Tumble Me Some Soil - The Birth of a Compost Tumbler

There is one thing Jared and I often disagree about…it’s my compost pile. It hides behind our garden shed, out of sight from the house, but he just is not a fan of it (which I see his point, it is a pile of rotting organic matter). However I win the argument, because I know how frugal he is and kindly remind him a good bag of compost is about $4.00 so I would be happy to throw it out and drop about $70.00 at Lowes every year on dirt.

Anyway I have been looking at compost tumbler plans for a while because of the *#@#% fireants, however I couldn’t fork over the money to well, make something rot faster. My friend Tiffani had purchased a couple of 55-gallon drums at the local car wash for $10.00 and offered me one. I still had some scrap lumber lying around so I decided if I could build one for under $25.00 I would…and I did!

There are several different plans out there and after some research I did what any good do-it-yourselfer does – scrap the plans and make your own.

I built it over three days (between kids helping, nursing, and everything else, things are slow going around here). Over all time was about five hours.

My goal was to make this a budget project and considering the nature of the project is recycling, I thought it was fitting to use as many recycled materials as possible for construction.

The 4x4 supports were old fence posts we still had from when Ike blew down our fence (they were snapped off at group level so never tall enough to use for anything else) and the 2x4’s were scrap wood we had the around the house. The axle is a 1” metal pipe (gas?) Whatever it was it has been lurking behind my garden shed since we moved in.

The barrel came from the local car wash. I drilled two 1 ¼” holes in it to run the axle through. I cut a 16x12 in door in it with a jigsaw. After some research I decided to go with a 12" piano or contiguous hinge for the door and then three three-inch latches. Because the barrel is plastic I tossed the screws and bolted all the hardware.

One thing I read on several sites was that people got too carried away with the holes so I drilled about 12 1” holes in the barrel. The compost needs oxygen to get the job done; my only concern is I hope bees don’t find it homey.

And that was it; I now have a functioning compost tumbler. I am thrilled how it turned out and even loaded it turns smoothly. A tumbler technically does not make it compost faster, however you are more likely to turn it more often, thus I should have a beautiful fresh hummus about every six weeks. So now every few days I walk out and give it a turn.

I’m happy that I no longer have to deal with fire ants, Jared’s happy the pile of debris will no longer exist and the worms in my garden are happy they won't die from lack of O matter in the soil.