Build this Easy Composting Bin Made of Hardware Cloth

Adding a composting bin is such an amazing asset to any garden or homestead. There are so many benefits.

One of the biggest of course is to help with the garden. Compost helps you bring in natural nutrients to help enrich your soil. But there are so many other reasons.

Compost help introduces microorganisms such as fungi and bacteria to your soil through decomposing material. I know… we all think these things are what we need to stay away from. We have been brought up thinking of bacteria as bad. But there are beneficial bacterias that are important to the soil’s ecological environment. These bacterias do jobs like fixing your nitrogen for example.

Another benefit to composting is reducing the waste that gets put out for the garbage truck to pick up. This is huge! It helps save on landfill space. And helps from wasting all the amazing goodness that can be giving back to you!

For me personally, I also love the idea of how much money it saves me! Every time you add to your compost bin you are deposing into something that gives you a great return! Let’s face it, stuff is not cheap! Creating your own compost makes amending your beds so cost-efficient.

My first Composting Bin Project

Although I wanted a big and fancy composting system, I didn’t want to sink the money into it just yet. I had just started planting in my yard and I was putting most of my money into the plants. The other part of this is I wasn’t 100% sure if I was going to keep my garden where it was at. My husband had just started talking about wanting to build a shop. And where I had my garden was in the way. So whatever I wanted to build needed to be easily moved.

I decided to get creative. I looked around at what I had available and this is what I came up with… a wire composting bin! Yup! And this system worked perfectly!

I had hardware cloth my husband had already bought to build a rabbit cage. And the zip-ties we keep around for various reasons. It was such an easy and inexpensive idea.

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Materials

Zip-Ties
7′ Long Hardware Cloth (I used 1/4 inch)

Tools

Wire Cutters
Measuring Tape

Building this composting bin is so easy. I rolled out 7 feet of the hardware cloth and using wire cutters I cut the wires using the vertical wires as a guide. Basically, I stayed between the lines as I cut. (Wink)

Once I had the hardware cloth cut I used pulled the edges together to create a circle. I overlapped the edge to where three squares were lined up on top of each other. Then I took the zip-ties and pulled them through the first square, back through the third square, and then pushed the tip of the zip-tie through the hole in the tie and pulled the zip tie tight. I respected this step on the other end and then 3 more times spaced out evenly to close the sides.

Filling The Composting Bins

Once I built them, filling them was easy! I had a ton of leaves. So I filled one up to have all my browns easily accessible. And as I mowed or brought kitchen scraps out to the empty composting bin I would dump in the greens, turn the bin, and top it off with an even mixture of browns and VIOLA! Compost.

If you are new to composting here is a quick and easy chart to see what is considered a Brown and what is Considered a Green to throw in your composting bin.