Composting is an excellent way to create nutritious fertilizer for your garden while reducing your family’s landfill contribution. If there’s one negative thing to be said about composting, it’s the work involved in flipping it. A compost tumbler can make this chore easier, and you can even make the contraption yourself!
A compost tumbler does just what you’d expect it to do—it sits on an axis that allows it to rotate and flip the compost without taking it out of the barrel. What makes this so great is that you can turn the compost easily and more often (daily if you want) allowing more oxygen to circulate in the organic material, which helps the material break down much faster than traditional weekly or bi-weekly flipping. With a tumbler, you can have compost in one month instead of four to six.
The simplest compost tumbler you can make at home requires nothing but a sturdy plastic barrel with a tight-fitting lid. Make sure you drill some are some small holes around the outside of the barrel to let insects and air in. As far as tumbling goes, it’s not much fancier than laying the barrel on its side and giving it a good kick to roll it over a few times.
If you’re looking to make a upgraded compost tumbler—something you can show off to the neighbors—you’ll need tools and materials, but it still shouldn’t cost you more than $20.
How to make a compost tumbler:
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