes about them.

This system also allows you to comment on these plants if you've grown them or are growing them. It becomes a review partnership between us all to get the best sense of these new plants.

And as they bloom and grow, I'll be adding pics to each post.

This is the best way I can devise for getting good info about each plant to you as I see it happening. But it does mean a ton of email over the next week or so as I add them to the garden.

Thanks for your patience - let the planting begin. :-)

Continue reading "A LOT of Plant Reviews Coming"