Best, simplest, cheapest way to start compost... in a neighborhood?

Over 18 years ago, I landed in a small 1990's build cookie cutter neighborhood of starter homes, and I can't move right now. My backyard is 1/2 acre, so we have some space to work with. But I would still like to be as little of a nuisance to my neighbors as possible. The side that sees most of my activity doesn't necessarily care, but the wife is particular about her produce, so they can't always be "bought," so to speak.

Anyway, all that context to say I do have to be mindful of how I operate as opposed to if I only had to worry about impacts to nature. I also can't and don't want to just buy those tumbling things from Amazon.

I'll try to add a drawing in the comments at some point, but the backyard is a little over 100 feet wide, runs north to south, and is 300' long on the west side, shorter on the east. There's a gentle slope north to south, as well. I have no idea about degree. Enough that water runs into my neighbor's yard. Zone 8a, if that matters for composting.

We back up to woods and also have dogs. Unfortunately, all the currently dog-proof areas are closer to those neighbors.

In short, I'd probably just start a heap somewhere if I didn't have to worry about neighbors, but I do. Any advice is appreciated! I'll start working on a drawing (I know, I should have had one drawn like 16 years ago!).

ETA: My primary goal is waste reduction, not necessarily the fastest path to useable compost. Our soil is pretty good, and I use "chicken dirt" in the spring to top dress my rows. Basically we rake back the mulch and scoop out all the pretty black dirt, then add more mulch.

For myself, I have found the best system to keep friendly with the neighbors is through the style of a big pile covered with natural brown materials.

My pile right now is covered in a mixture of autumn leaves and old straw. When I add contents, I will pull back the covering with a pitchfork and add the new contents near the core before covering it back up. I don't have a container around it but have considered making a pallet-based box just to keep up appearances. My mound is located near my trees away from the houses so it generally isn't noticed. While the placement isn't close to the house making it bit more of a chore to add to the pile, it keeps the peace so I tolerate the walk.

In a situation with neighbours, I had a lot of success with a 36" tall dog exercise pen formed into a circle, and kept covered. You can pick them up inexpensively used. I liked how portable the exercise pen was and it looked tidier than just a heap or my attempts to make circles with wire fencing, and the volume it contains is about right down a pile.  I operate my piles as 1-2 year cold compost piles, with each year getting a new pile, and ideally, the pile sitting another year before use.

If one is inclined to flip their piles, the ex pens open up easily to allow you to do that, but I decided the increase in speed want worth the increase in work to me!

Of course, keeping the pile covered with carbon rich materials to avoid smells is important too.

In my experience dogs love to scavenge in compost heaps. mine love vegetable peelings and aren't fussy where they get them from. Other critters will as well - birds and rats in my case are the problems, slugs and mice just turn the heap and eccelerate the breakdown. If you just compost garden waste (leaves, grass clippings, weeds..) then you're less likely to have a vermin problem, although it would be a pity to lose the nutrients in the kitchen waste perhaps. I tend to just chuck the garden waste in a pile out of the way to break down, and use my compost bin for the kitchen waste (along with some sawdust for added 'browns). A covered pallet cube is an easy way of containing the pile, but you may need to consider something like hardware cloth, or metal sheeting if rats are likely to be a problem.

They say a compost heap needs to be about a meter across to have a core area big enough for composting (so a half-meter of thickness all around to insulate and keep in the heat). A round footprint is good because you get that half-meter of thickness all around  - harder to generate heat in the corners of a square heap. The corollary is that it also needs to be a meter tall or more - and that would be a LOT of kitchen scraps; perhaps more than I have made in my whole short 65 years (considering that they are perishable). To make a working heap, you kinda have to start with a big pile of organic like yard waste and add in your kitchen scraps on the fly.

A heap needs turning, because of the differential composting action between the center and the edge, but you don't want to move the whole pile! I have found that making it work like a silo is somewhat effective. You need a tunnel into the center at the bottom and a long-handle shovel - you can excavate it into the heap but that can be tough digging based on my prior experience; if I started again, I would make a bridge so I could dig from the center without the heap collapsing on the near side; maybe made from some scrap plywood set into an A-shape so I could get the shovel to the center and the pile could settle centerward. Then it is possible to dig out some finished compost and use it as cover over the newest kitchen waste - and also keep adding yard waste as it becomes available. Whenever you dig from the bottom, you should be getting finished material for whatever uses required. But sometimes I have dug out a whole rotten onion or broccoli stem or such; have to sift that out and put it back on top to try again.

I like the suggestions others have made especially the post by Cade.

I feel something like this structure would keep the pile looking neat in a neighborhood:

https://permies.com/t/281580/composting/Super-easy-beginner-project-compost

Some other ideas:

https://permies.com/t/363114/composting/pile-sawdust-materials-orderly

Hopefully the attachment works. My son drew the sketch and I labeled it in Canva. The highlighted areas are where I'm thinking of putting the compost pile. The area behind the chicken coop is dog proof, and the one in the northeast corner is really shady. I'm not sure how much that matters.

I wouldn't worry about shade - that might help if you get hot summers as the compost needs to stay moist.

