How to Make Free Dirt: Renter’s Edition

You CAN compost in a small space and it IS productive!

I currently live on a rental property where I garden in containers because I am not allowed to mess with the lawn or (very ugly) garden beds. Despite my limitations, my garden has continued to grow each year and that means I have been going through A LOT of compost and potting mix. I love that I have the driveway space to expand my garden, but all of this extra dirt can get expensive!

Thankfully, I decided to invest in a small compost tumbler when I moved onto this property and it has been a lifesaver.

Contrary to what you may believe:

• You do not need a lot of space to compost
• A compost set-up will not ruin the lawn
• One small compost tumbler can take A LOT of food scraps
• Composting does not smell when managed correctly
• Composting does not take a lot of work
• Composting is totally worth, it even on a small scale

So, to start: to effectively compost your food scraps you DO NOT need a lot of space. I have a 43 gallon compost tumbler with two compartments and it takes up a two foot by two-and-a-half foot space. Because it is a tumbler, it is on legs which means it doesn’t ruin the lawn. To be honest, I could care less about the weedy lawn that characterizes my rental property, but the landlord and lease say I can’t do anything that would kill even a small portion of the “grass” so a tumbler is superior to a pile in my situation.

At this point, you may be thinking: but one small tumbler, I have way too much compost for that. I would like to challenge you on that point because that is exactly what I thought 3 years ago, and it couldn’t be more wrong.

I eat a lot of produce. And when I say that, I mean I eat a vegetable omelette every morning that has peppers, onions, sweet potatoes, garlic, greens and sometimes tomatoes or avocado. I eat an apple in my lunch every day. I cook almost everything from scratch and I don’t enjoy a lot of meat or pasta, so lunches and dinners also have a lot of veggies. The amount of produce I eat combined with the (what I’ve been told is an absurd amount) of tea I drink, the produce my partner eats, and the coffee he consumes makes about 3 gallons of food scraps a week. That doesn’t include the paper packaging and garden scraps that I also throw into the composter.

With all of that, I STILL only empty one compartment of my compost tumbler every 6 months and I only get a maximum of about 2 cubic feet of compost each time.

So, is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY.

Yes, you are correct, I do not get a lot of compost for everything I put into my tumbler, and I still need to buy more each garden season because my garden is growing exponentially. BUT, when I lived in a small one bedroom apartment, by myself, with no way to compost I was taking out a 12 gallon bag of trash a minimum of once a week. Since adding compost to my routine, I now take out a 12 gallon bag of trash a maximum of once per week and that is with the addition of a 2nd person, a dog and quail into my household. That means I have cut the amount of waste I send to the landfill in half and I have also cut my trash bag budget in half!

Do you still have doubts? You may be thinking that compost smells and attracts bugs. Well, I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong. Dirt smells like dirt. If you put a shovel in the ground, you are going to find worms, pill bugs, springtails and sometimes even grubs. That is the nature of dirt. BUT, if you manage your browns (carbon heavy inputs) and greens (nitrogen heavy inputs) correctly, your compost tumbler will not smell like trash, it will smell like dirt. If your tumbler starts to smell and looks super wet inside, add some more browns. My favorite browns to add are my shredded billing statements and spam mail. In terms of bugs, you’ll get a few flies, but those flies are specifically attracted to the decomposing plant matter not your fresh food and they actually help the compost process. I also have worms in my tumbler.

You STILL have doubts? You think composting takes a lot of work? Not with a tumbler. With a tumbler you literally just spin it once in a while and it takes less than 30 seconds. Most people will tell you to spin it every time you add something new, and that may speed up the composting process, but I’m here to tell you that I only spin mine about once a week and it works great.

Finally, my last ditch effort to convince you to invest in a compost tumbler, 4 cubic feet of free compost a year is still 4 free cubic feet of compost. If you don’t have a big enough garden for that much compost, just throw it behind your landlord’s bushes. They’ll never notice a little bit of extra dirt and you kept a heck of a lot of waste out of the landfill.

I highly encourage anyone who rents and has 5 square feet of space to set up a compost tumbler. It’s the investment that just keeps giving back year after year.

Additional Resources:

Things I compost:

• Tea
• Coffee Grounds
• Egg Shells
• Produce Scraps
• Pruned leaves and branches from my garden
• Shredded paper
• Brown Packing Paper
• Egg Cartons
• Quail Bedding
• Random leaves that my landlord didn’t rake up
• Grass clippings that the lawn service dumped by my driveway

Online Resources:

• University of Maryland Extension – How to Make Compost at Home
• West Virginia University Extension – Composting for Beginners
• Oregon State University – Compost Tumbler Suggestions?

Books I Love:

I am an Amazon Associate and that is reflected in the below affiliate links. I will make a small commission if you purchase the below books with my affiliate link. That being said, please check your local or favorite indie book store for them! I’d much rather you support a small business than give me a kick-back.

• Kevin Espiritu’s Epic Homesteading
• Geoff Hamilton’s Organic Gardening
• Betsy Matheson Symanietz’s DIY Projects for the Self-Sufficient Homeowner
• Silvan Goddin and Jordan Tony’s Homegrown Handgathered – This one is not available on Amazon but I still love it

Products I Use:

See above Amazon Associate blurb. Yes, I’ll make a small commission if you purchase these items but I highly encourage you to check out your local garden center instead.

• My Compost Tumbler – I bought in 2022 and I have been using it since then. It’s been outside in 100 degree heat and single digits cold, rainstorms and droughts. I haven’t had to repair it once.
• My Compost Keeper – My grandparents had one just like this and I love it. It’s easy to clean and I can smush a lot of food scraps inside. My only complaint is that the handle likes to fall off if you’re not paying attention so I always need to check it before taking my compost outside.