Aimless Tangents

With the weather warming up and lots of people getting out to work in their yards, usually generating a lot of very nice green and brown waste, I thought it was timely to repost my no-cost pallet compost bin.  Enjoy!

I’ve wanted a compost bin for a while now. The willow tree in our back yard sheds leaves like you wouldn’t believe. And as I hate bagging leaves it seemed like a good idea to have a place to rake to so that they may decompose into something the plants will love. Thanks to the price of the tumbling compost bins, or even the free standing ones, or even the kits I started scrounging for more economical ideas. Preferably free ones.

A while back I conned a friend into going and picking up some free pallets for me in his truck, he was bribed with food. I had intended to use the pallets as building materials for things around the house. Then I found some pictures of pallet compost bins. After rummaging through my supplies I realized I had three pallets that would work. Their tops had relatively closely spaced slats; so that the compost wouldn’t pour out of the confines.

More importantly I had one that had ends like this (with an overhang):

And two like this (flush ends):

I started off by using my wonderful squeeze clamps to hold one of the flush ended pallets to the top of the overhanging pallet:

Close-up of the corner:

I put a few outdoor screws through the overhanging pallet into the side support of the flush ended pallet. With that I done I had this:

I repeated the process on the other side with the remaining flush ended pallet. Complete with the backyard neighbor’s dog barking at me non-stop.

And I ended up with this:

In the end I’m very pleased. I’ve managed to keep some pallets out of a landfill as well as get a practically free compost bin. Thanks to the rain in this area since I’ve completed the bin I haven’t had a chance to rake leaves and grass clippings into it. The weather is supposed to improve over this coming week so it will get filled relatively soon.

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