Compost-a-poll

[Glutton4...]

We separate our rubbish as we go. Mr.G hoards the aluminium, and twice a year he takes it to a merchant in exchange for Beer tokens. Glass goes to the bottle bank when I get fed up falling over it. Paper gets shredded and composted. Plastic cartons and tubs get reused as pots/weights/waterers/bird scarers..., the remainder gets collected by the Council, if and when they can manage it (don't go there...).

Our local Council occasionally do offers on Composters and possibly Wormeries, and all households were given a useful Kitchen Caddy, which gets used for collecting compostable leftovers and transporting to the Composter. I have a second, which gets used for food scraps that my little feathered velociraptor friends happily devour. But don't tell anyone, as you're now not supposed to do that!

As for a daily amount, I couldn't actually calculate that, sorry. But I have two large bins (think 4' x 3' x 3'), one of which is full and the other just filling. These also contain horse manure, grass mowings, garden rubbish and Hen house bedding.

[susieq100]

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

Very easy - do it as we 'go along'.

The Council provides us with 3 different wheelie bins and a box.
The green bin is for household waste that cannot be recycled.
The brown bin is for garden and vegetable/food waste.
The blue bin is for plastics, tins and bottles.
The box is for newspapers.
We also have 3 daleks in the garden and I have a compost heap at the plot, although I would like a dalek there. I am currently using a black plastic dustbin with holes in the bottom for quick composting and it has been extremely good but not big enough.

I empty my daleks every spring and add the contents to the raised beds and beds around the edges of the garden. Been doing this for the past 4 years - they have made an incredible difference to the quality of the soil ... I can now actually grow stuff! I also use lawn clippings to mulch and to mold up over potatoes that I have growing in odd locations. They break down and improve the soil too.

[Dazy]

Council provides
Green wheelie - general household - fortnightly collection
Brown wheelie - compostables - wkly collection
green/brown/black boxes - paper/plastic-metal/glass - wkly collection

1 Dalek in garden
green waste, chicken doings, paper etc

In Kitchen
I caddy for veggie peelings - for dalek
3 stacking bins to collection appropriate glass, paper etc
1 household rubbish bin

Gave me the hump when council started all this and I still question just how green this method actually is, considering the amount of bin trucks that are now trundling around our roads and the boost given to the plastics industry with all these bins. Rarely use the council brown bin, mostly put green waste in dalek, I empty this in the autumn burying it under my raised beds. Recycling has become second nature and even grandkids know which bin to use without asking now, think I would be uncomfortable returning to the old ways of just chucking everything

[TallGirl]

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.

Carbon-rich material locks up nitrogen as it breaks down (I guess the nitrogen is locked up in the bodies of the decomposers). Which is possibly why my neighbour's beans were looking very pale and yellow until they got going; the bed had a lot of pretty raw sawdust in it. I'm guessing that by now, maybe the roots have got past the sawdust layer, or managed to co-opt in some nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

Some green manures as they decay release compounds that quote unquote inhibit the germination of seeds, especially small ones. Seem to remember that grazing rye is particularly bad for this. So IIRC the advice was to either dig them in well before, or follow on with a transplanted crop.

The other thing about a compost bin is that by turning it, you get more oxygen into the mix, so you get aerobic decay rather than anaerobic decay (as in landfill). Aerobic decay releases CO2; anaerobic decay releases methane, which is about 20x as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2. I don't know to what extent you'd get aerobic/anaerobic breakdown dug lightly into the soil though. Dig up after a few weeks and see how slimy and smelly it is or isn't?

[DigChop]

I have a 'peelings' bin in my kitchen for used tea bags, coffee grounds, egg shells and raw vegetable waste, excluding citrus peelings. This all goes into the compost bin (the sort that you turn on a central axle and appears to decompose matter quite quickly and effortlessly). Grass clippings, egg boxes, toilet roll tubes and some confidential paper waste also goes into the bin, however I'm rather hesitant about weeds, as I don't know which might lead to weeds in the compost. For the latter I have a brown bin that Kent Councty Council charges 36 pound per year to have, and which has a fortnightly collection.

[robD]

Two daleks here, both bought at a reduced price from the council. Builders bucket outside against the fence so that my neighbours can throw their green waste into it along with mine. Takes a year to rot down, so only use it once a year. Although Sheffield council collect all the green waste in the City, they do not sell the compost back to the residents which I think is a shame.

