Tag: composter

Compost Bins: Stage Two

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The Stages

Stage One of building the compost bins is complete. That was getting the corrals up.

Stage Two is now complete! I put the fronts on the corrals!

Stage Two++ is in progress which will be using the metal mesh to corral the leaves and hay from blowing all over the yard. I made the sides which will be the depth of the corrals. Now I need to make the back and door. I can do this in the garage since the width is arbitrary to the wood available.

Stage Three will be the top. This is not planned out as well. My ideas are fluctuating. And I’m in no huge hurry. I mean the materials is still decided. But do I really want one huge lid? I don’t know. We shall see.

Saturday Morning

So last we left off, I had the corrals of my compost bins up. But they still needed fronts. So this Saturday, I decided to conquer Stage Two. This was going to involve my first experience with a circular saw, so I knew it was going to be a lot. So I set up camp. All my materials laid out. A chair for rest. An umbrella for sun. And the VIP of the day: my new Worx WX065 Clamping Sawhorses with Bar Clamps.

Seriously: These sawhorses are fucking amazing. How are you suppose to saw shit without the clamps holding it in place? And the saw horses are built to hold and lock-in the clamps, but you can take them off and use them by themselves. You can also take them off to store them — in the built-in slot that holds them. They fold up. They’re light weight. They hold a thousand pounds (together). WTF. These are amazing. Since you have to use two hands to use the circular saw, I don’t even know how I would have done this without these things. They’re the things I didn’t know I desperately needed.

I also used my new circular saw! I’m not great. For some reason, when I get to the very end of the cut, it wants to kick and not finish that bottom corner. I corrected for this by using a piece of scrap wood behind the pieces I needed to cut to cut into, but WTF? I need a class. Anyway — I got set UP and ready to conquer. I even had a ton of drinks in the wagon.

Since sawing things was intimidating, I started with the rebar. I wanted to secure the front of the corrals with rebar in the ground. I didn’t think this would be a difficult task, but it was. I’m not known for my strength. So hammering rebar a foot into clay was more difficult than I expected. It got easier as they got down to a height that was more natural for my arm — but damn. I secured them to each side with some metal straps.

Yeah, they’re real crooked. Don’t judge me. I did this whole project by myself.

Then, I had to embrace cutting wood. So the front of my bins are stacked boards. To secure these boards, I made a little wood I-Beam on the front of each post. So a little 2×2 spacer sandwiched between two 6 inch fence boards. You can see I secured the spacer and backs to the posts first with some 4 inch screws to really get them in there. I also wanted to easily measure how long my horizontal boards needed to be. I expected each bin to need a custom length or there to be longer and shorter lengths on top and bottom. But I was pretty damn square.

Then, it was lunch time.

Saturday Afternoon

After lunch, I needed to put the fronts on my I-Beams and start cutting my horizontal slats. I measured 35 inches from spacer to spacer and 31 inches from inner to inner post. So I made my boards 34 inches. This gives them a whole inch of wiggle room if the walls shift and makes getting them in and out a breeze. But I still have 3 inches to hold them in there, so no need to worry about centering them.

My first test slats: SUCCESS!

Now to cut 13 more.

Look at my happy fronts! There’s tons of wiggle room for boards to curl, but not so much that two boards could slide over each other.

Also, the front posts are taller so I can place a 2×4 across the top of each side and they will cover it. You can see I had one laid on top in an earlier picture when I was measuring how long to cut those.

LOOK! I DID IT!

Fucking beautiful.

Sunday: COMPOST DAY!

So the next day, I built my compost pile. This had the added benefit of raking leaves and pulling vines off my house to use as composting material for the 3 gallons of kitchen waste I’ve accumulated in the fridge waiting on my ass to actually complete this project. Ok, it’s not COMPLETE, but it’s to a functional stage.

I made my pile with marigolds, a fuck ton of lemon grass, vines, and half dead plants for the “greens.” And crusty old lemon grass, leaves, hay, and cardboard for the “browns.”

Don’t worry, the card board was cut up pretty small, see:

I also cut up the vines.

Next Up

I did make the two sides for the browns corral. I can finish it off in the garage and place it out there whenever I get around to it. It’s a very simple frame that I will staple the wire mesh into. The front will be a gate that matches the bins.

