Compost bins come in a myriad of styles from many suppliers but most if not all suffer from at least one problem, size. Yet a compost bin is not hard to make. A bit of time spent in the shop or garden can solve a lot of frustration from happening.

If you like to just pile up organic material and let it sit for a year or two as you wait for compost to happen, almost any commercial bin will work. However, if you have even a modest garden the difficulty with most commercial bins will become quickly obvious. There is just not enough room to handle a year's supply of plant material from the garden let alone the leaves and other debris that most yards will produce or for that matter the kitchen leavings that quickly accumulate. For most commercial dealers in compost bins the solution is Clear; they would love to sell you a lot more bins.

Better is to make your own, especially if you like to make quick compost. A good system is to make three bins, either separate or connected. That way one can be set aside for compost to work, another for collecting material and the third to hold the finished compost until you get it to the garden.

Cold or slow composters will quickly learn that it takes a while for the process to work, typically three years for the bottom of the pile to thoroughly break down while the top will look pretty much the same as when it was added to the pile. Those top six inches or so act as a weather cover that keep in the active fungi, bacteria and insects that do such great work for us. The first year one bin gets filled; the second year sees the first bin work while the second gets filled; and the third year allows the first bin to finish while the second waits and the last accumulates organic matter.

Year four is the year for use to really start. Bin one has the top layer scraped off to find the finished black gold underneath. All that composted organic matter goes off the garden while the scrapings get tossed to the top of the third bin. Now bin three is the collecting bin and the process goes on.

Hot composters will do the same process with a wrinkle, they toss the pile. Bin one fills and then is tossed into bin two while new material goes into bin one. Three or four days later bin two gets tossed into three and a few days later gets tossed back and so on it goes. Amazingly, after five or six tossings the pile will be finished compost depending upon climate and material mix and so on. In other words a hot composter trades work for time. In order for this to work the compost bins must hold at least a cubic yard of material, more than most commercial rigs will accommodate.

In both cases at least three bins of a cubic yard or larger are the ticket. These can easily be made of wood, stone, brick or other material depending upon your preference. Homemade compost bins like this will allow you to produce lots of compost in your preferred fashion with little frustration and a lot of satisfaction.