Last year I made two home-made compost bins out of old Rubbermaid containers. The original post about these bins can be found here.
While those compost bins worked pretty well, they didn’t work quick enough (for my liking) or net enough of the much-needed end product. With so many landscape beds in rough shape I can use all of the good organic matter I can get. I prefer to make my own.
With all of the yard debris, trimmings, and kitchen scraps the capacity of the old compost bins quickly maxed out. The also took a little fine tuning to keep them mixed, aerated and not ‘stinking’. I still have them around, even though they haven’t made any progress since the temperatures dropped last fall.
After a lot of research and consideration of various compost bin designs and options, several weeks ago I opted to purchase a professionally manufactured compost tumbler.
I bought the Lifetime 60021 75-Gallon Compost Tumbler.
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This thing is huge, but AWESOME! It’s a free-standing tumbler that’s about the size of a clothes dryer tumbler. It ‘s made of super-sturdy double walled molded plastic, has a large removable door, good aeration build into the panels and through the metal aeration tube in the middle, and a super sturdy metal frame with locking pin to keep the tumbler steady in the filling or emptying positions.
Considering how I’ve got it loaded over 50% full, it is quite easy to turn.
I’ve had it for several weeks now and continue to add nearly every kind of compostable material around the house and landscape- coffee grounds, kitchen veggie scraps, egg shells, chipped up ornamental grasses and tree trimmings, leaves, old container soil, spring-cleanup debris from the various beds, etc.
The tumbler is making compost at record speed, especially considering it’s only been sunny and warm for the last week or so. I can’t wait for this load to finish so I can re-fill it with the contents of Compost Bins 1.0.
