Building a Garden Composting Area

by Texas Homesteader

I have a raised-bed veggie garden and I love it. Gardening is in my blood and it’s something I simply MUST do every year – it’s not ever an option to forgo my veggie garden. There’s just something about digging my hands into that moist dirt and coaxing plants from those tiny seeds, and then nurturing those plants until they produce healthy food for my family. I try to keep everything in my garden as natural as possible & I use a *compost tumbler to make my own compost – I can’t recommend a tumbler highly enough.

It’s especially beneficial for us living out here in the country since we planted our home right smack dab in the middle of a cow pasture. It’s pretty native out here and there are lots of critters around outside – mice, rats, raccoons, coyotes, opossums and many more. My tumbler keeps my compost enclosed to keep the critters out of it. And it also speeds up the composting process. The task of turning the compost was something I had never been diligent about in the past, now I simply turn the barrel each time I empty something into it. Easy!

Convenient Composting

But as much as I love my tumbler, you’ll never actually get finished usable compost if you keep adding fresh material to it. So when my tumbler gets semi-full I had been emptying it into a large feeder tub with holes drilled for drainage to allow it to sit a little longer to complete the composting process.

Then I begin once again adding fresh compostable material to the tumbler to start that process over. My tumbling composter is close to my kitchen door, but due to needing my garden area close to my underground cistern for irrigation, the composter isn’t  necessarily close to the garden.

I needed an area inside my vegetable garden fence to finish my composting process, and I found the perfect solution! #TexasHomesteader

So in the past when compost was needed for the garden I would pull the finished compost out of the large feed tub and carry it to my garden to feed & nourish my veggie plants. But I hated toting it from one place to the other & I didn’t like the look of the large hole-drilled tub next to my home – there just  had to be a better way!  I needed a compost bed right there in my garden area.

Building A Composing Area In The Garden

So at the end of the gardening season I had RancherMan bring the Bois D’arc posts that had been saved when we tore down the crumbling corral around the barn. Bois D’Arc is extremely rot resistant and highly valued for fence posts and building posts because of those characteristics, so we were careful to save them when we tore down the corral.  He loaded them on the tractor and dropped them right over the fence into my garden area.

I lined several of them up against the garden’s fence and laid heavy paper feed sacks along the ground in front of them to keep grass from sprouting up through my new compost bed.

Then I laid another line of Bois D’arc posts about 2.5 feet in front of the others and wrapped the paper feed bags up along the inside of those posts as well to make a paper tub to hold my compost while the posts keep everything contained. Then I added my finishing compost and topped it with hay cleaned out of our chicken coop.

This compost will now finish production right here in the garden area where I need it.  I’ll also use this compost bed to keep my grass clippings handy until they are thoroughly dried so I can use it to mulch those veggies during the heat of our Texas summers.  I love that I have this important gardening feature right here in my garden now.

Soon I’ll be getting ready to prepare my veggie beds for spring planting, and the compost is right there where I need it.  Thank you RancherMan!

~TxH~

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My Favorite Garden Hacks

My favorite gardening hacks all in one place. #TexasHomesteader

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20 thoughts on “Building a Garden Composting Area

  1. Kimberlee

    Good to know that the tumbler thing works well – I have thought about getting one. I have a big black composting bin I got at Sams at least 4 yrs ago – it works alright but you have to turn the stuff yourself and it does take a while to get compost – I find that now that I am juicing the juice pulp really speeds up the compost.

    Reply
    1. Texas Homesteader Post author

      I love my tumbler Kimberlee – it’s been instrumental in me actually getting usable compost more frequently. I just wasn’t very good at the turning part before. ~TxH~

      Reply
  2. Kristen from The Road to Domestication

    Great post! We actually bought my mom one of those tumblers for her birthday this year – she LOVES it! Thanks so much for joining us over at the #HomeMattersLinky party! We hope to see you again next week!

    Reply
    1. Texas Homesteader Post author

      Oh yeah Kristen, I absolutely love my compost tumbler. It made easy compost a reality for me. ~TxH~

      Reply
  3. Shirley Wood

    I have been composting for years. Our dirt is terrible, compost saves us! So glad you shared with us at Merry Monday. Please be sure to come back Monday for the new party!

    Reply
  4. Terri Presser

    This is great information. We give all our scraps to the chooks but our compost comes from the bottom of the pig pen. The base is grass hay and then as it scrunches down my husband keeps adding to it. After it dries out in early spring my husband digs it out with the pig manure and spreads it over our pastures and vegetable growing areas. Thanks for sharing this, I really enjoy what I am learning from you. Blessings to you and Rancher Man.

    Reply
    1. Texas Homesteader Post author

      Sounds like you’ve got a great system for composting there Terri, thanks for sharing. And thanks for your oh-so-sweet comment! ~TxH~

      Reply
      1. Terri Presser

        Thanks for sharing at Good Morning Mondays. Blessings

        Reply
  5. Gentle Joy

    This is great! We have compost containers… although I would love to have the rotating type also… that is on my prayer list. 🙂 Nice to start thinking of the garden already. 🙂

    Reply
  6. Kathy

    Great location and tips on composting! I do appreciate you sharing with Home and Garden Thursday,
    Kathy

    Reply
  7. Linda @ A La Carte

    My kids are thinking of starting a compost pile!

    Reply
  8. Ruth A. Stiles

    I just started composting for serious this past fall and winter. I am excited to see the process. The kids have fun dumping stuff out in the pile and stirring it occasionally with a fork. I don’t have a raised garden bed but am considering building a smaller one for herbs closer to the house. Any suggestions? I am visiting from Making a Home! Have a great day!

    Reply
  9. lisa lynn

    Great share! I’ve sort of done this…although I don’t always use the bags. In recent years I have been feeding all of my compost to the chickens. They eat what they want and the rest goes in their manure pile. Speedy composting!

    Reply
  10. Kathe

    Biggest disappointment of our new home is that the HOA states very clearly, no composting 🙁 I had a bin and a tumbler I had to give away! Happy composting friend!! Your garden is gonna love it 🙂

    Reply
    1. Texas Homesteader Post author

      (GASP!) Kathe I can’t even wrap my brain around that!! Thankfully we’ve never lived in an HOA area (although they do have many benefits, I can’t be without my organic compost) Wish I lived closer when you were giving away that tumbler! LOL! I absolutely love mine. ~TxH~

      Reply

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