Pallet Compost Bin | Sprouting Off

I try to be frugal in the garden.  Ok, I’m downright cheap at times.  I take home car loads of nearly dead plants from The Nursery.  I’ve repurposed a fence from The Nursery into a Winter vegetable storage box, a chicken coop, raised beds and a light fixture.  I think I may finally be out of fence boards, but I single handedly kept those out of the landfill.  When Travis took out the path to his own chicken coop two years ago I snagged all of the bricks and my husband built me a patio in front of my green house.  I painted my plastic patio chairs just so I didn’t have to throw them away.  You get the picture.

Every garden needs a compost bin.  When you have a chicken coop 2 compost bins are even better.  Combine my need for a larger compost bin, my frugality and pinterest and you have my FREE! compost bin.

I built my original bin 2 years ago and it has served me well.  I’m a lazy composter so it hasn’t fully made useable compost, but it’s getting there.  This year the bin needed an expansion but my problem was I didn’t have enough space.  Here is the original bin:

Oh, I didn’t mention… my bin is made out of pallets.  To the left of the bin was a 5′x5′ raised bed that wasn’t practical and had the worst soil (again, cheap so I bought topsoil… so dumb).  The bed had to go so I repurposed the boards to a bed in the front yard and spread the soil around to fill in the divots.  Once the bed was removed I could add on.  I picked up 2 pallets at The Nursery (I still need a 3rd, but we were out).  I stood them on end with the top of the pallet facing out and screwed them together (with random screws I found in the garage).

Then I took the door off of the existing bin (which is held on with a bungee cord) and shoveled the top layer into the new bin to allow the old compost to finish.

The hot mess in front of the bins is because I let the chickies have at the bugs and other goodness in there.  Grinnin’ the anti-social chicken thought it was fantastic.

Ha! Fluffy chicken butt!

I’ll eventually get a door for the new compartment, but for now the chickens can earn their keep and do some turning.  It took me about 5 minutes to put the whole thing together and didn’t cost me a penny.