The Compost Pile of My Dreams

I saw this design for a compost pile at the landscape arboretum and I was so envious. I have tried many different compost configurations in the past, both expensive and dirt cheap, with only moderate success.
I learned a great recipe for compost building at a biointensive gardening class that I took this Spring and I was eager to give it a try (See the 6/23/11 posting on Compost). Truly, I could just pile my clippings in a shady corner of the garden, but I liked the three bin composting area at the landscape arboretum and I was determined to do it cheaply.
I got eight two-inch landscape posts from the hardware store. They fit the cheap bill, $2 each, not cedar or treated. I know that they’ll rot, but not immediately. I pulled out my pallet wood collection. I’d been destructing pallets for sidewalls to contain and divide my three piles of decomposing garden stuffs.
My husband saw where I was going with this and intervened. As I have said before, this IS Green Acres and I am married to the male version of Eva Gabor. And Eva was having nothing to do with my pallet constructions in our yard.
According to the time-honored tradition in our marriage, he took over the project and finished it to meet his aesthetic requirements. Either partner reserves the right to modify another’s project, with the understanding that their contribution must involve at least as much sweat equity as opinion.
We compromised on the wood used in the walls and dividers of the compost construction. We saved my pallet wood for another project (a bonfire?)and used new wood from sale bin at the big box store.
I’d done the difficult (but ab building) work of digging the holes for the posts. All of the two foot deep holes involved some root removal. I carefully leveled all the posts so my piles wouldn’t lean. It didn’t matter that they were all different lengths. The chainsaw is a great equalizer.
My husband cut all the posts so that they were about three feet tall and screwed 1x4s between the posts to build walls and dividers for the posts. He trimmed the edges even with the chainsaw. He put 1x4s on the posts to make tops for the bins. He even filled up the first stall, using last year’s bagged leaves, this year’s weeds, and some soil leftover from my post hole digging. And he got it all done in the time between dinner and darkness. Eddie Albert never had it so good.
And everyone agrees that the end result is quite nice.