Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Compost Sifter

I love my compost bins. I have two in my garden and in the spring I take the wonderful bounty out of the composter and use it as a soil amendment in my garden. This weekend was the designated weekend to accomplish that task.

Sometimes some larger items in the composter (like tree branches) don't completely decompose. I use a sifter to separate the small decomposed material from any remaining larger items.

The pictorial below shows how you can take a garden shop plant flat and turn it into a wonderful sifter.

(But first...Casey needs my attention)


Start with the plastic container from the garden shop flower flats.

Cut wire screen to fit the bottome of the flower flat. Cut the wire so no edges of the wire remain. Be careful. I got a few puncture wounds from the exposed edges of the wire mesh.




Attach the metal screen to the bottom of the flower flat using zip ties. This are available from the garden shop or from the hardware store. Once "zipped" cut the remaining "tail."


Here I am sifting my compost. You can see one of my compost bins behind me.

3 comments:

jengod said...

Okay, I love you! I've been googling all day for compost sifters, and I was dreading have to learn woodworking, buy new tools and so on. But this? I have all this already, and the skills to do it. Just need the wire mesh, which I think even I can handle buying at the hardware store. Seriously, this is a great, great design, and very well-illustrated. My compost (and my garden!) thanks you!

David P. said...

Great idea! I was wondering how I was going to separate the compost from the rest of the fodder, now I know!

earlysnowdrop said...

Glad this idea will help you out.

Composting Rocks!

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