hi welcome back to garden ninja today
i'm going to be showing you how you can
make your own compost bins out of these
pallets! It's really easy to do it
means you'll have amazing compost for
all over your garden which will benefit
your soil your plants is super easy and
free so come on let's get cracking! So
here I am with the main component of the
compost bins, pallets. Now pallets
come in a whole variety of different sizes
the most important thing is to make sure
that they are certified not to contain any
nasty treatments creosote or toxins that
could leach into the compost cause your
harm so go somewhere reputable, ask
have they been certified and have they been heat treated.
Now most decent pallet stockists
will have done that. So here I am now I've bought
rather strange sized pallets, usually
they come in sizes of a 1m to 1.2 meters
square these are 1.4 meter
pallets the reason I've done that is
I want to get maximum capacity out of
these bins so I've gone for quite a broad pallets. So we're
going to do now start building first
compost bin now I'm going to make three
today we're going to be next to each
other. So I've got my palettes got my gloves I've
got my steel toe-caps boots on I'm ready
to rock and roll so come on let's get
palleting! so you're going to need a few
key bits of equipment to get your
pallets
into the shape ready for your compost
bin so first thing you're going to need
is an electric drill to drill your pilot
holes for any of these screws or hinges
the next thing you'll need is some
hinges for your doors I'm also going to
be using decking screws here to screw
them together because they're galvanized
super tough and then hook and
eyes for the doors as well to keep them
shut.
I've got screwdriver and some pliers and
of course pallets! First thing to do is
to make the frame now the frame is
basically three pallets all of the same
size but you then stack into a box shape
If you haven't worked with pallets before there is an under side
and a top side where
the underside has less struts less of
these braces than the top side. Now we
want the top side facing inwards into
the compost bin because that will help
prevent the contents from spilling
out they're also probably going to cover
these with chicken wire if you're not
doing that that's definately make sure that
thinnest slats are on the inside
So here's gardening just top tip number
one which other guides seemed to miss the
first screw you need to put in is in the
back left corner at the bottom and see
that screw there which is a decking screw
I've drilled a pilot hole and
screwed that through and that will then
support that corner and all the other joints
so get that one first and then move on
to the top of that same corners okay
so we're going to adjust this so it's
perfectly flush at the back then I'm
going to drill a small pilot hole
there we go pop that down that grab
myself a decking screw which are
galvanized so they don't rust pretty
awesome things put in there
holding this firm start to screw it
okay so now we've screwed in the back
two corners of the compost bin you'll
notice that the two sorts of arms here
can still flex so what we need are these
l-shaped brackets. They're made of steel
so what you do is pop those on the corner
two or four screws in each and that will
give it more rigidity I'm going to
probably put up three maybe four in each
corner to really firm this bad boy up so
come on let's get the screws in! There so if
you're followed the instructions you
should now have a case like this so the
brace is in each corner you've got your
decking screws for the opposite corners
and you're now ready to build your door
for the door you don't need another
pallet same size and a hand saw. I'm going to
show you how to make that now.
I'm going to do now is take a wood
saw it's a nice and sharp and another
pallet and they're basically gonna cut
it in half
we're going to cut it just beneath the
middle braces once you've done that you
can then take those two halves and
attach them to the compost bin
so once you've cut your doors you can
then decide whether you want two doors were you can split the
doors in half equally or in
my case I'm just going to go for one door that
come sort of two-thirds of the way up
the compost bin and that's because it's
going to be quite a lot of material going in
here so don't necessarily need a door
all the way to the top. I want to
increase air flow into that compost bin
so I've decided to go for one door you
could go for two you could go for a
split of three you can go nuts! For me a
door at the bottom it just keeps all
that mass in there will be perfectly
sufficient throwing stuff into the next
bin and the next bin all the way through the
summer so one door it's super easy for garden
ninja. So I'm going to get my hinges on
and then this first bin will be finished.
Top tip number three when making compost is
you must go on to bare air on earth thats
permeable if you put compost bins on top Flags
tarmac any hard standing simply won't
work or you'll end up with is a pool of
goop!
So the first bin is now complete I've
got my nifty sort of halfway door here
to keep things in I've got the hinges on
and my little latch that will keep it
shut so I'm going to let myself out and
then start on the next three bins! Okay
so that's one compost bin down I'm going
to do three so I'm going to crack on
basically repeat the process remember
you're always using the last walll of the
compost bin so rather than needing four
pallets you'll need three for
every subsequent compost bin.
okay so I've just finished the final bit
the way I'm working with four bins there
you could be working one two three six
twelve it depends on how much space you
got
but the first two bins I've made here
have half doors on them so that's for
the fresh material pop that in there
that will help keep the heat in they
keep it secure moving on to the other
bins they're open compost bins
so once the material starts to rot down
and starts to its compost I can shift it
from the first or second third or fourth
because you're always going to be adding
new material but we don't want it to
just keep piling more and more in heat
shift them along as it progresses so
I've got four bins here what's going to
you now is using some chicken wire it's
just why you match the inside the bin
and that will stop small particles from
escaping or the guides show you to put the
chicken wire around the outside but I
think it looks messy and for the design
point of view I think should try and
hide it as best you can so come on let's
finish these bad boys! So once you've
finished wrapping your chicken wire on the
inside you should see it looks a bit like
this, super neat, not scruffy you're not
going to get snagged on the outside of your bin.
So there we have it garden ninjas guide to
how to build very own compost bin out of
pallets if you've liked this video
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I've been Garden Ninja thanks for watching
happy gardening!