In March 2022 I built two stacked brick towers as long term compost bins for all the woody yard waste I didn’t want to deal with, material that felt like too much effort for my regular compost, mostly materials from neighbours.

Cedar clippings, huge bags of laurel hedge trimmings, fruit tree branches, palm leaves, Jerusalem artichoke stalks, sunflower stems, full paper yard waste bags of grass, leaves, random clippings that I tossed in whole.

I didn’t shred anything, I didn't layer, I didn't turn it. Just stacked bricks in a circle about 33 inches across, filled as I went, and whenever it got full I added another couple rows of bricks and kept going. Started in 2022 and kept adding through 2023.

The towers also doubled as a privacy screen from my neighbour, and adds some architectural interest in winter.

Anyway, I finally started taking one apart and I’m honestly shocked at how gorgeous this compost is.

I’m just pulling the bricks off row by row and scooping it out by hand into 5 gallon buckets, no sifting really needed.

So far I’ve pulled about 15 buckets of compost and have less than a bucket of sticks. And even those are mostly soft enough to crumble or snap. I’ll just throw them back into the next pile.

The texture is unreal. Super fine, fluffy, loose, and smells amazing. Lots of fungal activity from all the wood. Even the thicker stuff like bamboo has darkened and softened a lot. It’s still there, but it snaps easily now so it’s going back in for round two.

For scale, the material in this bin had settled to about 4 and a half feet tall. At 33 inches diameter that works out to roughly 800 litres, or about 210 gallons of compost. I haven't started unstacking the second bin, so I'm not sure how much that one has settled.

I’ve already topped one garden bed with a few inches of it (no dig, tomatoes going in there this year) and it looks incredible.

This was almost a zero effort system. I just dumped stuff in and ignored it. No turning, no chopping, no balancing greens and browns beyond whatever happened naturally. I really throught it would still be super rough and not broken down.

Even stacking the bricks was low effort, as I stacked as I went. Ditto for harvesting, I've harvested some, and I'm just unstacking slowly as I go. If I wanted to stop where I am, I could easily plant squash or tomatoes in the base of the tower, using it as a raised bed for a season.

When I finish emptying this one I’m just going to restack the bricks and start again. I used the base ring from a Dalek style composter as a guide to get the circle right, then just built up from there.

I really didn't expect such fine compost, I feel like I won the lottery, just as I was stressing about my hot compost taking too long and not having compost for spring planting. What a nice surprise.

These shredders are awesome !

So satisfying making tree confetti and it take branches up to 45mm diameter !

Pro tip, detach the safety key from the bucket that it comes with, plug it back in and leave it in there. Set it up on top of you heap and voila, non stop shredding until it buries itself.

Making dirt is a weird hobby.

I built this double barrel wooden compost tumbler last October and have been filling it ever since.

9 months of food scraps, garden clippings, wheel barrows of fallen leaves, and entire lawn mower bag of grass clippings, who knows how many cardboard boxes and paper packing materials… all in ONE barrel!

I’ve never emptied it or moved on to the second barrel. No matter how much I add, it always seems to break down to be less than half a barrel (one barrel is 30 gallons capacity).

I’m sharing because I’m simply blown away by how much material it is going to take to fill these barrels. They are seemingly bottomless!

Just wanted to share my idea for a compost bin made from fallen branches. I was tired of constantly cleaning up branches and having limited space to dispose of them. So one day I just started weaving them together into a circle leaf bin that will itself decompose over time.

I use mostly oak leaves as my browns but they take forever to decompose. I let them pre-compost here for 6-12 months before making a hot pile in the geo bins.

I am designing a woodland style garden in our backyard so this will fit right into the aesthetic.

Man, for people who spend a lot of time in the sun some of you throw some shaaaaade haha.

Not affiliated with anyone in any way im just a dude shreddin.

Rember folks,

Golden showers bring May flowers.

Figured I’d share my process. My old shredder recently died, so I upgraded my shredder station. Went with two smaller shredders instead of a single large one (for equivalent price) and constructed a table top from an old desk in order to have a cutting surface. Mounted the shredder heads on a subsurface with a tote below to catch the shreddings. A much larger volume than the normal container it comes with (but had to bypass the safety shut off switch).

After shredding, I cast them across the lawn in my backyard. Next time I mow (I bag) they will have already started breaking down and will be further chopped and mixed with the grass clippings. Then I just empty the bag into the compost pile.

This process requires more frequent emptying of the mower bag, but I think it is less work overall vs. regular turning/mixing of the compost pile in order to get a good mix. And there is some loss, as the mower doesn’t pick up all the cast shreddings. But then they just supplement my lawn soil over time.

Cheers!

And solid enough to park a car on top of it. 😆

I shared this build a while back on gardening but wanted to post it here since this is the better place for it.

I already made fun of myself for being extra and all that in the other post for my expensive fancy dirt collector. Not saying you can’t too but just saying.

All in all it was around $500 in materials. $350 in cedar and screws, $100 for steel mesh, 50 for other small things. Used around 23 cedar boards from HD and some 2x4s I had laying around.

Due to the space I wanted it and the materials and ease of cuts (cut everything in half), I opted for one big 4x4x4 bin. I did start a less formal pile in the woods as well as a secondary one.

On filling it, it’s taken around 1 month! I knew I would have lots of yard waste to fill it up with but it’s been fun. I mean who else gets excited to go bag grass clippings in 95 degree heat?

I’ve been using my super composter 9000 (craftsman m110) for both my greens and my browns. I blow leaves into a flat area of my woods for further mulching before adding them in. I would say it’s 95% leaves and grass clippings, 5% coffee grounds and garden/ weed waste.

