One Hundred Dollars a Month

One of our favorite readers, Lisa from Tasmania has shared an awesome post with us yet again. Normally she sends over stories and pictures from her life in Australia. She’s shared amazing pictures of her garden and even a yummy apple recipe. This time she’s walking us through a DIY Composting Bin that she made on the cheap. Thanks again for sharing, Lisa!

Hi Mavis!

Hope you are enjoying your new food freedom and some hot weather! Its a little icy out today, despite the blue skies! Can you believe its mid-winter here and I just picked some fresh tomatoes out of the hothouse?? Its not artificially heated either. I just left one of the tomato plants in there to do what it wanted. We still have potatoes in the pantry from last season, fresh broccoli and carrots (and beef from my cousins farm too!)

Anyway, its all about the compost today!

We FINALLY got around to building the first bay of our compost areas. We had a compost area that was very half-hearted and the chickens were getting into it, and we weren’t getting good use of it. Having seen some examples of nice big bay areas, I wanted to copy and get it into our yard. Our materials weren’t expensive – we pick up pallets here and there for free and use them where needed and a while ago we picked up a lot of usable tin sheeting from the tip shop (the dump) for I think $40.

Like Mavis, I enjoy seeing my husband get out the power tools and do useful stuff!! We are kind of the “Dodgy Brothers” of building things, but mostly stuff works out okay, even if it isn’t a work of art! We cut the pallets off to the height of the tin to make things easier and simply screwed them together. We set it up on the front lawn to see how it would go before dragging it down to the veggie garden area to set up.
We had to dig into the ground to level it off a bit, but we weren’t too fussy about being millimeter precise (after all it’s a compost bin not a jewelry box!)

There was a small hiatus in production when we had to rescue some fool who got himself stuck on top of the chicken coop, but apart from that it all went together pretty well.

Then on to google to see what to put in it. We covered the base with cardboard, which of course will break down, and stuck roughly to the “One third green, two thirds brown” idea.
We had plenty of chicken poo hay from the chicken coop and we bought a small garden shredder to break down garden scraps so the process speeds up. (Wicked fun using it!) We mulched all the dahlias and just pruned the apple trees which all added to the compost bin. I have also bulked it up with a bit of seaweed, layered it all in and mixed it up.
It’s so wonderful to come back and stir it up and see steam rising!!! I tried to get a photo of that but… doesn’t really show, but the heat in there already is fabulous!

We need to do at least another bay (maybe two) and I have been offered a bucket of compost worms so they can get in there and do their bit for the greater garden good! It’s a few months before our spring and I am really hoping by then I will have some gorgeous usable compost ready to go. Not having done this before it’s all a bit of an experiment, but I am pretty optimistic!

Of course I have snuck in a beach photo I took the other day which I thought was pretty for a winter’s day!

Have a lovely day!
Cheers,
Lisa