Making LOADS of Compost in A SMALL Garden

I've learnt so much from Garden Youtubers about composting but it took me a while to adapt their principles to a small space.

I couldn't figure out a way to make hot compost with the limited materials I had without spending a bunch of money on a Hotbin.

This method is easily the cheapest way to get a hot composter because it doesn't cost anything. That's a hard price to beat to be honest.

[terriblejustawful]

"Rather than give you the food bloggers long ass history and introduction to my family, I just..." i automatically stopped watching the preview while scrolling through my feed, clicked on the video, and subscribed to the channel. Thank you for not wasting our time with information we didn't come for and don't want.

[lyndaturner]

It’s nice to hear someone talking about small gardens with a few raised beds for veg growing rather than huge commercial growers

[Peoplespilates]

Hello! I'm from India. I have a tiny garden, I use my brown dry leaves, sticks, Green leaves, food scraps and kitchen waste. I collect the dry sticks, dry leaves, green leaves, in separate piles in a space hidden between my trees and garden wall. Not easily viewed.
I then use either my pots or containers that I'm going to plant in or the biggest bags I get from the supermarket. The pots are easy, you have drainage holes, place the sticks at the bottom with dry leaves.
Add kitchen waste, green leaves and cover with dry leaves. As you get more kitchen waste, make another layer. Keep going till you're at the top of the pot and you have no more space. Move the pot to a place that needs fertilizer, like next to a rose bush and water regularly. In a few weeks, you can begin planting in the pot. I never buy soil or fertilizer and always run out of kitchen waste!!! My garden and flowers are blooming.
No turning, touching, fiddling. If you have rodents. Use a metal mesh cover for the pots and also for the bags.
Bags have to be enclosed in a mesh box. I make wire mesh barrels for my bags.

[kathrynletchford]

So glad someone has actually said the words. There is no secret recipe to composting.
I live in sub tropical Queensland Australia.
I have bought multiple Gedeye Composting bins, from the Hardware stores.
I literally throw in whatever i have. Seedy weeds, old hay, chook poop, etc.
You can buy a huge contraption that looks like a cork screw that you can turn the compost with, whilst in the bins.
I have 10 bins on the go.
When one is full i leave it to cook in the sun, and fill the next one, etc.
I grow great vegetables with my compost.

[lifestapestry]

So refreshing to find someone succinct. Too many You Tubers waffle for 10 mins before geting to what you want...the facts.... I find lawn mowing the leaves with the grass expodites your comnpost as it will chop it up into smaller pieces.

[gardeningwithkay]

I also do small scale composting. And I just use my garden to put all my kitchen waste and cardboard and I just leave it there like forever. I also like your relaxed attitude of no rules. I see too many of this big YouTubers rabbiting on about rules and ratios. It eventually comes out nice ❤

[joshjosh]

I liked your expression "I'm not baking a cake" about the portions of materials in the compost, really agreed. Thanks from JPN!

[ambersnyder]

I use a large cardboard box to build my pile, then as it breaks down, i get another box and move things over into it, adding the old box as a brown material.

[ThevegGrowerpodcast]

Very much enjoyed this video and as a fridge engineer by day the use of a fridge is very appealing. Only thing I would say is that fridges contain refrigerants that can be harmful to the environment so I would encourage getting the gas removed first, otherwise a slip of the fork could go through the evaporator. As I say this is with my refrigeration engineer hat on.

[kelleclark]

I scored an old truck topper from a neighbor for free...flipped it over and drilled MANY holes in bottom and along the sides...filled 1/2 with the usual layers (leaves, kitchen scraps, garden debris)...covered with a layer of thick cardboard weighted down with a few bricks. It gets pretty hot during early fall, but as it cools I add some aged rabbit/chicken manure and hubbies urine during my weekly flip to the other side. So far so good...smells earthy and looks about 1/2 done in just 2 months. Many tomato and cucumber seeds sprouted in the beginning, but now I know they're gone :) I should have plenty of compost come spring!

[spinningweb]

I live in tropical area. I have 3 thirty litres terracotta pots in my balcony. I throw in all my kitchen waste (including unwanted fish, meat parts and food leftovers, used paper bags/towels etc), vegetable and fruit waste, then cover with 1 inch of garden soil every few days to prevent any fruit flies larve from hatching. It takes about 1 month to fill up the pot. Then i move to the next pot and so on. It takes less than 2 months for the kitchen waste to fully compost if it is kept moist. The compost is filled with worms, millepedes, bettles (probably from the initial garden soil) that feeds on the kitchen waste. I never ran out of space using the 3 pots as the waste compact quite fast. I can easily add additional pots or change to bigger capacity pots if my family generate more waste in the future. There is no smell if you do not add large quantity of starchy food. If there is smell, u can get rid of the smell easily by topping up with cardboard paper, dried leaves or more compost. Once the compost is ready, leave some for covering the waste in the current pot and rest for your garden. The compost is filled with mircrobes and insects that can speed up the compost process. Generally, bettles eat meat and dead plants while worms and millepedes eats fruits and vegetables. Their population fluctuate depending on the amount of kitchen waste.