Then, eventually, I will make a lid. Or lids. The plan is in flux. Right now, my compost pile just has a big square of cardboard over the top. It’s fine.

Super proud of myself! GO ME!

Compost Bins: Stage One

Posted on | by cursingcats.com | 1 Comment on Compost Bins: Stage One

The Stages

Stage One of building the compost bins is complete. They are standing. There are three corrals. They look great.

Stage Two will be adding the front faces to the corrals — I hope to accomplish that this weekend. All of the materials have been acquired.

Stage Two++ has been added which will be somehow using the metal mesh to corral the leaves and hay from blowing all over the yard. I’ve got ideas. More coming on that later. Maybe I can work on that this weekend too. But it’s not part of Stage 2. It is an additional and optional task.

Stage Three will be the top. This is not planned out as well. I know the roof design. I’ve chosen the materials and the design from a build I like. Now how I attach it… I would love to have someone with more skills and tools help. I will be building the height of the back of the corrals up a slight bit so the lid will slant forward. It will rest on the front with hinges in the back. However, I would absolutely love for some help to build up the sides (inner and outer) to match the angle so that it lays flat on the structure. Not required, but I would like that.

One Stage Down

So I ended up going for a kit. I used two of the “Greens Fence” brand “Composter” kits. They sell these at big homes stores like Home Depot and I scored mine on sale on Wayfair. You can buy them online on their site too. They’re extendable, and customizable.

I assumed I could get someone to build me something for much cheaper. I was very wrong. With inflation — wood prices have skyrocketed. The only compost bins I could find on Marketplace and local sites were really bad and more expensive than the kit. So I drew up this sketch of what I thought I wanted and tossed it out to three local builders to see what they could do. I mean surely if you use pressure treated pine (as opposed to cedar) and don’t use all the fancy dovetail cuts, it will be cheaper right? Here’s what I sent. I did this really quick in Photoshop, but I’m low key proud of extending that picture to three bins.

The closest one guy could get was two bins in pine for that price. Yeah… no. So I ordered the two kits on sale with free shipping. They got here in like three days. I was very excited to put them together but I didn’t. Like this is adult lincoln logs. There is nothing to fix together — just build and go. No nails, screws, or glue needed. Now, I didn’t do it that way, but still.

I just couldn’t get off my ass and do it. This who menopause thing has me napping every damn day and I just haven’t wanted to go out in the hot garage and put this shit together. As much as I want to play with the blocks, I don’t want to. So I just kept watching youtube videos and getting nothing done. Until…

I embraced the fact that it wasn’t happening. Fuck it, I’m in the living room and they will be too. So I decided to build all the sides in the airconditioned living room while watching youtube. And that’s what I did. I put together the four sides in the livingroom. I had little cedar squares cut for the “feet” so there would be slight protection from the ground. I know they will rot eventually, but lets let my feet rot first and give me a chance to replace those before the posts.

FUN TANGENT! One of the reviewers gave it a bad review. They assembled it in the garage and when they went to move it outside, all the bottom pieces fell out. No shit, Sherlock — nothing’s holding it together. People are so stupid.

So I screwed the feet on on the posts and proceeded to build my giant lincoln logs set. One runner, two spacers — repeat. However, I used wood glue. Not just any wood glue, I used Gorilla Brand Wood Glue. As Adam Savage says, wood glue is amazing. It’s one of the only bonds that is strong than the thing it bonds. And from every experience I’ve had with Gorilla Brand — they are just OP. (That’s Over Powered for the nonnerds). Like Gorilla says “hold my beer so I won’t glue it to myself.”

Seriously, I have a sunsail on the side of the house to cover the pool equipment. One anchor pulled out last year and I liquid nailed it in place. It still pulled out. So this year, I bought bigger and deeper anchors to install it. Still pulled out. So I googled what the strongest of the Gorilla Glues was — it’s the Clear Constructions glue. Surprisingly not the regular one — the clear one. I used that shit. That anchor is part of the house now. If you want it down, you will need to replace those bricks. I squeezed it in the holes, put the anchors in, squeezed it in the anchors, gobbed it all over the anchor plate, then screwed it on. It hasn’t moved. It is part of the house now.

