New compost bin

It happened that one of my neighbors had a bunch of leaves that were partially composted that he wanted to get rid of. It also happened that I was there while he was talking about this and promptly offered to take them. However my existing compost bin wouldn't hold them. Time for a new one?

I had picked up a fair bit of scrap wood (i.e. discarded bunk bed frames) from the side of the road (free) and this past winter I had demo-ed the cieling in our bathroom which consisted of plaster and lathe. The lathe was good wood so I saved it (Brenna ended up pulling quite a few of the nails for a penny a piece). I also always have scrap wood from previous projects. So, long story short, the compost bin:

The dimensions were largely the result of the available wood and my laziness (why cut when you don't have to). This isn't meant to impress anyone, heck you don't even need a compost bin you can make a pile. The bin just uses the space a bit better and keeps it all together. If you're interested in making a compost bin, start keeping your eye out for scrap lumber. Up here in Maine its fairly common to see stuff on the side of the road and you'll probably be able to amass enough materials in a short time. You can read about optimal sizes and what not, but its just as easy to figure out how much matter you produce that you'll be composting and try estimate a box that will hold a years worth. There are faster ways to compost but this is the simplest and I expect that by next year I'll have some useful material.

Now, there are some considerations. You might notice that the new compost bin is full of carbon-rich materials. Compost is supposed to have a mix of nitrogen and carbon rich materials (as you can read in any site about composting). So what to add? There are a number of nitrogen rich sources that I'm interested in. I'll let you know how it works out in a future post.

NOTE: I really did minimal measuring for this. It looks decent mostly because the wood had aged (old lathe) or it was stained (from bunk bed frame). I largely eyeballed the measurements.