Bucket Composting

Two years ago, I really wanted to compost outdoors in addition to using my fabulous worms.  At the time I was living in an apartment with a balcony so I decided to do it on a very, very small scale using a little red bucket. 

Total experiment, but it worked really well and fast relatively speaking!

Now that I have a yard, I wanted to compost outdoors, too, but the problem right now is that my yard isn't fenced and I feel that having a giant pile of rotting plant material won't fly with the neighbors or my landlord. :-P  So I decided to bucket compost again on a larger scale using 5 gal. buckets instead. 

I drilled holes in the bottom and sides of the buckets (I'm using 2 this year); the holes in the bottom are for drainage as well as to encourage worms to come and hang out in the bucket.  The holes along the sides of the bucket are necessary as I found out doing it on a very small scale for proper air circulation, otherwise, you get kind of a stinking, wet pile of poo. 

I covered the top with landscaping cloth to keep critters out and to help heat up the bucket a little as well as for air circulation. As I recall, I ended up with compost in 3 or 4 months as opposed to an entire year of turning and churning a large pile of compost.

This is what I'm hoping my bucket composting will turn into by the beginning of fall! I'm crossing my fingers!