anyone want to share experience with compost tumblers?

I am wanting to try compost tumblers. I want to make my own but after looking around and seeing how much they cost and the reviews, I don't know if it would be any better than a compost pile. What materials do you prefer the tumblers to be made of?

You might want to check the soil and composting threads with this question. Lots of discussion on different composting methods and composters.

DH just built me a simple bin with chicken wire and left over wood. :) I just dump anything and everything in it! HA HA HA

Well I have checked. To me it's not very helpful. Chicken wire huh? Does it hold the waste pretty well? Sounds like a good idea since it gets the airflow.

I've thought of using oil drums (burned out) or something like it, but I don't want it to rust out after a few years. Plastic to me just doesn't seem like it would hold up to the weather. I do have lots of wood for a base or something.

Yep, just plain ole chicken wire. :) He just drove some wood steaks in the ground and stapled the wire to it. We just started throwing everything in it! :) I don't go out on a regular basis to turn it or anything either.

oh. How long have you been doing this?

Well mine is made out of recycled pallets. Here's picture, the bags of leaves have since been moved. It's raining or I'd try and get a more recent picture.

Rain? What's that? LOL! Does this system work well for you? How do you keep the compost cooking in the dead of winter? I think I will just stick with my pile since in the summer, everything decomposes pretty fast. I might get a garbage can to roll around, but that sounds like too much hassel.

I see I need to get a better picture, sheesh, sorry. Got no problem with it cooking all year long. Right now it's loosely covered with a tarp. We just added a pickup load of cow poo about a week ago and turned it again. She's working nicely.

We just started ours the beginning of Fall, but it is doing what it is suppose to do, without all the work! :)

Composting is not real difficult, just take a little patience and paying attention to what your putting into it. The finally product is well worth the effort. I haven't bought commercial fertilizer for my garden in years. I occasionally splurge on osmocote for my roses, but that's it.

I bought my osmocote on clearance for almost nothing, I was so lucky! :)

Boy howdy, it's expensive but worth it. Great for my hybrid teas, they sometimes need a little more "boost".

I think I gave just over 2 bucks for a good size bottle, so I thought I done pretty well. :)

if i can find it i will send a link about a way i like to do this. but i don't have a homeowner's assoc. and it might be against the rules. but to start a new flower bed... i put down huge sheets of cardboard. then i alternate with leaves, hay, manure.....lasagna gardening. but i leave it for a time to give the earthworms a chance to work the soil underneath. does any one know which forum that was on?

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/800670/

here it is. see what you think.

Crap! I was just there mamajack. Sorry I can't remember. I saw a better pic of your bins on a different thread and it does look ideal. I guess patience is the key huh. I am just mostly concerned with it not getting hot enough to kill the bad stuff. I don't have a problem with my pile smelling bad or getting in a yucky state when it gets too wet in the winter. In the summer I cover it with black tarp. Should I do that in the winter as well? I didn't because it needs water anyway and what's the point of covering a pile when the snow will just be too deep to bother with until it melts some.

Misty, you thief, you stole that bottle! Take that bad boy and run!!!

Weedsfree, you bin should never smell bad or get yucky! You never add dairy or fat to the pile, ever. A working pile gets hot and you can see the steam rolling of it. If you want an easier way, try a biostack, they are the most highly recommended by all the DGers who have the bins. They are stackables and easy to work with.

Oh, I ran hard! LOL But I wish I had grabbed more cause now they're all gone!

whichever way you go weeds, it's just going to take some time. i had to get a large vat that i filled with water to keep my leaves wet the years of the drought. before that i had leaves that were still leaves after 2 seasons.

over on the compost forum you ought to be able to find a list of what everyone puts in their compost piles. but mostly nothing animal or fat. except for egg shells. and i wouldn't worry about a compost pile getting hot enough. if it is kept damp from time to time it will get hot.

Many types of leaves will work better if you shred them up first, leaves from some trees can take a really long time to decompose if you leave them whole, but if you shred them up they decompose a lot quicker (I have a leaf blower that reverses to a vacuum and has a shredding blade, others put the leaves in a trash can and have at them with the weed whacker)

I never have put in dairy, meat, sugar, oil or anything made with them. Except bread. I have put stale wheat bread in my pile. I have done some investigating of the biostack today. It seems like a good idea. You just transfer the stuff on the trays down to the bottom gradually, right? There really doesn't seem to be a general concensus on which is better. It sounds to me that it is based upon how much work people want to put into making their compost. I think I will try the lasagna gardening this spring and see how that goes for a year. All hail princess Tammy! I think you got a really good deal on the osmocote. However you spell it. I also put lint in my pile. Egg shells decompose slowly but that is alright. I use those too. I don't have a chance for leaves in my corner of the neighborhood. I was thinking of taking up the idea I read about today of asking around my neighborhood for their leaves. I use grass. Though I am picky. It can't have weeds in it. Thanks all. I have learned a lot from you!

