Compost-a-poll

[solway cropper]

Anything and everything gets composted here. I have two large daleks, a big open heap, two leaf mould cages and loads of plastic bags full of green waste. Even the tree prunings go through the shredder and get re-used. My aim is to get at least 1000 litres of good compost by springtime. Got more than that this year and it still wasn't enough. I also gather dead seaweed which makes a good liquid feed before itself being composted.

I'm currently experimenting with using dried seaweed crushed and sieved and used as a base dressing.

results will eventually be published on my blog
the recycled gardener

[jackie j]

We seperate all our rubbish and compost most of it. We have a caddy that we bought and all our veg waste goes in as well as anything else that will compost, so small cardboard, paper towels, egg shells etc.
The council gave us a small caddy that all our cooked food waste goes in, not that we have much.
I shred a lot of paper and that goes in the two very large compost bins my husband made at the lottie and the veg waste is added to it.
We then use th compost on the beds.

[HeyWayne]

I don't compost as much as I used to.

Our council provides a food waste collection service that can accept all food - cooked or otherwise. Our old compost caddy has become redundant in the process as we have become lazy and put all food waste in it, including things we'd previously composted - peelings, eggshells, teabags, that sort of thing.

The bin is collected once a week - I don't always get the chance to get to the allotment that frequently, so we've become lazy composters.

However, grass clippings, and garden cuttings still make their way to the plot as we also have green garden waste bags that stay outside.

[VirginVegGrower]

We compost everything we can. We have a row of bins at the end of a large garden. We use hedge clippings, tree prunings, grass clippings, chicken poop and Aubiose bedding, cardboard, all "green" trimmings from veg, tea bags - anything and everything we can really. It then gets thrown onto the allotment beds. We are given discounted rates through our council but don't have a brown bin as we live up a narrow (private) lane, so we have to reuse our waste! Makes us think more about it.

[TallGirl]

How easy do you find it to separate your compost from other rubbish? How much do you use in the garden again? Does your council provide discounted compost bins or wormeries? How much compost do you create each day and where do you keep it?

Hey Holly :-)

Everything that can be, gets composted or recycled. We find it very easy because it's become a completely consistent habit. Even my stepdaughter has no trouble remembering, and hasn't since she's been big enough to reach the bin, even though her other home is not a reuse-recycle-compost kind of place.

All the home-made compost gets used in the garden/on the plot. Can't get enough! I'm always on the scrounge for coffee grounds at Starbucks these days, and I want to get food waste collection going in the kitchen at work.

The council provides compost bins, and also kitchen bins for food waste collection. They do a green waste/food waste collection, but I only use that if we've totally run out of space in any of the bins here (has only happened when my parents were staying, in the middle of winter).

Allowing for my stepdaughter being with us half the time, we have two-and-a-half people in the house. We empty the kitchen waste bin (2l I think? 1.5?) once or twice a week into the compost bin in the yard, which also gets the waste from the yard. It doesn't make loads, because we don't generate huge amounts of kitchen/food waste. The back yard is secure against vermin so we put cooked food waste in there as well. We also empty the hoover into the compost bin. Never had a problem (apart from one time there was a problem with the gate and we had a single rat, but we fixed the gate behind him and he did a great job of aerating the bin until he died).

At the allotment we have two 1x1x1m bins. I'm hoping to get at least one load of compost per bin per year, but could really do with more. Now in our third year of allotmenting and trying to figure out where to get more raw material from. Growing veg has made me see compost as a valuable product, as well as a right-on waste-disposal system.

There's a tiny percentage that gets burnt instead of composted, and that's the plants that look infested or diseased.

Background - I've been a lifelong composter thanks to parents' habits. I hate to say it (not really!) but they were way cool and ahead of the game

[gillian62]

I compost everything at the allotment, and take green waste, chicken droppings and bedding, egg shells, tea bags from home to put in compost bins there.

A lot of my 'green waste' at home is eaten by my chickens - peelings, odd leaves, weeds etc so they are great recyclers for me there. They then produce the droppings and newspaper bedding as a great fertiliser/activator for my compost bins at the allotment.

I have 2 bin areas at the allotment made from pallets. 1 of them is now full and rotting down, while the other is in use.

We do have a green waste bin provided by the council, and collected every fortnight. We only use it when we cut down any trees, eg conifers recently, or trim branches.

[Newton]

I am new to Growing your own and have quickly realised the importance of composting. I now have 3 darleks to exterminate all my green and brown waste and I am hoping that the resulting compost will enrich my soil and my life!

I guess I'm a convert!

[dave_norm_smith]

How easy do you find it to separate your compost from other rubbish?

Very easy. We basically do it as we go along through the day.

How much do you use in the garden again?

Probably made/used a very large wheel barrow full but could have used x5 the amount. Beautiful stuff

Does your council provide discounted compost bins or wormeries?

Not really. They did in the distant past but no longer. However I did find where they take the green waste from the town and have started to buy compost direct from them at a massively discounted price.

How much compost do you create each day and where do you keep it

We have a caddy about the size of a pot of paint ( 1 litre ish). We fill that roughly twice a week and pop it into the compost heap. I suppliment this with offering from the neighbour as well as tea bags from work. So maybe 4 caddies per week in total. To this I then add the usual garden clearings, grass clippings etc

Dave

[planetologist]

I've started digging in stuff directly when I prepare a new bit of seedbed, since I found digging out the whole compost heap once a year an unattractive job. I reason that things will compost in the soil as well and got the idea from reports that it works well with peas growing on top. Things like bindweed roots I leave to dry completely first.