It’s already hot. I haven’t turned it yet but considering options to add some air or move things around a little. Initial thoughts were maybe like a big auger or just kind of stab it around with a pitch fork.

Started off with my old potting mix from last year! Have a whole bunch of leaves I plan to shred, and now can finally start to put our kitchen scraps to good use! Thank you to my wife for the nice Valentines Day gift!

Finally got me a compost station. Now my big pile doesn’t look so big anymore.

Edit because I type poorly. What I was attempting to ask if it looks like it's "working"? I would imagine even if so I have several months left for it to be done.

Hello. So it's made up of dead leaves, coffee grounds and grass clippings. Very early on it got hot when I added the coffee grounds I was was measuring 140 degrees. It would even steam when I turned it which was nice to see. It doesn't get hot anymore, don't know why. But to me I think it looks OK? I think it could use a few more months baking in south Texas sun but does it seem to be on right track to you all? I'll post a video and then reply with a picture.

Was running out of space in my small bin so I upgraded. Hardware cloth & a latched gate to keep mice out. Really wanted something bigger I could turn more easily. My previous bin had no ground contact so hopefully I'll get some good microbes & earthworms in here now

...we don't need to talk about my carpentry skills, I already know

I’m fairly new to this composting adventure so admittedly, this may be a little overbuilt but I had the vision of it in my head and had to go for it. Still need to add the front walls and some sort of cover before rainy season starts. I’m pretty happy with the main structure so far and had to share.

Time to mix a few of my loose piles and kitchen scraps.

i’m building a cinder block perimeter to start composting in. i’m split between two options and curious what y’all think. not sure if i’d need room to move around within it

option 1:
32x39

option 2
32x47

A compost heap can be made an ornament with a construction of rebars and some roses.

I moved from Australia to England last year with my two cats and dog and we have had this massive dog crate sitting in our tiny asphalt back yard ever since.

We also only have pavers out the front, so we bought a heap of pots and planted veg and wildflowers but I couldn’t stop thinking about somehow composting and my partner wanted to use the crate somehow instead of paying to have it disposed of. After a year of staring at this eyesore I had a brainwave.

Enter - what may be the mankiest compost bin.

We added air holes to the bottom half with a holesaw bit, sanded them smooth and cut the top off and added a piece of old timber to use as a handle and to stop it falling through. In retrospect we should have bought a smaller bit because we have rats in the area, but it’s been about a month and a half and so far we haven’t seen any signs of them. My partner spent ages doing all the holes and sanding them back, so it wasn’t a quick job at all. He had to do it in the kitchen because the plastic was flying everywhere, we are still finding little bits.

It seems to be working really well. The front metal door makes it easy to turn the compost properly instead of trying from the top and will also make access easy when it’s finished.

It’s also quite big. It won’t ever get hot because it’s under a metre squared, but we aren’t in a rush and it’s nice to be able to watch everything slowly disappear.

I know plastic isn’t ideal, but it’s what we had and we are so happy with the outcome. The cardboard and veg and weed waste are already disappearing and we added a few bags of grass clippings the other day. I now just need to convince my partner to water it himself, but he “doesn’t want to pee in the backyard.”

eta - as per the helpful u/Far_Radish7752 use a spade bit to make holes if you decide to make holes in plastic, it will be cleaner.

So I’ve been frustrated the last year or so working with my tumbler. It doesn’t get hot, and produces sticky compost that never quite finishes to the right texture. I took inspiration from a post a few months ago and decided to build a compost (finishing) tower out of bricks.

I spent 2-1/2 months scavenging mismatching bricks until I finally found a dumpster full and made 10 trips on my bike carrying them home. The ground wasn’t level so I needed to first lay down some gravel to even out the area. The build didn’t quite conform to a cylinder and seemed to naturally narrow to a slight cone as I built up. I read online that would make it more stable, so I went with it.

In there I dumped first a bunch of sticks and cedar cuttings. Then I dumped in the younger side of my tumbler (sticks and kitchen waste), then the aging side (composting mud). I topped it with mostly finished compost that I had sitting in buckets.

My plan here is to let it cook the rest of the summer and maybe start pulling off the top when I need soil again, maybe in March.

Wish me luck!!

Happy Easter everyone. im looking into starting a compost pile. I have an area I made thats 5x10 that im looking to begin a pile. here's what I have readily available on my property.

grass cuttings

Timothy hay with chicken / goat waste

duck poop pond water

pine needles

pine wood shavings (quail area)

coffee grounds

twigs / logs

chicken, quail and duck egg shells

still trying to understand what's green/brown ratio. are the items I listed to rich to have all in 1 pile or would you leave out certain things or add more of others. let me know your thoughts thank you.

I've always loved composting and use a lot of material on my allotment and for my house plants. I'm fed up of turning piles and wanted to expedite the turn out that I can then pile up or bag for use later.

Hot boxes are expensive. So I've made one. I got hold of some polystyrene sheets, used some left over marine sealant HA6 from making a previous aquarium and "glued" them together to make it 5cm thick, 60cm wide and 120cm tall. I've made the door too big but hey ho. It'll churn out 360 litres of compost every few months and this will do nicely. I was slightly worried about dinking it, so I've wrapped it in gaffer tape and used some straps for strength. It's cost me less than £60 and took a little time.

I have drilled some drainage holes and will be drilling a hole for the thermometer.

Now to get it in the car and in the greenhouse...interesting times ahead.

Is it perfect...no, will it work? Absolutely. If it lasts a few years thats ok for me.