Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (34 page)

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A Compost Bin Made of Shipping Pallets

PREPARATION:
1-2 hours

Composting is the ultimate form of recycling, so shouldn’t the container used for composting also be made from reclaimed materials? One of the most ubiquitous castoffs in our cities is the humble wooden pallet. It takes just a few minutes to hook together a few pallets to make a phenomenal compost bin.

YOU’LL NEED

• 3 wooden shipping pallets
  ^A
  , all the same size (Find them behind stores.)
  
• Attachment hardware: your choice of screws, nails, bolts, twist-ties, or wire
  
• Scavenged boards to act as slats for the front of the composter
  ^B
  (2x6s, 2x8s, etc.), at least 3 feet in length
  
• 12 to 16 total feet of 2x4 lumber
  ^C
  (You can piece together scraps, if necessary.)
  
• Chicken wire, hardware cloth, and/or flattened cardboard boxes (optional)
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Choose a level site, preferably on soil and in the shade. Orient the back pallet of the compost bin with the slats running vertically and on the inside of the bin. Attach the side pallets of the compost bin to the back pallet with the slats running horizontally and also facing in. Alternating the orientation of the slats makes the bin stronger and gives you a nailing surface on the front. Connect all three pallets at their corners with screws, bolts, nails, twist-ties, or wire. Predrill the holes if you are using screws or bolts, as pallet wood splits easily.

The front of the bin can be left open, but it’s neater to place slats across the front. The slats also allow you to build a taller pile. By using stacking slats, you can add or remove slats to access the pile at different heights. Most pallets measure 3 feet across, but some don’t, so measure the width of the front of your bin. Cut three or four lengths of sturdy 2x6 (or wider) lumber to the width of the bin to serve as slats. How many lengths you cut depends on how wide the individual slats happen to be, but most likely four slats will do to close the front of the bin.

Make guides for the front slats by cutting four pieces of 2x4 lumber to 48 inches (or whatever the height of your shipping pallet happens to be). Using nails or screws, attach two 2x4s to the inside of the bin and two more to the outside of the bin. See the illustration on the opposite page for their orientation. Slide the slats horizontally between the guides.

Line the walls of the bin with the chicken wire or hardware cloth to critter-proof it and hold in loose materials. To help retain moisture in dry climates, line the bin with cardboard: Flatten cardboard boxes around the inside walls as you fill the bin. Depending on your climate, you may want to improvise a cover for the bin. We’ve used both cardboard and plastic tarps as covers to keep out rain and retain moisture.

VARIATIONS

Add two more pallets to one side of this bin to form a two-bin system. Add two more pallets to the opposite side to form a three-bin system. Having multiple bins makes it easier to turn the pile.

With a two-bin system, you just need one set of front slats. To turn the pile, you transfer the front slats to the next bin as you fill it. You can then turn the pile back and forth between the two bins as often as you like, transferring the slats as you shovel.

With a three-bin system, you start out building compost in one end, turn into the next, and then let it finish in the third and last bin. After you turn your initial pile into the middle bin, you can add new compost to the end to start a compost assembly line.

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Slow Compost

PREPARATION:
15 min

WAITING:
1 year

If you only have one compost pile, make it a slow pile. This sort of composting is best suited for dealing with day-to-day green waste, like your kitchen scraps and garden trimmings. It’s built slowly, over months.

YOU’LL NEED

• A compost bin (see ideas below).
  
• A
  source of “brown” matter for cover, such as straw, dead leaves, or dried grass clippings. These things can be kept in a bag or container near the bin.
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

CHOOSE A BIN

What kind of bin you choose depends on how much green waste you expect to generate. A slow pile can be kept in a smaller bin than a fast pile, though in general, the more mass you accumulate, the better. You don’t need any fancy gizmos to compost, just a sturdy container. Many cities give away compost bins or sell them at reduced rates, so you may want to start your search by checking with your city’s recycling program or waste management agency. You could also use a large garbage can. Just cut the bottom out or put many holes in the bottom, so that worms can come and go, and punch the sides full of airholes. The more holes, the better. Or build a bin from discarded shipping pallets, as described in Project 57. If your bin doesn’t have a lid, you will want to improvise one with a tarp or a board. While it is possible to keep a lidless bin, lids help retain even moisture levels in the pile, and discourage visits from critters.

FILL THE BIN

Place your bin on soil, not concrete. Always start a new bin by putting down a 4- to 6-inch layer of straw or twigs in the bottom to help with airflow. Then all you have to do is add kitchen scraps and yard trimmings as they appear. Almost anything from your kitchen can go into the pile. Some people compost nearly everything. We avoid foods that are greasy, salty, or milky, and we never compost fish or meat so the pile doesn’t attract vermin or develop odd smells. Everything coming out of your kitchen is guaranteed to be nitrogen rich, whether it be coffee grounds or carrot tops. This nitrogen-rich matter must be balanced with carbon materials. So when you put down kitchen scraps, bury them under a layer of dry, carbon-rich matter, like dead leaves or dried grass clippings or straw. This not only balances the nitrogen but it prevents bad smells and insect infestations. Always cover fresh material with dry material (balancing fire with earth), and your compost pile will be well on its way.

Don’t forget the other two elements, though: air and water. Compost must be moist but not soggy. Depending on your climate, your bin, and the types of materials you’re composting, you may have to water the pile now and then to keep it from drying out. Air is provided both by the addition of dry matter, which breaks up the density of wet, decomposing materials, and by ventilation in the bin itself. If your compost pile is perennially soggy, add more dry matter and poke more holes in your bin.

Once in a while, add a thin layer of garden soil to the top of the pile to inoculate it with beneficial organisms.