So that was actually kinda fun. The middle sections don’t have all their slats, so I used screws to just prop up a spacer where I needed it until the glue hardened. Four sides complete.

I’m also lining this in metal mesh. Did I mention that? Yeah, quarter inch hardware cloth. Like, yes, I’m not an idiot. I know critters will get in. But I don’t have to give them an open invitation. Also, when I turn this shit I don’t want to constantly be raking up everything that fell through the slats. So I went ahead and installed that inside too. I precut the metal mesh in the garage with my dremel and stapled it on in the house. The middle sections have mesh on both sides to keep a little air pocket between the corrals because compost needs air. A tip from another build I stole.

You can see here that I cut the mesh purposefully a bit wide to account for my not putting it on straight. I just used this metal leveler I had handy to bend the mesh into the corners.

I did actually consider building two of the corrals inside and then attaching them with a back wall outside, but they were getting heavy. With the metal mesh, they were a lot heavier. So the backs had to be assembled in the great outdoors. Boooooooooooooo

I actually did another extra step. Again, critters will live in here — but I don’t have to leave the light on. So I trenched a bit around the inner edges and buried some mesh in the dirt a bit and stapled it to the bins. While doing this I totally put all my weight onto one foot to get the trowel in deeper and totally fell in the mud. It’s fine.

Did I bury it deep? No. Don’t I realize they’ll get in anyway? Yes. But I’m not the Super8 Motel OK, I can do what I can.

So then I glued the back slats and spacers in place and rested. Because it is hot outside and there are mosquitos.

Then I came back and stapled all the mesh up onto the sides and the mesh sheet on the back. WHA LA! Each section is a three foot cube. The three bin system has you using the left-most bin constantly for new scraps and waste. You can turn back and forth between two bins until you get some stuff thats mostly composted. Then stuff that’s mostly composted goes into the middle bin and new compost and still big chunks stay in the left bin. Finished compost (and my overwinter dirt storage) goes in the right bin and is ready to use at any time. Since I have the quarter inch mesh, I can make a really big portable mesh screen to just cover the top of that bin with some scrap wood. That will be my filter. FREE SIFTER, BABY.

Coming Soon

So this weekend (hopefully), I will install the fronts. As in the drawing I used to show the wood workers what I want, I’ll be doing slats. This is all real cedar. To make the slat tunnels/holders/sides/whatevers, I bought cedar fence planks. So it’ll be a sandwich of cedar plank, spacer, cedar plank stuck on the front of each post. The fronts themselves will be cut wood. Specifically treated pine fence planks that were dyed to look cedar. Cause, listen, I can more easily replace rotting sliding planks than pieces of the actual unit. Cedar for the bins, pine for the front slats.

I already have the materials and a spiffy new circular saw to get it done!

Oh and I need a browns corral. I already have my hay bale out there ready to get to workin’! And I’ve already notice the wind blow a bit of it around. I’m also going to want to have leaves on hand (and pulled weeds) to add as I add greens. Well, as I’ve already taken the build specifics from a lot of different peoples bins to make my fankenbins — I’m taking another. One guy had a cylinder of wire mesh next to his that he kept his browns in. Wait, I have a fuck ton of wire mesh now. So I’m gonna buy some rebar stakes and make a little square on the side there for me to dump leaves and stuff in for easy access. It won’t be part of the bin system and lid. Just a corral for my browns. I want to put a “door” on it for easy access when it’s low (also because hay will probably be on the bottom and leaves on top and ill want to grab a mix of browns). I’ve got some scrap lumber in the garage, I might try to outline it in lumber and make a little mesh gate door for the front.

Since I bought two composter kits and assembled them in my own fashion, I have a lot of extra slats. I can use some of the extra slats to make the front gate of my browns corral match the sides of the bins perfectly!

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Phase three isn’t on a schedule. If it starts to rain a ton, I can throw a tarp over the active bins. It’s going to get done. But I can start composting this weekend. Not have to wait on the lid.

It Keeps Spiraling

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The BABIES!

If I turn into a crazy plant lady propagating shit to hoard and sell online, this is where it started. Right here.