Glad everyone was able to help you out! :)

On the chopping up of the weeds. When I used to garden in a small area I would just use the lawn mower with the bagger attached to it to pickup the leaves. Then when I dumped them in the compose pile they were already to go, worked real well. Also didn't have to handle the leaves twice.

ecrane, how much for a blower with a shredding blade? i gotta have one.

I bought mine several years ago so I don't remember exactly how much it was but it wasn't over $100. I got the cheapest electric blower/vac/shredder that Home Depot had.

Yea! a composting question... Mmmmm

I thought I'd share a composter we made when we lived in the city several years ago. It was simply a big plastic garbage can. I put in a layer of garden soil and then whatever vegetable scraps I had. Every time I put scraps in, I'd throw in another shovel of garden dirt. If you keep the lid on you have to water it once in a while too.

Now, it didn't take long at all for stuff to pretty much rot down. To get at the bottom where the most rotted compost was, I cut a kind of "doggie door" flap that lifted up and I could get a shovel in and take a few scoops. I used this mainly for digging into the garden as it wasn't totally rotted down. It was a great way to compost in the city where we had to worry about critters getting into it. Never had a problem. Best, it was pretty much a free composter because it was just an old can we didn't use anymore. Also, I always had a place to put all those vegetable scraps! I couldn't stand putting them in the trash!

Weeds - watch the lint - a lot of clothes are made of synthetic petroleum-based material - best lint is just from pure cotton, wool, linen or other natural fibers.

May you have wonderful great rotten stuff!

I read this forum after you mentioned, that I should be careful about lint, compstR. I promptly went and removed the lint.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/442645/

Thanks.

well that was an eye opener weeds.

sure was!

Barb, I had years too where it took my pile 2 years to turn. I think it was the drought. I water my pile, but probably not enough.

I've been using a big Rubbermaid bin for years. It never turned very fast because it was so hard for me to turn it. Last summer, I switched from that to smaller garbage bins, and they're a lot easier (for me) to handle. When it's time to turn them, I just duct-tape them and roll them around. When one is full, I start a new one. Since the cans fill up faster, the pile gets to sit sooner without new additions, so it's finished faster. I have a lot less sifting to do. And it's easier to get the right proportion of greens and browns.

I'm doing lasagna gardening this year too. My cardboard and leaves aren't turning as fast as I'd hoped. But I have heard that, since it's cold composting, you can plant directly into a lasagna bed without having to worry about heat. I've been trying that out. Found lots of earthworms. So far, so good.

I am reading a book on lasagna gardening and they say to do just that. As the layers decompose, you have the nutrients the plants need. Then in the fall you could just rotter till the lasagna mess in the dirt and start all over in the spring. I think though, there are a couple of ways to do it.

i started a very large bed last spring. it is looking very good with all the rain that texas has gotten. i wish i had done the whole yard but who knew it was going to rain this much. lol

Just so, mamajack. We need a better long range weather forecaster...........LOL

that's for sure doccat. and while i got you on the line, so to speak, doccat, are you a real virginian? and if you are do you remember the old southern saying.....pure d or pure t? used like ...he is full of pure d meanness..
or pure t meanness? my question is did virginians say t or d? don't try to make sense of this just answer the question, please. lol.

Well, I've lived here over 30 years so I think that makes a Virginian. LOL And yes, people here do say that. Using d. LOL I take a lot of teasing from friends and relatives still back in Nebraska for any accent which has changed. LOL And NE such a great place to be from! LOL

are you sure it's a D? apparently eastern seaboard southerners say T and i figured virginia would too. the plot thickens.

and before the 30 years where did you live? lol.

Well, I went to school in MN for five years then went back to NE. Met the DH when he got out of Nam and got married. He couldn't find work back there, but he'd been stationed in VA and had connections here. He got a good job offer, so we packed it up, lock, stock and tommy hawk and moved out here. I love the area. Normally we have fairly mild winters, compared to MN this is tropical.......LOL

i bet that's right. what is minn. like zone 4 or is it 3? hurts me just to think about it. lol.