Your 'dalek' is designed to deal with cooked food waste, at least the ones I have seen are. You can buy a composting bin from your council or privately and this will have air spaces to allow for the material you place in the compost to rot down. If you have lots of space your daughter's suggestion will work well.

Really and truly you can make compost in any sort of container.....but you may have to wait to shovel it out onto your garden. We had 3 breeze block open topped bunkers when we had a large garden. The country cousins of our childhood had chicken wire enclosures in their dream thatched cottage garden. Mum had a hole in the ground behind the garage and never seemed short of something to shovel on her beloved rose bed. These days there are all sorts of exotic shapes. I thought the plastic ones lifted off the compost, and then you can find your own way to mix it a bit.

I have a 'dalek' type compost bin (supplied free by the Council) and it makes good compost. I bought a 'compost aerator tool' which makes it easy to aerate the compost without having to lift the bin off each time.

Thanks fOr the info guys, I've emptied the "dalek" and am making a 3x3x3 .

Have fun Hank...

The OH has now sent for a compost aerator.....thanks for that mention Jakaty!!!! My recent struggles with my ancient concrete monstrosity have been prodigious recently. OH won't let me modernise. It does have slots in it though. The resident blackbirds think its spring still. They are building their umpteenth nest in the huge Magnolia next door, last one in our Laburnum. They feast on the compost I have spread under the garden shrubs, while they are followed round by 3 or 4 obese demanding fledglings!

lol Dorjac our sparrows are still nesting too and pestered by their earlier broods to feed them - even though they are capable of doing themselves.

A compost aerator ? Not quite sure how it helps me choose a new compost bin Dorjac. Please explain.

I will Hank. I can't change my compost bin, as the old one is screwed together, heavy concrete panels, 4 foot high. Other half is over 80 and very disabled and I am not that. Earlier I suggested several alternate methods of composting household vegetable rubbish. Such as a hole in the ground and wire and post containers for general garden rubbish. Visit a garden centre and choose. We each have what we have according to individual requirements.......simples or discus, moi has explained!!!!!

Thanks, D, i now have sufficient info to sort the bin I want, and will be working on it this after'. I have an area 2ft 10 x 2 ft 9 ( a bit tight ) and have the timber I need to make it. I can't wait to get into it. the golf will have to wait.