When I started my vegetable garden this spring, I moved my compost heap surrounded by chicken wire to make room for more veggies... but there wasn't a great place to relocate my compost heap. The other spaces in my backyard are the grassy play area and a cement bike riding area. The best composter for these spaces is probably one of the more contained and covered options such as the big barrel that uses the sun's heat to help decomposition and a crank handle to keep air circulating. I didn't have one handy, but I did find some black plastic pots that plants had come in... and discovered a "Make-Do Composter." One pot is slightly bigger than the other so they fit together pretty nicely. See picture below. So far, it has worked great. It gets warm in the sun and I flip it once in a while to keep the air circulating. They have some holes on the bottom so rain water doesn't collect and animals haven't been interested in it yet. We mostly deal with squirrels, who get plenty of interesting finds out of our trash cans, so I can imagine a more determined or desperate animal might get into this Make-Do Composter. I was prepared to try duct tape if my squirrels got interested. Recently, I upgraded to 2 giant pots that some big shrubs came in. Now I have plenty of space for my kitchen scraps and the compost is starting to look pretty good!
That's a great idea--I need to come up with a better plan than what I'm doing now. I like this idea of grabbing big pots that are sitting around anyway. I'll be digging in the shed tomorrow!
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