If you are preparing a new pot for planting, fill the bottom with a thin layer of compost, then fill with waste and top up with 4 inches of compost. Let it rest for 2 weeks and it should be ready for planting as kitchen waste in a small pot generally do not generate alot of heat.

[klee]

18Nov2023: Wonderful, I am going outside to flip a dead mini-freezer on its side right now and start using this method. I have been You-Tubing learning about gardening for the past 2+ years and until now, I had not found a composting method that I could afford, spare my upper body arthritic joints from lifting with pitchforks, utilize adding small amounts of "browns and greens" as they become available from a one-person household and most of all, keep the composting products protected from my 4 dogs and the rabbits and coyotes that are always sniffing and digging around for food without having to build Another fenced in area on my property (20 acres in the Northern Chihuahua Desert in Luna County, New Mexico, Zone 8a/USA). I send you a giant cyber hug and kiss for offering this idea to the world. If there is anything else that I should do to the freezer besides removing the shelves and tipping it on the side so that the door sits on the top aspect of it, Please feel free to advise me. Subscribed and Thank you.

[hargravegas]

Thanks for the ‘Fridge’ suggestion, I’ve used plastic Daleks but they don’t keep heat in, so really like that idea

[FarmLifeHomesteader]

This video completely changed my perspective on composting! I never knew how possible it was to produce such a large amount of compost in a small garden. The tips and tricks were incredibly helpful, particularly the parts about optimizing for space. I can already see how applying these methods can improve the quality of my soil. Can't wait to start implementing these strategies and watch my garden thrive. You've earned a new subscriber today!

[ebradley]

Like to see what people are doing on a small scale. I have an average sized urban lot that I share with 3 pups who need room to run around. I compost kitchen and garden waste in old garbage bins with lids on top and holes in the bottom. When I toss in green stuff I grab a couple handfuls of brown stuff from a neighbouring bin and toss it in on top. Periodically I mix everything with a compost turner. Don't worry about temperatures but I live in a climate of blistering summers and mild winters. If I want it to heat up just toss in something sweet/carby to feed the bacteria and give it a turn. Some people will add some water with molasses to give it a kick start. When I let the compost rest to finish off worms inevitably move in from the ground underneath to help out. Have to say I also make leaf mould, have a separate worm bin for castings and a wood chipper. Pretty well have a zero waste yard.

[masterbodytech]

You won me over by getting to the point my friend. Thank you for that.

[rayglover]

Just started composting last 2 years (belatedly in my 64th year !) in tandem with growing veg and finding it all interesting and rewarding. Annoyed with myself I never started sooner - although we have always enjoyed our small garden, growing flowers and herbs. Glad I just stumbled across your channel - enjoyed your 'realistic' small garden approach and look forward to getting tips in the future. Just to add that we have built a raised bed 10 x 6 (from scrap wood)and planted with toms and french beans(much better than runners) - also getting my head around potash - wow! - potash apparently is the derivative of Potasium. When making your own it is best to use the branches and twigs - they contain most potasium and magnesium - also getting my head around the benefits of charcoal. Interesting fact ;- Did you know that the charcoal from the Alder Buckthorn is used to make gunpowder ? Powerful stuff - and this is the species of shrub that the Brimstone butterfly live off in both caterpillar form and the flowers of this shrub feed the adult butterfly.

[dereknash]

I have an extremely small mainly flower garden with one 9’x4’ veg bed, plus some 30 ltr buckets for growing potatoes in. Due to lack of space last May I started to fill a 120 litre heavy duty green plastic type garden waste bag with a mixture of greens & browns mainly grass clippings, de heading of flowers, tops from potatoes etc, with cardboard broken into small pieces plus some horse bedding from a bale I purchased to add a top mulch on the potato buckets. No food waste as I did not want to attract vermin. Turning the previous layer with a hand fork every time I added a new layer. Early this month I decided to turn the whole bag into a new one and was surprised to find that at least 100 litres of the bag was perfectly usable compost, of which I have added 20 litres to each of 5 x 30 litre buckets which already contained 10 litres each of compost from this years potato harvest. Will leave them until next spring for my next planting of potatoes.
This month I have emptied all the flower beds and pots of bedding plants, cut down all the dahlias to ground level, plus garden leaves and now have 2x120 litre bags full of mixed green & brown garden waste, which I will turn next spring. Have subscribed.

[InspirationSessions]

Love the lack of nonsense, so true that many of the most inspiring gardeners on here are also working on what's essentially an industrial scale compared with the average plot. The fridge idea is brilliant although I personally like the Ecomax-style bins so worms etc can gain direct access from below. You've inspired me to finally buy a cheap compost thermometer, though.

[wendychandler]

The f/f idea appeals to me not just for the heat but to keep out unwanted wildlife - some of which don't always stay wild!Really helpful video thank you.