Look at these little adorable babies. I made these. Free plants. They’re cuttings from my other plants. LITTLE BABIES! On the left, you’ve seen my Fishbone Cactus scrap cuttings. They’re doing well. And on the right we have K’s prayer plant. She requested a cutting of mine. I didn’t want to cut it, but she did cut her Christmas Cactus for me so…

It actually worked out for the better. I had three vines just growing all lopsided and sloppy. I snipped off one vine and made 5 cuttings. Then, I actually staked the other two vines. So my original plant actually looks better than ever! It’s all spread out and just popped out three new leaves! And LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE BABY! So adorable! I love it. I wants to keep it. I don’t need it and I don’t do unglazed terracotta. It’s just adorable. It’s also the only 2 cuttings that rooted. Yeah, this one didn’t take well. I used rooting hormone and everything. 40% survival rating. So I put the two survivors together here.

My little babies!

I actually rooted some of the Christmas Cactus of Friendship for K2 earlier. Now it’s on to the third friend in the chain! All three of those cuttings grew great roots. I watered them last weekend while K2 was on vacation and all three cuttings had baby leaves already! So fun! Baby plants! Free plants!

PUMPKINS!

Also, right on time, Publix has their pumpkins out! So normally I would have bought a few. But I already have my own pumpkin display!

These are the guys that survived the Great Pumpkin Massacre. Obviously squash bugs kicked my ass this year. And there was a huge learning curve. So my harvest wasn’t huge. And then…well, the massacre. That’s why there are so many super teeny tiny white pumpkins. The massacre halted their growth and they tiny. But adorable.

However, three of the vines have started putting out again so I think I’ll get a few more pumpkins! I will do a post at the end of the season and show all of them and everything I got from each vine. Believe me, I’ve taken tons of photos. I love pumpkins (have you seen my tattoo? There’s two main pumpkins, a Jack-O-Lantern lid on my shoulder and a big pumpkin vine on my back)! Lots of lessons learned this year. But to think — this is from SIX PLANTS. Six tiny little seeds. Six seeds made all this! Did it cost more than the Publix pumpkins? Yes. Was it hard? Yes. Did I cry? Yes. Am I so proud? Hell yes. My pumpkin babies! It’s like magic. Like six tiny little seeds in some dirt made all these. Like how? MAGIC IS HOW.

Composting

What else? Oh, I’m going to start composting now. I’ve been toying with the idea this season. Mainly just because of dirt storage. I usually over winter my summer plant dirt in pots or a bag in the garage. But you have to keep that shit watered or it becomes hydrophobic. So you literally have to water dirt. Last year was the first year I’ve ever overwintered plants. I’ll be overwintering my ferns this year and maybe the front porch plants. But I’ll still have a ton of dirt. Those pumpkins are in six 20lb grow bags. And I’m overwintering the lemon grass as rooted cuttings in water. So there’s all the dirt from them too. Dirt is expensive.

(NOTE: On second reading, yall might not know why I store dirt! Ha! Well, dirt is different all over the world. I happen to live where it’s all red clay. Like my outside dirt is red clay. It’s hard and it stains fucking everything. Red clay mud is the devil. So we have to buy our gardening dirt. When we plant flower beds, we buy all that dirt. Like the first time I traveled and saw a bunch of black dirt just on the ground, I was like “that’s a lot of money wasted.” So yeah, we have solid as fuck foundation dirt — but not good for the pretty plants dirt. We buy that shit. And it’s expensive.)

Also, this year I got a real eye opener in good dirt vs bad dirt. I got some super cheap dirt at first so I have a few pots with it. Then I bought two car loads of good dirt for the pumpkins and front porch. So at the plant swap, I picked up 3 miniature sunflowers. I put two on the front porch (in the good dirt pots) and one on the back stoop (in the poor dirt pot where the coleus hasn’t even done well). Holy shit. The sun is about the same. The water is about the same. But DAMN. The ones in the front have had like twenty blooms each. The back — maybe five? And that dirt won’t hold water to save its life. Even the coleus is sad in it.

So I’ve been tossing around the idea of composting. K2 jumped on it like a spider monkey because she wants to stop throwing away her food scraps. So if I compost, she can dump them here. And we have a lot of food scrap too. Come fall, I’m going to have a lot of plant scarp as well. And dirt to store. So… why not compost it? It’s not like I don’t have the ROOM.

