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🌻🍃🍅 No. 10: Compost Bucket Sit Upon 🍃🍓🍃 #100GardenHacks

I am working on a project for the 2017
growing season to work my way through
100 garden hacks*.

Compost Bucket Sit-Upon

With all the soil testing Community Roots has been offering this summer, we've had a chance to test some of our garden plots. While the flood plain sandy loam soil is a great texture, most areas lack organic matter severely, leading to some compaction and hard panning at the surface. The deep mulching we've been doing for over a year, plus cover cropping this autumn and spring (especially if we have another early mild winter) will help address the issue, however half our gardeners removed the deep mulching on their plots and won't benefit as much. 

I wanted to find a way to add organic matter, that was convenient to the garden plot area; our compost pile is a good distance away, particularly given the uneven terrain - the shortest route between plots and pile is not great footing yet. 

I remembered a solution I came up with back in Evanston's James Park Community Garden for composting in a small area, using a 5-gallon bucket to make a miniature in-soil compost bin with a lid that also functioned as a seat.

• bucket with lid
• paint - I used spray paint to make the bucket a dark color to aid heat absorption + old nail polish to decorate (also using a clear finish after painting to help waterproof is a good idea).
• waterproof fabric - oilcloth, vinyl, pet food bag, etc. Enough to cover the lid with overlap to adhere securely to the lid + slack to fill with stuffing.
• pillow stuffing or even an old small pillow
• staple gun or strong adhesive

STEP 1: Drill out bucket bottom

By removing the bottom, you can have the compost feed directly into the garden plot. This way the bucket never really fills to capacity and the contents are connected directly to the soil system (with all it's decomposers and nitrifying bacteria!)

STEP 2: Paint the bucket as needed. I spray painted this one the darkest color we had on hand (normally I go black or darkest brown, but we had a dark navy blue on the shelf already). I also can't go with out fun embellishments so I used my old nail polish supply to decorate. 

STEP 3: As the paint dries, affix the fabric to the seat an opening enough to stuff it. 

 STEP 4: Fill with stuffing. Once full affix the last bit of fabric to seal it all up. 

Once it's all finished you can dig a small hole in the garden and snuggly insert the bottom several inches of the bucket directly into the top layers of your soil. As composted material builds up you can take a shovel and turn it. You can also move the bucket around the garden to kind of inject some composted materials on several places as you need.

You can also use this idea, but keep the bucket bottom intact to hold tools, or for trash, etc. 

🕊, 💌,  🍃 & ⚛
~KF

*101+ Garden Hacks magazine. 2017. Rodale, Inc. 

I found this copy on a CVS magazine stand :)
However, portions of this publication
previously appeared at RodaleOrganicLife.com