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Home » Video » P. Allen Smith's Garden Home | Trash Can Compost Bin

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  • P. Allen Smith's Garden Home

P. Allen Smith's Garden Home | Trash Can Compost Bin | PBS

Duration: 02:30
Program: P. Allen Smith's Garden Home

I have to say, I'm one of these people who love compost. Well, I should say I love the results of compost. If you want a beautiful garden, you ought to be taking advantage of the things around your gardener yard.

Now let me show you how to create a compost bin. If you've never done this before, it's really a lot easier than you think. What I'm starting out with here is about a 40-to-50-gallon standard trash bin. And it's important that you get one that has a lid where the lids lock, and I'll explain that in just a moment.

Now, what I've done is, I've gone around it, and I've drilled these holes all the way around. I've used a 3/4-inch bit. And here in the top, I've used a 1/2-inch bit. This allows air to circulate through the bin itself. And you can see, I have it sitting on a pair of concrete blocks, again, for air to get inside the compost, which is an important component to making it.

Now, what you want to do is, you want to use green and brown and alternate them. And what I mean by that is green could be any sort of clippings from the garden. It could be scraps from the kitchen.

Now, you don't want to put any sort of meat product or cooked vegetables in here, but things like the peelings of apples or carrots -- the tops of carrots, that sort of thing. That qualifies as green. You want to chop it up in tiny pieces and throw it in here with some brown. And the brown could be the leaves that you rake up or straw or anything or pine needles that you have.

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Post Date: June 2, 2010