On Sun, 26 Feb 2017 20:35:00 -0000, Janet wrote:

I'm wondering about one of these plastic conical bins, put it
in at the top, shovel it out at the bottom.

Do they really work well, or will I need 2 of them (I'm not
thinking of the heated type).

I have 3 (only because our council gives them away) and have them
stashed out of sight around the garden to dump weeds in. Compared with
me real compost bins (4 ft cubes made with pallets) plastic bins don't
ever heat up much and are very slow. You can forget "shovel it out the
bottom"...doesn't work. But they are a no-labour system. Every so often
I lift off the dalek from its mostly rotted contents,

Very similar to what I was going to type,
With mine they stay fairly warm because they are very sheltered and I
pile other vegetation and grass clippings around them.
Each one also has a section of perforated land drain pipe running from
top to bottom to assist with aeration as the contents can get
compacted . I have also placed them on some iron drainage grids I
obtained , these allow worms etc to colonise but discourage rats who
before doing that burrowed under in into them.
As others have said shovelling out can be difficult , get the odd
bucketfull but it less frustating to tip one over completley then sort
the material that has turned into compost and then shovel what hasn't
back in .

Our also came from the council for free , I have noticed there are
usually some used ones at our local dump/recycling center where the
operators sell them off for a couple of quid.

G.Harman