What sort of materials are you hoping to compost? The only reason I ask, is that both areas you highlight are a long way away from the house. If you are intending the pile to mainly deal with garden waste on an infrequent basis, then that is not too much a problem, but if you want to empty a kitchen caddy in there each day, or frequently, then it may be worth placing the heap where you walk everyday anyway - to the chicken coop for example. That means the one near the vegetable area would perhaps be more suitable for you.

Think about where the waste is coming from, and where you want to use the compost in future, and you might be surprised how much transportation you can save yourself!

I'd say just make it look neat and organized to avoid complaints.

You could go cheap and use 3 pallets screwed together to create a "U" shaped bin, one for starting and one for finishing. You could go higher end and use landscaping blocks or even pour concrete.

Or you could just talk to them if you're on good terms and see if they wouldn't mind a heap. Hopefully you don't have to deal with an HOA...

Nancy Reading wrote:. . . If you are intending the pile to mainly deal with garden waste on an infrequent basis, then that is not too much a problem, but if you want to empty a kitchen caddy in there each day, or frequently, then it may be worth placing the heap where you walk everyday anyway . . . Think about where the waste is coming from, and where you want to use the compost in future, and you might be surprised how much transportation you can save yourself!

This is so true; daily trips really add up. We were fortunate to have a bit of vertical relief available and mounted a three-inch PVC pipe from just outside the kitchen door straight down into a 55-gallon compost barrel. If you can devise such an arrangement, the pipe should be very close to vertical, and even then the inside of the pipe may accumulate a layer of black goo over time (an annual swabbing by poking a hot soapy mop head down the pipe would clean it - we should try that perhaps instead of letting roaches and lizards manage it! ). Anyway, the stuff in the barrel is not properly composting - just rotting; so it has to be dug out and put into the compost heap fairly regularly. For a couple of people, a 55-gallon barrel is WAY overkill for this use; even a five-gallon bucket would suffice (though you might have to deal with it during inclimate weather sometime because it fills up at a bad time).

Because of the accumulation of rotting food waste, an intermediate container will tend to attract rodents. Making a rodent-proof repository that is still reasonably easy to open, for removing the accumulation, is not simple. We used a plastic barrel but armored it with galvanized sheetmetal. That has slowed them down quite a bit, but sometimes one finds a way to set up camp and we have to revisit the design again. We're in the tropics where they NEVER give up and they are abundant in the surroundings because of year-round fruit fall of various sorts - mango, banana, breadfruits, and various plums and berries. A metal drum would be more secure against rodents, but due to the moisture of rotting materials it would corrode fairly quickly.

Catie George's suggestion of upcycling dog run fencing sounds good for a small system. Veggie scraps are considered "greens" and part of keeping things nice is finding an appropriate source of "browns" to mix in. Fall leaves tend to pack down unless you have a way to break them up. Things like cardboard may harbor toxic gick. Dry weeds/grass may add unwanted weed seeds. Sawdust slows decomp because it's hard to digest. It often comes down to picking what's available and just being aware of the downsides. However, adding browns goes a long way to having a happy compost.

Nancy Reading wrote:I wouldn't worry about shade - that might help if you get hot summers as the compost needs to stay moist.

What sort of materials are you hoping to compost? The only reason I ask, is that both areas you highlight are a long way away from the house. If you are intending the pile to mainly deal with garden waste on an infrequent basis, then that is not too much a problem, but if you want to empty a kitchen caddy in there each day, or frequently, then it may be worth placing the heap where you walk everyday anyway - to the chicken coop for example. That means the one near the vegetable area would perhaps be more suitable for you.

Think about where the waste is coming from, and where you want to use the compost in future, and you might be surprised how much transportation you can save yourself!

I'm in west central Georgia, so it gets really hot and humid in the summer.
Basically, I want to compost anything that isn't recyclable but is biodegradable. So used paper towels, paper cups, food scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds, etc. I do have a regular supply of pine shavings and used chicken bedding to add as needed.

Emily Smith wrote: Basically, I want to compost anything that isn't recyclable but is biodegradable. So used paper towels, paper cups, food scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds, etc. I do have a regular supply of pine shavings and used chicken bedding to add as needed.

This is how I treat my recycling. I was inspired after reading David the Good's book Compost Everything. I think he provides a good overall view of using a compost system to break down organic wastes from a household (outside of humanure systems) that would eventually end up in more traditional waste streams. It is some decent reading if you are looking for some literature.

Timothy Norton wrote:

Emily Smith wrote: Basically, I want to compost anything that isn't recyclable but is biodegradable. So used paper towels, paper cups, food scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds, etc. I do have a regular supply of pine shavings and used chicken bedding to add as needed.

This is how I treat my recycling. I was inspired after reading David the Good's book Compost Everything. I think he provides a good overall view of using a compost system to break down organic wastes from a household (outside of humanure systems) that would eventually end up in more traditional waste streams. It is some decent reading if you are looking for some literature.

"Where we go to steal compost occasionally." XD
I think I actually read that book soon after it came out. I'd almost forgotten about him! I guess I'll just make sure to keep a layer of shavings on top to make it look a little nicer. And bury any proteins. That's not any worse than burying our chickens when they die, right??