WAIT UNTIL IT’S FINISHED

Keep building until you reach the top of your container. If you’re only adding kitchen scraps and trimmings from a small garden, this will take a long time, because the pile shrinks as the material decomposes. Once it’s completely full, stop adding materials and let it sit for about a year to cure. In the meanwhile, start a new pile. During that waiting period, you don’t have to do much. You don’t have to turn it, but doing so will accelerate the composting process slightly and allow you to adjust moisture levels in the pile. Add water if it looks like it’s drying out. When it looks like soil, it’s ready to use.

As you can see, this is a slow system—thus the name. Yet it’s a simple, effortless way to recycle kitchen waste and garden trimmings. If you produce very little green waste, you may wish to use a worm bin instead (Project 61), which will make castings of your scraps in a just a couple of months. If you want lots of compost in a hurry, you should build a fast pile, as described in the next project.

SIFTING COMPOST

All compost benefits from sifting. When your compost is finished, meaning you can’t recognize most of the source material anymore, run it though a sifter to remove twigs and random pieces of matter that haven’t broken down yet, like stubborn orange peels. Small quantities of compost can be sifted through a kitchen strainer. For larger amounts, use a piece of ½-inch hardware cloth or chicken wire. Have someone hold it and shake while you shovel the compost on top of it. If you feel ambitious, you can staple the wire to a wooden frame or the bottom of a shallow box. For instance, you could take out the bottom of an old desk drawer and staple screening material to it. Save all the chunks that don’t make it through the screen and put them back in the bin.

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Fast Compost

PREPARATION:
30+ min

WAITING:
2+ months

Use this method when you want a lot of compost in a short period of time. A fast pile is built all at once with preassembled materials. The mass of the pile in combination with the aeration provided by regular turning breaks down organic matter quickly.

YOU’LL NEED

• Compost bin at least 1 cubic yard in size. We recommend our shipping pallet bin (Project 57).
  
• Big pile of green matter. This could be cuttings from your garden, green plants of any sort, green lawn trimmings, weeds, anything that doesn’t have a woody stem. When we don’t have much green matter at hand, we go to the farmers’ market at closing time and collect boxes of vegetable trimmings and discards.
  
• Big pile of dry, carbon-rich material, like dead leaves, straw, or dried grass clippings
  
• About a gallon of good soil from your garden
  
• Water source—hose or bucket
  
• Shovel and/or pitchfork
  
• Compost thermometer. You’ll probably have to order one by mail. It’s a thermometer with an extralong probe. In hot composting, it’s critical to monitor the interior temperature of the pile.
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

1.
Set up your bin over soil, not concrete, so that earthworms and beneficial microbes can migrate up from the ground.

2.
Gather all the materials for your pile. At a minimum, you will need enough material to build a pile 1 cubic yard in size, larger in cold climates. Mass is important for the bacteria to build up heat. Once the pile is assembled, you won’t add anything else unless you need to correct for an imbalance.

3.
Chop the green materials as finely as you can. We do this with a machete and shovel. The more finely chopped this material, the faster the composting process will happen.

4.
Begin assembling the pile by putting down a 3- to 4-inch layer of dry bulky material such as straw or chopped-up branches. This loose layer will help oxygen (your “air” element) reach up into the pile.

5.
Add a 6-inch layer of green plant material.

6.
Top with a light covering of soil from your garden. The soil layer will act as a compost “inoculant” to jump-start the pile with microorganisms. Carefully moisten each layer in the pile with water as you go—not too much. If you squeeze some of the material and water comes out, you’ve added too much.

7.
Next, add a 4- to 6-inch layer of brown, carbon-rich materials. Top with a light covering of soil. Add water to moisten the dry materials.

8.
Keep building, repeating steps 5 through 7, until you have a pile that is at least 3 feet high. When you’re done, top with a thin layer of soil. Keep the pile covered. The contents should be moist at all times, but not soggy. If your bin doesn’t have a lid, put a tarp over it.

9.
Within 1 to 2 days, the pile should start to heat up. Check the temperature with your compost thermometer. You want the pile to get into the thermophilic range—between 113° and 158°F. If, after a few days, the pile fails to heat up, the odds are it needs more nitrogen-containing materials. Turn the pile and add more “fire”—that is, shovel the contents out and replace them in the bin, mixing in more green matter, or manure.

A pile that gets over 160°F needs to be cooled down. To do this, you turn it and add more carbon or “earth.” If at any time the pile smells rotten or like pickles, the odds are it has gone anaerobic because it either contains too much green stuff or too much water. Mix in bulking materials like straw to aerate the pile.

10.
Commence regular turning. If you turned the pile every day, you could, theoretically, have usable compost within 2 weeks. We think you get better compost by letting nature work her magic more slowly. Monitor the temperature. If it dips below 110°F, definitely turn the pile. When you turn, try to move the materials on the outside of the pile into the center. We’ve found that weekly turning yields finished compost within a couple months. It’s also okay not to turn at all, but the pile will need to sit for at least 6 months.

When is compost ready? When it has cooled to ambient temperatures and the materials you put in are no longer recognizable. It should be as dark as coffee grounds and have a nice earthy smell. If your compost is not moving in this direction after a couple of months, evaluate the pile’s condition. Is it too dry? Too wet? Is there enough green material to heat it up? You may have to adjust the ingredients, as in Step 9, and wait a little longer. Remember, no matter what, it will decompose eventually. Do be patient and let it finish. You never want to add unfinished compost to the garden, because soil microbes will use nitrogen to digest the unfinished compost. In so doing, they will steal that nitrogen from your plants.

Finally, sift your finished compost. Once it is sifted, rake a few inches worth into the top of a depleted raised bed or use it to improve compact soil—see Project 47. Topdress around established plants or trees. Or use it to make your own planting mix by combining it in equal parts with good soil from your garden.