Composting for Beginners + How to Build a 3 Bin Compost System

Picture it: you had a crazy busy week, you had just gone grocery shopping last week, you go to open your refrigerator after things finally calm down…and the peaches you bought are all moldy. Such a bummer to have to throw them away! 

But do you really have to throw them away? Our mindset around food waste has changed since incorporating a compost system into our little urban homestead. Instead of beating ourselves up about the wasted food and money, we remind ourselves that we can turn this rotten food into beautiful compost, to then nourish the plants we grow that in turn, feed us. 

Composting is a great way to help close the loop of needlessly throwing items in the landfill. Most landfills are so anaerobic (meaning they lack oxygen), that even if you threw a peach away, it would be years before it sufficiently broke down. The landfill is quite literally devoid of life. 

Having the ability to compost has been a way to allow us to feel better about food spoiling before we can use it. We know that it will break down and feed the soil. Plus, not having to buy good quality, organic compost every spring is SUCH a relief on the wallet! 

What Makes Something ‘Compostable”?

Any organic material is compostable. Inorganic materials are not. Some things you can compost include, but are not limited to the following:

When beginning your compost journey, I often advise folks to avoid adding any meat, dairy or processed foods to their pile. The pile is likely not active (or hot) enough to properly break these items down efficiently. We made this mistake once early in our composting days, by throwing a piece of meat in the pile. All it did was attract wildlife and stink for a good couple weeks!

Getting the Balance Right

Composting isn’t quite as simple as throwing your unwanted food scraps in a pile and waiting for it to turn into black gold. I wish. It’s still incredibly easy once you find the right balance of green to brown materials. The infographic above does a good job exemplifying what materials are green (nitrogen heavy) versus brown (carbon heavy). Those mixed with oxygen and enough moisture create a good environment for microbes and buggies to start breaking your pile down.

There are a couple ways you can tell if your compost is off-balanced. The main one? It stinks. You might also notice an increase of flies hanging out nearby. This is a good way to know that you have an excess of nitrogen, or green, materials. Add some more brown materials and give it a good mix.

Your materials look dry and unchanged even after a lot of time? It might be too carbon heavy, or brown material heavy. So, the opposite problem as above. Mixing in a bit of water each time you stir the pile will help you out with this problem, too.

Let’s discuss a few ways you can get started composting and then go over our homemade compost bin system. 

Can I Compost Indoors?

You may be quick to assume that if you live in an apartment or a home with a very small outdoor footprint, that you do not possibly have room to compost your kitchen scraps. But let me tell you that this is a great big world of possibilities and so many innovative solutions! There are quite a few options for small-space composting, including counter top composters, bokashi bins (worm composting) and tumbler composters that stay off of the ground. There are small set-ups that you can fit under your sink. There are many different designs out there to fit a plethora of different needs. 

A Typical Compost Setup

For ease of access, I’m going to talk about a ‘typical’ compost system today, in the form of a bin or a pile that is outdoors on the ground. We can touch on the other alternatives that I mentioned above in separate posts in order to do them justice.

To get started composting, you truly don’t even need to set anything up. It can be as simple as a pile in your yard, or digging a hole in the ground. If you want to start out this way, I do have a few pointers for you. In order to prevent wildlife or wandering neighborhood dogs from picking through your pile, it may behoove you to cover it in some way. But with a pile, you have a very easy-to-access way to dispose of your food waste from any side. 

You can go a step further and rig up a vertical ‘tower’ type system like this. This is how we first began composting once we lived in a home with a garden. It was easy to dump things in and let them decompose over time. The downside to this system is that there is really no easy way to access and turn the materials in the bottom of the tower. While it is not necessary to turn compost, it is recommended in order to allow oxygen to flow through the bottom materials. 

The next step up in my eyes is a rubbermaid tub system. When we first moved into our current home 4 years ago, we had no idea where we wanted our permanent compost bins to be located in our yard. I wanted to make a temporary system that I could easily move if I needed to, without spending a fortune on a fancy tumbler system.

How to set up a quick rubbermaid tub compost bin:

Grab an old rubbermaid tub (with a lid) that you aren’t using, and don’t plan on using for anything else ever again. You’re going to be drilling holes in it. I used our Ryobi drill and a large drill bit to give it holes all over – top, bottom and sides. To promote more airflow in the bottom of the bin, I propped the bin off the ground a bit using a few bricks. Plus, this allows you to put something underneath to catch any liquid that falls out.

Start your bin by placing dry, brown materials in the bottom. Every time you add green materials, be sure to throw a handful of browns in. Keep the lid on. You can stir it if you want to speed the process along.

If you are ready to build yourself a permanent system, an affordable way to get started is to make it out of pallets. *A note on pallet wood: If you want to use your compost to eventually feed your vegetable and fruit plants (plants that will eventually feed you), it is important to make sure they are heat treated. The way to know if a pallet is heat treated is to look for a black HT stamp somewhere on the boards. Don’t see a stamp? Skip it, better safe than sorry.

For a pallet setup, you can simply prop three pallets up on their ends and connect them to each other to make a three-sided area. Nice and easy!

Once we determined where our compost system would be, we utilized some scrap wood and hardware cloth we had leftover from building our chicken coop. We wanted to build a three-bin system, one where we could have a bin that we actively add scraps to, one bin that is curing, and another that could either store finished compost or materials such as leaves and sticks. We also built a sifter that doubles as a lid to keep neighborhood animals out. 

Here is a photo of our newly constructed bins. We ultimately settled on 3 bins with a bonus one to the side for dried leaves. The frame was connected using a kreg jig to make pocket holes (we use this jig for everything). On the back and on the inside walls, various sizes of plywood are attached with gaps in between. On those gaps, we added hardware cloth to promote airflow, and to also keep the scraps from falling out everywhere. On the front, we have scrap lengths of plywood that we add as we fill the bins. Then once the compost is ready to be used, the plywood on the front is unhooked and the compost tumbles out.

Just like I mentioned above when starting a rubbermaid tub bin, we started out compost piles by layering the bottoms with brown, dry materials. Then we welcomed any and all kitchen scraps from friends and neighbors! We have three mature ash trees that provide us with plenty of dried leaves for the year, so we rarely have to hunt for brown materials.

Once you get your first whiff of fresh, finished compost, you will be hooked. No joke, it smells so good when it is ready to be added to your garden. The time it takes to break down varies a lot based on many factors, including temperature, moisture levels, size and type of materials…so I cannot give you a timeframe to expect finished compost. But I can tell you that we usually get a couple wheelbarrows full a couple times a year with our system!

Are you an avid composter already? Just thinking about jumping in? Let me know in the comments below, I love ‘meeting’ you all and hearing your homesteading goals and dreams!

Happy growing (and composting!),

Becca

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