So I’ve been learning. I learned it actually required effort, one. I mean I thought shit just rotted in a pile but no, it’s more complex than that. I learned about ratios and that it actually might require watering. Well, I had planned to chunk it in the back of our lot. But if I gotta turn this shit weekly (more like daily if I hot compost)…

In the beginning, I probably will actually hot compost when I clean up the pumpkin vines. Maybe get the yard guy to bag the clippings next cut to get started. And I’m already storing up all the brown packing paper I get for the browns. (Simplest dumb way to hot compost is apparently 50% greens to 50% browns. Stir to aerate daily or you get the sludge of death from too much anaerobic greens). And the browns need enough water to break down because brown cardboard and paper is kinda dry.

So weekly and sometimes daily effort plus water hauling? That’s not going in the back of the lot. I’m not walking all the way back there every day to do manual labor. There’s poison ivy in that grass, on all the trees, and I can’t get near the over growth. So no. It needs to be closer to the house. So I need bins. I need affordable and something husband won’t despise. (Do yall know he’s trying to say I don’t need my fancy pendant grow light for the Great Monstera? Um I do, and I will buy it anyway). So I try not to push him all the time. When it was going in the back of the lot I was gonna throw up some metal panels or something, but closer to the house I don’t want it to look like shit. So I’m doing something like this. I have this drawn up in Photoshop because I was querying local wood makers on prices:

So that design is from a kit I found, and a bunch of ideas from various youtube videos. I think the lids will actually be metal siding/roofing to keep most of the rain out, but obviously it won’t keep all of it out. Or I might still do mesh — not sure. I could even just use an old tarp and stretch it over the wood frame of the lid like a canvas. I have a clever solution for holding and closing the lids that I’ll totally show you. I’ll document my build. The sides will be the wood slats, but I bought 1/4 inch metal hardware cloth to staple all the inside edges. This will help keep the finer bits of compost in while allowing plenty of air. And I’ll do mesh on both sides of the center divider framing so there will be a good 1 inch pocket there — more air.

I really thought I could get someone local to do something cheaper than the kits online. But wood prices have skyrocketed so damn much, it’s just not gonna happen. It’s such a simple design too! The kit has all precut pieces and is expandable I figured local build wouldn’t have to do all those cuts. Wouldn’t need the dividers. Could just screw everything together on site. Nope. No one could come close to matching the kit prices.

So I’m going with the three foot composter from Cedar Wood. Did you know you need at least a 1 meter x 1 meter pile to hot compost? You do. So I’m going to buy two of these kits and bastardize it. I calculated all sorts of ways to do this. One composter plus spare parts (you can buy individual bits on the site). Two composters. A composter plus an HVAC cover. I’ve been mathing. I settled on two composter kits which I will use to create my three bin system with exactly six three-foot lengths of cedar leftover (plus a lot of spacers I won’t need). Those will probably be involved in the lids.

You can buy these kits at Home Depot so I did think to look around the internet for coupons and prices. They’re actually cheaper on almost every other site, including Lowes. But look at you, Wayfair, with the deep cut! I see you! Order placed. It will be here tomorrow.

So tomorrow I will have the kits, my plan, and the mesh. I’m sure that will take me longer than this weekend to get the sides up and the mesh in. The mesh is going to take a long time. The kit should go together nicely. Though I have a few things I want to pick up from Home Depot before I build them. Mainly some over priced prowood to cut squares to sit under the posts. I also need wood to repair the fence that blew down in the storm today anyway…

So I’m, for once, not doing it all at once. I’m going to get the frame up and contemplate the fronts and lids. I’m thinking siding (vinyl or metal?), some sort of plastic? Not sure what I want to use. I’m going to try to use the dovetail cuts in the posts for the fronts but I fear they will be too thin and I’ll need to resort to my diagram of how I would have made them if I didn’t have precut trench in the posts. So I’m gonna build it and see what I’m working with. I’m also going to see what Home Depot has and how much it costs. Because cost matters.

So yeah. I thought I was a farmer growing pumpkins! Now I’m getting into fucking composting. Good lord. Bring your food scraps over, I’ll dump them in my compost. But not yet because like, it’s not done and I don’t have freezer space. I know. I’m sad too. I’m gonna have to toss these rotten bananas. Next time, though, the rotten bananas are compost food!