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How to Build a Homemade Compost Bin
The Best Bin EVER!
Best Homemade Compost Bin EVER!Stacking Tiers Make Turning Easy
This homemade compost bin is by far and away the most practical, easy to build, easy to turn, easy to move, easy to work with, fastest-breakdown compost bin I've ever used. I love this design so much that I have built many of them in different places over the years: for Naropa University, for a homestead in Montana, for a community garden in Boulder. Some things you just can't buy. This bin truly is the best compost bin ever, and I’ve tried them all.
How My Homemade Compost Bin Works
When you stack one tier on top of the next, they nestle onto one another and kind of "lock" together, while leaving a nice 1 1/2" gap between tiers around the sides for good aeration.
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But the real brilliance of this design is that when you go to turn the compost, you simply lift off the top tier and set it on the ground next to the bin, and then start forking the compost over into it. As the pile in the original bin gets lower, you move over the next tier, and fork some more compost over, and then move the next tier, etc. As the pile on original side gets lower and lower, the new one gets higher and higher, until the whole pile is moved over, fluffed and inverted, right next to where you started.
The other thing that makes it easy is that you're not having to reach over the edge and down into the bin to reach the compost. For a short person like me who couldn't reach if they wanted to, or a tall person who doesn't like having to reach way over, this compost bin saves your back.
It's this ease of turning the contents that makes this homemade compost bin the hands-down winner, because the more frequently you turn, aerate, and check moisture levels in your "cooking" compost, the faster it will turn into the crumbly, earthy, rich, finished product that works wonders on your soil.
Click here or on the "Free Plans" box above to be taken to the plans and the construction instructions.
(Unless you want to take it apart, in which case you would have to find some deconstruction instructions...)
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Thirty-five years ago when I started vegetable gardening, I also decided to make a homemade compost bin, and settled on this cool design for a 55 gallon compost tumbler. (HINT: this was NOT the Best Homemade Compost Bin Ever…)
I spent about a week on the project, using an empty plastic phosphoric
acid drum (with lid) that I got, believe it or not, from the local
Coca-Cola bottling company for free. I drilled a hole in each end for an
axle made of steel pipe, and rigged up an elaborate bearing system on
2x4s. I cut out a little door with a saber saw and fastened it back on
with hinges and a clasp.
It worked… sort of. The compost hung up on the axle, the thing weighed a ton when only a quarter full, and it became one of those “it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time” projects. I gave it to the community garden.
I tried several other homemade compost bin designs, most of them from the old 1960 edition of the Rodale Book of Composting, until I finally hit on this one.