That is why before discussing those manufactured aids to composting that can make a consumer of you, I want to inform you that I am a frugal person who shuns unnecessary expenditure. I maintain what seems to me to be a perfect justification for my stinginess: I prefer relative unemployment. Whenever I want to buy something it has become my habit first to ask myself if the desired object could possibly bring me as much pleasure as knowing that I don't have to get up and go to work the next morning. Usually I decide to save the money so I do not have to earn more. En extremis, I repeat the old Yankee marching chant like a mantra: Make do! Wear it out! When it is gone, do without! Bum, Bum! Bum bi Dum! Bum bi di Dum, Bum bi Dum!
So I do not own a shredder/grinder when patience will take its place. I do not buy or make composting containers when a country life style and not conforming to the neatness standards of others makes bins or tumblers unnecessary. However, I do grudgingly accept that others live differently. Let me warn you that my descriptions of composting aids and accessories are probably a little jaundiced. I am doing my best to be fair.
Visual appeal is the primary benefit of making compost in a container. To a tidy, northern European sense of order, any composting structure will be far neater than the raw beauty of a naked heap. Composting container designs may offer additional advantages but no single structure will do everything possible. With an enclosure, it may be possible to heat up a pile smaller than 1' x 4' x 4' because the walls and sometimes the top of the container may be insulating. This is a great advantage to someone with a postage stamp backyard that treasures every square foot. Similarly, wrapping the heap retards moisture loss. Some structures shut out vermin.
On the other hand, structures can make it more difficult to make compost. Using a prefabricated bin can prevent a person from readily turning the heap and can almost force a person to also buy some sort of shredder/chipper to first reduce the size of the material. Also, viewed as a depreciating economic asset with a limited life span, many composting aids cost as much or more money as the value of all the material they can ever turn out. Financial cost relates to ecological cost, so spending money on short-lived plastic or easily rusted metal may negate any environmental benefit gained from recycling yard wastes.
Building Your Own Bin
Probably the best homemade composting design is the multiple bin system where separate compartments facilitate continuous decomposition. Each bin is about four feet on a side and three to four feet tall. Usually, the dividing walls between bins are shared. Always, each bin opens completely at the front. I think the best design has removable slatted separators between a series of four (not three) wooden bins in three declining sizes: two large, one medium-large and one smaller. Alternatively, bins may be constructed of unmortared concrete blocks with removable wooden fronts. Permanently constructed bins of mortared concrete block or wood may have moisture-retentive, rain-protective hinged lids.
There are two workable composting systems that fit these structures. Most composters obtain materials too gradually to make a large heap all at once. In this case my suggestion is the four-bin system, using one large bin as a storage area for dry vegetation. Begin composting in bin two by mixing the dry contents temporarily stored in bin one with kitchen garbage, grass clippings and etc. Once bin two is filled and heating, remove its front slats and the side slats separating it from bin three and turn the pile into bin three, gradually reinserting side slats as bin three is filled. Bin three, being about two-thirds the size of bin two, will be filled to the brim. A new pile can be forming in bin two while bin three is cooking.
