Here we utilise no longer needed wooden scaffold boards to create the perfect companion to our chicken garden homestead!
If you’ve been following our family on instagram @Corporate_Dad, you’ll see that our garden is where we have all the fun.
There’s a slight issue in that the garden being so large, produces a significant amount of garden waste or as I like to call it, natures fuel!
As Monty Don would do we need to ensure we’re using every single resource in our garden to maintain, grow and help thrive in all weathers. This is where a good compost bin would come in handy.
Well, how about two?
Having a good compost bin it’s important to be able to rotate and turn to ensure we’re getting a decent rot throughout and that all of the lovely nutrients, are spread around. So with two, you can do a good turn from one to another, leaving you a fresh batch ready to go.
So here’s how to make two recycled homemade compost bins.
What do you need:
A hand saw or ideally a mitre saw like the one we used. Not only does it speed things up dramatically but you’ll get a square cut. A rubber mallet. You don’t want to split any wood now. Scaffolding boards. The ones used here are 18ft long and I used just under 6 in total for these. 2×2 timber posts. We bought 4 lengths to create 8 posts. 3 Inch decking screws. Approx 72. A power drill/screwdriver for easy and strong fixings. A spade if you need to level the ground. and finally Lots of energy!How do you do it?
Step 1 find yourself some decent scaffolding boards. I looked on gumtree and I found these bad boys. Just under £10 each and they were 13 ft in length. Massive!
Having a timber yard not far away meant that we could pick up some cheap 2×2 for the stakes to put into the ground. You’ll want to sharpen up the ends for easy hammering into the ground.
Using my trusty mitre/chop saw which I love, I divided the board into four which I think was 97.5cm each and cut my first one. I used that to mark out the rest of the boards. Then chop chop!
Now please accept my apologies for my bad drawing but at this point, the rain was coming down and I didn’t have the time to get some snaps.
Hopefully this shows how I constructed the first end panel. Using the top of the stakes as a line, I added the top board first to ensure a level across the top. As I used a chop saw I levelled to the edge as I knew it was bob on.
Two screws in each plank each side you then add the next board down and then the last one. This leaves a nice gap at the bottom to allow us to hammer into the ground.
I hammered into the ground the panel I made as my back of the compost bin. I levelled it up to the fence (With enough room so I could paint both).
You could do this differently but I built it in the ground. So I created another front panel and measuring the distances using another one of the boards on either side for spacing, hammered in the front. You could build independtly and site but it was quite heavy.
As you can see here, there’s three sides done, I was contemplating the third. On the diagram you can see that I’ve screwed the side boards into the stakes in the ground. I thought they would provide me with more security. I could be wrong! Once I made the cube structure, I added two stakes on the opposite side which I screwed into the cube. More screws the better! This allowed me to then add more panels to the front and back after I created another side (like the n shape) which then was screwed together. One thing I haven’t mentioned is the ground wasn’t level. I did dig down along the boards so I didn’t have to dig a full hole and it saved me a lot of time.
With some serious hammering with the mallet, these now make a level and awesome structure to our garden. Total cost is £52.50 for the boards, £5.50 for the screws (I’ve got 100s left), £4 approx for the timber. In total all of this for £62 which I think is an amazing value for something that is going to last us years!]]>
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