Need to start composting. See lots of cool and useful design ideas on the web. Hard to just pick one, and I don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Want to hear from arfcom what works well.

Wanting to end up with 2x 55gal drums to be able to have a ready-bin and an in-progress bin.

Ideally you will have 3. At least I have 3. 1 to put stuff in, one to break down, one to take from. but depending on how you do it you can get away with 2. I just don't want to take compost out of a bin that I recently put chicken manure in.

How big is your place? I'm planning on building 3 pits out of pallets similar to a mini silage bunk that I can get my little tractor into to flip every week or so.

Right now, I just have 3 boxes I made out of pallets Screw 4 pallets together, and you got a composter.

My wife and I started planning for Spring. It'll be our first attempt at gardening together, here in this place. She knows some things, I don't know much.

Read some about composting, watched some vids. Pinterest has a ton of DIY bins and such. I'll probably do pallets as well, at least to start.

My question is how do you know how much compost you'll need? In order to plan for the right size. I'm thinking 3x3x3 just because I have no frame of reference.

Will post pics when built.

The answer is "more". A better question will be how much compost can you generate. Food scraps only go so far. My chicken manure goes pretty good, but I only fill half a pallet bin with it about 2x a year when I clean out the coop.

Yeah, good point. My neighbor has a giant tree full of leaves that will be coming down soon. There's grass clippings. Be a lot of random soil after we do some hardscaping. I figure that and some cardboard should cover the "brown" element. Might have to solicit other people's kitchen scrap.

Any other tips to fill a bin before Spring?

When I set up my compost bin, it was really easy to spend hundreds on bins or tumblers. To me that defeats the purpose. Might as well buy soil from a garden center.
Ended up with one of these bins. It works alright. I mostly fill it in the fall with leaves and grass, use the resulting product in the spring when I’m planting the garden.
https://www.menards.com/main/outdoors/gardening/raised-garden-beds-composters/keter-reg-e-composter-120-gallon-compost-bin/17186362/p-1444436707394.htm

Pallet bin. Just three regular pallets bracketed for back and sides, then a couple upright 1"x for slat tracks. Only two slats that fit yet, and want to make a plexiglass lid in place of the pallet I stacked on top.

Lined the inside with cardboard that I punched a bunch of holes in. Laid down kitchen scraps, shredded leaves and crabapple in alternating layers. Only about 1/4 full so far.
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