They do collect it, but it's easier and much quicker to just take it to the tip ;>)

The good news is that they do sell it back to us though - it's processed by Green Estates and you can buy it at £1 a bag on certain dates (they provide the bag and shovel!). It's a bit twiggy but at a quid a bag it's well worth it, and still a few more dates left:

Green Estate - Sheffield Based regeneration organistion

[Thelma Sanders]

Here all the kitchen peelings go in a small bin in the kitchen and then up to the daleks on the plot. Plain cardboard & toilet roll inside get taken up there as well, along with lawn clippings and unseedy weeds.
Our council collects glass/newspapers/tin cans weekly from a blue bin at the same time as the household rubbish(black sack collection)
Anything nasty from the plot has to go home and into the black sack.

[Dynamo]

I compost all the stuff at my lottie in my big home made bins. I used to take kitchen scraps and other stuff from home to the lottie but I can't be bothered doing that very often. I think I need a big compost bin at home too.

[ginger ninger]

With limited space (My garden is only 16ft by 18ft) I compost/re-cycle as much as possible. Our council provide us with all the bins we could ever need...and for free I might add, also free water butts.
So far I have...
1 Large Gray wheelie bin for house hold waste (None compost stuff).
1 Large Green wheelie bin for cardboard, garden waste, wood etc...
1 Small Brown wheelie bin for plastic bottles, drinks cans, food tins, cleaning produce plastic bottles (bleach, fabric softener etc).
1 Blue wheelie bin for news papers, shredded paper, envelopes.
1 Water butt.

Once a year the council give away bags of compost on a first come first served...limited to 3 bags per car. The bags contain 50ltr.
My dalek compost bin is currently on loan to my neighbour, but I pass some of my waste over the fence for him to compost. I'd made so much compost over the years, I was having to resort to giving it away. I'm in the process of saving for a wormery now. It's a shame the council don't do these for free. My veg peeling, old bread, kitchen scraps go to a friends chickens...in return she let's me have eggs, which I recycle into lemon curd and cakes.

[Dynamo]

I've just ordered two 330 litre bins from Evergreener in conjunction with the local council. the first cost £18 and the second was half price.

I also checked out when the council are giving away soil improver. Every little helps on my lottie because the soil is pretty poor.

[planetologist]

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.

Sorry for the slow reply, have been travelling. I either use fresh material that should have a relatively low C:N ratio, or if it's high in browns I add liquid gold. The plants look happy, but I haven't done any comparison tests.

[Mulchkin]

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

We do not have a kitchen bin any more, but we do have 5 litre composting bin. That was a conscious decision as it's a pain to have to go and put rubbish in the outside bin, so everything we can possible pop into our little compost bin the better!

How much do you use in the garden again?

We will use all of it on our veg patch, but it's our first year so none yet! The compost that is a few months old is lovely and crumbly now so next year we will hopefully have a lot of quality compost to use.

Does your council provide discounted compost bins or wormeries?

Not that we know of, but this has got me thinking that I need to investigate! :-)

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

About 1-2 litres a day. We have 2 composters in the veg patch at the top of the garden - one 'dalek' type and one metre square wooden one.

[Piggle]

I have four compost bins - a delek at home and three bodged together heaps at the allotment which I tend to stand in and turn in case wildlife has set up home. I also have a wormery going at home as wellwhich is an endless source of amusement to my husband.
I love it it's like magic - garbage in .. good stuff out.

[Dynamo]

I also have a wormery going at home as wellwhich is an endless source of amusement to my husband.
I love it it's like magic - garbage in .. good stuff out.

I have a couple of home made wormeries, but I don't think they work very well, so I'm planning on getting a proper one sometime soon.

In the meantime, the two dalek type compost bins arrived today. I thought there was only one, but then I found that one was sat on top of the other one and neither had a bottom in them lol. If it doesn't rain too much tomorrow, I'm gonna blitz my back garden and get them set up. I reckon I ought to about half fill one of them with weeds that are in the garden right now lol.

[Jo Sara]

I have one dalek that we got free from our council a couple of years ago. It's quite a large one, and as I've only got a small garden it's taken quite a while for compost to actually start happening in there (the whole 2 years since I've had the bin, to be precise), but we chuck all our green waste in when we have some, so it's gradually filling up. I reckon it's just over a third full after 2 years, but the base is huge, so it'll fill up quicker as I get into the narrowing bit. I will eventually use some of the compost I've created on my small veg bed, while trying to keep enough in there to keep the composting process going.