[mothhawk]

I've started digging in stuff directly when I prepare a new bit of seedbed, since I found digging out the whole compost heap once a year an unattractive job. I reason that things will compost in the soil as well and got the idea from reports that it works well with peas growing on top. Things like bindweed roots I leave to dry completely first.

Does that work OK? I'm sure I read somewhere (can't find the place now) that if you dig uncomposted garden waste into the soil, then as it decomposes it takes nutrients from the soil, rather than putting them in. I assumed that was why you are supposed to dig in green manure a few weeks before you are ready to plant where it was growing, and why you fill a bean trench over the winter.

[endymion]

How easy do you find it to separate your compost from other rubbish?
Simple.

Our compostable kitchen waste has always gone straight into a small, lidded, bin in the kitchen. We now use bought biodegradable liners. When it's full it gets emptied onto the compost heap.

We've just started a home made wormery which is just outside the kitchen door.

How much do you use in the garden again?
All we can make, there's never enough. We raid our neighbour's compost heap and also buy in if necessary.

We compost all kitchen waste.

Lawn mowings are either composed or put directly beneath our hedges, same with autumn leaves.

If we've got time we shred the woody stuff from hedges, trees and shrubs, and either stack the larger bits on a woodpile or dry it for kindling.

If we're pushed for time, or have a huge amount to get rid of in one go, we take it to the council dump. Because we compost at home we don't have enough to fill a bag every fortnight throughout the year, so it's cheaper than buying into the council's garden waste collection scheme.

Does your council provide discounted compost bins or wormeries?
Yes, but we've never used it.

The partner company's cheapest (220 litre) composter is £15, but not all the items offered are cheaper than buying direct. There's also a standard delivery charge for 'council buyers'. Buying direct there's no charge if spending over £50, and there are different deals.

How much compost do you create each day, and where do you keep it?
There's no real 'daily amount'.

Kitchen waste depends how many are eating, and also what we're eating. Rhubarb leaves are huge so the kitchen bin would need to be emptied straight away, other times the little bin might take a week to fill.

During the winter kitchen waste goes straight into a bean trench until it's full, some also went directly into the ground ready for squash, courgettes and cucumbers, and some will go into the wormery when it's up and running.

Apple and pear cores always go onto the lawn for the blackbirds.

We have a large garden surrounded by tall deciduous hedges, our garden waste is variable, depending on what we're doing.

We have home-made compost containers.

[perkin]

Separating waste is very easy - we have a metal peelings container in the kitchen so general food waste goes in there while preparing meals. Any meat or fish (only occasional since there's only 1 meateater in the house) plus cooked food or potato peel gets wrapped in newspaper and goes into the green council bin with larger prunings and perennial weeds. The compost heaps are fuelled by torn egg boxes (our neighbours and friends collect more for us than we can ever use), grass clippings, loo and kitchen roll inners and contents of the dyson. Junk mail and other paperwork/envelopes are shredded, then used as chicken bedding and then put onto compost heap along with collections of chicken poop. The resulting compost is definitely better than it was pre-chickens!

[Speed Gardener]

I can't remember the last time I actually threw away anything that can be composted or used down the allotment. I have two council daleks at the bottom of the garden which take the daily kitchen veg bin contents and all the garden weedings/prunings. Anything large or woody either gets put through the shredder or burned in the old shopping trolley I keep at the allotment. The ash gets bagged up and spread around the fruit bushes in the autumn.
I've got six 330l, three 600l and four 500l council daleks at the allotment which stand in full sun and take care of manure and the leaves that I collect in bulk bags around the village in the autumn, plus a four compartment pallet compost bin that takes all the dead veg waste from the three plots.
Everything gets emptied out in the spring and bagged up for use in the gardenat home, or spread directly on the plots and dug in.
I also have a huge pile of weeds that gets dug out every couple of years and barrowed onto the areas that have sunk - the last time I did it, I filled 50 barrowfuls! I figure there are weed seeds everywhere anyway, so I'm not putting any more weeds out but the lovely rich soil they make is too good to waste.
The only weed I don't compost is the dreaded bindweed, that gets put into a blu drum under water until it rots and the resulting sludge is buried.
I think I'm a bit obsessed with composting but I love the idea of turning waste into something useful.
You can never have too much compost!!

[Nicos]

We have composted all uncooked fruit and veg waste ever since we got our first allotment over 20 years ago.It just seems madness not to!
A couple of years ago we started keeping hens and geese and initially it seemed really strange not chucking everything into the compost bin and selecting out the veg that they can eat.
Now I love watching the hens and geese tuck into some of the greens which would normally have gone into the compost.
We still produce a lot of compost though- all for free!!!!!

[jackie j]

I don't compost as much as I used to.

Our council provides a food waste collection service that can accept all food - cooked or otherwise. Our old compost caddy has become redundant in the process as we have become lazy and put all food waste in it, including things we'd previously composted - peelings, eggshells, teabags, that sort of thing.

The bin is collected once a week - I don't always get the chance to get to the allotment that frequently, so we've become lazy composters.

However, grass clippings, and garden cuttings still make their way to the plot as we also have green garden waste bags that stay outside.

Wow yours gets collected weekly !!!!! ours is fortnightly, landfill gets collected the other week.