Compost

How To: Wire Mesh Compost

I live in an area with a very defined and intense rainy season, and had been wanting to start a compost pile at my house for some time. However, I remembered from having visited a farm in an even wetter region, that their compost piles, which were on the bare ground and without a roof (like I had been intending to do) ended up being, more or less, piles of too-wet sludge.

After some research, I settled on a design that seemed to fit my needs particularly well: a wire-mesh compost. It was small, occupying vertical rather than horizontal space, which was a big plus since I didn’t have a lot of room to devote to composting. It provided exceptional aeration capabilities, since the entire structure is made of mesh and allows for a constant flow of air. It was easy to assemble and move by one person, since the materials used are fairly light. Finally, being an enclosed compost meant that it would be safe from the prying little snouts of my three dogs, who have already ransacked a previous composting endeavor.

I’m sharing my process and some observations in the hopes that somebody else might find this information useful.

What you need:

  • Wire mesh (or chicken wire). The good thing about this design is it allows for repurposing. I had a 2-meter (roughly 6 feet) roll lying around from a previous project so I got to put that into good use.
  • Heavy wire or zip ties for tying the structure together.
  • Pliers — of a kind that can cut through wire mesh and wire.
  • Some thick working gloves. The wire mesh can have sharp bits sticking out, and they do a fair bit of damage! Don’t be like me — avoid the bloodshed by wearing the work gloves from the beginning of the project.

That’s all you need! Depending on what you have lying around, this project can cost next to nothing. Like I said, I already had the chicken wire, gloves and pliers, so all I needed to buy was the wire to tie the chicken wire tube. This took less than two hours to put together, so I think it’s overall a great time and money investment.

Steps:

1) Unroll the chicken wire and set it down on the floor. If needed, cut it to size. Mine had been sitting in storage for a while and it was kind of stiff, so I walked on top of it for a while to make it less tightly-wound and easier to work with.

2) With your pliers, cut off any protruding bits of metal that might snag or puncture. Wear the gloves! Make sure you cut as close to the edge of the material as possible to avoid future injury and to give you a manageable surface to work with later on, when you have to tie the two ends together.

3) Stand the wire up and shape it into a cylinder. This is a little tricky if you’re working by yourself, but what I did was secure the upper end with a zip tie quickly, then turned the cylinder on its head and secure the lower end before starting to tie the cylinder with the wire.

4) Get the heavy wire (or zip ties). If you’re using zip ties this will go much quicker, but I didn’t have enough to cover the entire length of the cylinder, so I had to tie it with the wire. Attach the ends of the wire to the lower or upper end and twist it with your pliers. Twist the two ends of the wires around and over themselves a couple of times before moving up the cylinder. Think of it as weaving the two sides into one. Do this along the entire edge until the two wire edges are joined together.


This is how I tied the ends together with the wire

The only thing that I don’t like about the design, and something that is certainly inconveniencing, is that you would have to remove the entire compost cylinder to get to the compost. Since I just compost my kitchen scraps, it’s not much, and definitely not enough to fill the whole cylinder at once. This means that you have to wait until everything is composted before you can collect your compost material. You could make shorter or narrower cylinders, for example, as a way to get around this. I didn’t have this problem when I had a mound-compost, since I could easily dig in a little bit and remove material whenever I needed it. But, seeing that now I am pressed for space and in need of a compost that keeps the dogs away, I can live with this trade-off. I’ve thought about making another one and asking neighbors and friends to donate their kitchen scraps, so that I could fill an entire cylinder at once and have several composts available. That could be one way to get around the issue.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this design makes it so that the core of the compost gets, well, composted, while the organic material surrounding the center will either compost at a much slower rate or not at all. I’ve read that this is both normal, and useful, since the surrounding bulk acts as insulation for the inside.

So far, however, the compost has been working really well. My kitchen scraps are steadily composting and so far there hasn’t been any smell, or flies. The shape lets you easily and quickly do a visual check on the compost. I would recommend it for anybody who is tight for space.


The completed compost in progress

Further Reading:

7 Comments

  1. I use this system to put “worm towers” into the high point of beds on slopes . The worm wee drains into the base of my ” no dig” beds . Once the plants are established I water through the tower.

  2. I have a similar set up, they are great.

    I did buy (shock) double ended dog clips. This makes it really quick to release one size to open it as you would removing the clip from a dog lead. You can get single sided ones that do the same thing. I have found using a more thick style mesh is better that chicken wire as it does not bend out of shape,on the other hand one that is too thick and has large holes will be hard to bend into an circle and the near finished compost will start to fall out the holes.

    My 2 cents.

    Good luck composters

  3. Pallets are good too. most people have access to industrial area I would guess? where they are free and readily available. 4 non treated pallets,or 5 if you want a roof as well, 4- 8 starpickets,and a mallet. ta da. Aerated, 1m cubed volume. (I’m on level ground so I only have to keep pallets upright, one end butts up against the next one so I got away with only 4 star pickets. You could use wire as well, to hold them together.) I turn my compost only once, so once the 4th side goes on, it stays for a while, but you could make it easily removable by using only short pickets and just slotting the pallet on and off over the top.
    My 2 cents, Yay, between us we can buy a cow at market.

  4. The ability to stratify the materials (carbons and nitrogens) with this design, really lends itself to the Berkley method of composting. Good luck!

    1. Do you have to turn over the compost with this design or is there enough air flow and oxygen with this design that its not necessary?

  5. I like how you say that wire mesh is good for garden designs because it lets you use it multiple times. Recently, I’ve been trying to grow some tomatoes, but my plants keep on falling down. They won’t stay up no matter what I do. It seems like I should find some wire mesh and use your designs.

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