Compost Corner!

[mothhawk]

I try not to compost too much paper or card as I think it's better to recycle it into new paper and card, but kitchen towels, tissues, and any paper that isn't clean enough to recycle goes in the dalek. As i don't have a shredder twiggy clippings are shoved under the hedge to dry out and eventually be friable enough to snap into little pieces, the leaves of perennial weeds go in, but not the roots, then pretty much everything else taken from the garden goes in and I don't fret over proportions and just give it a stir now and then.

Oh, and Baldy, this is GREEN and this is BROWN

[1Bee]

(I usually just hit "new posts" and rummage around, so I rarely know what board I'm on...

I need to work harder at getting enough browns in (mostly newspaper and card for me), keeping it moist enough and turning more often. Mines mostly kitchen waste because the weeds on my plot are still mostly perennial....

[Snoop Puss]

I have to admit, I never stir my compost. I can't manage it. The only thing I do is when I empty it, the uncomposted stuff goes in the next bin along or gets dumped at the bottom of the now empty bin. I have a dalek and two 250-litre olive barrels, and I still have sturdy stuff (aubergine plants, for example) tucked in behind. Even though I live essentially in a forest, I never collect leaf mould. Strictly forbidden by the forestry agents, and they do come and visit us every now and then.

[rary]

I bought six large stakable polystyrene boxes, the type used for shipping salmon, cut the bottom out of four of them and made a two boxes with them by running a bead of silicon sealant around the rim of one with the bottom in place, and built up with two bottomless frames, I actually lined the inside with thin polycarbonate sheets though not necessary, I filled up the first box with kitchen waste put the lid on it and have now started the second box, I think I will make individual retaining box's for them from pallets, to keep the lids tight they need a bit of weight on them as on their own the wind can lift them off

[1Bee]

Why is that, Snoop? I mean the forbidden leaves...

[bikermike]

I compost all kitchen raw veg peelings, teabags, coffee grounds etc (except citrus fruit - bad for worms) and all garden waste except perennial weeds.

I've got a dalek at the house, I don't ever turn it, I just shovel out of the bottom hatch once a year. Seems to be good stuff. I reckon I get about half a dalek out of it on the back of kitchen waste and lawn mowings.

One slight wrinkle is that the allotment has marestail, so I don't put any roots/peelings with earth on in the garden compost bucket. I don't know if that's an issue for you.

I've never had a problem with potato peelings, but I generally don't peel them, just scrub them

I've now got a heap at the plot too - I've just turned it for the first time, looks OK, but it's too early to tell.

re browns and greens
leafy stuff, grass etc is green, as is vegetable peelings etc.
brown is woody stuff and cardboard.

It's the Berkely method that specifies proportions, but in general it will all rot down eventually - but brown takes longer, and without brown you don't get as nutritious compost. I generally aim for more green that brown. We have a wisteria that we prune back in February, and I put the prunings through the shredder and keep those to one side to add over the year to the heap (eg after putting in a load of grass clippings).

Oh, and wine corks take ages to compost down - which means you end up putting them back and back until your compost makes you look like a wino...

[Snoop Puss]

Why is that, Snoop? I mean the forbidden leaves...

Well, what's good for the veg patch is good for the trees. They made the leaves, they get to keep them and their goodness is the thinking. Plus, it's surprising how much damage people can do to the local environment when digging for leaf mould. All the moss and undergrowth keeps relative humidity up, reducing the risk and impact of forest fires.

It's different in towns and cities, where wet leaves all over the road and pavement are a hazard.

[sparrow100]

I have a small family of daleks lurking around the plot, and now I have a bit more space (yippee!!) I am going to build a pallet-style thingummy. But that will be for filling as a horse poo reserve - you can never have too much!

I stick nearly all my weeds and dead plants/trimmings into the daleks, roughly 50/50 with card/manure/shredded paper/spent hops to give it the browns. Select kitchen waste (no citrus, no animal products) goes in too, including potato peelings. Anything big & woody is burned and I shove a couple of handfuls of the ash into the daleks too. I have a hotbin that gets very steamy when full, but is a bit of a chore to keep full. In summer the compost heats & happens pretty quickly, more so if I stir it with a garden fork - good exercise for bingo wings. It comes out pretty fine - if I could see a potato peeling it would get sent back into the bin for more time to decmpose. I get 330-500L compost/year this way and I mix my own potting compost from it, based on a third each of dalek compost, leafmould and mature horse poo. I don't use coffee grounds anymore, just because I am unsure whether the remaining caffeine would stunt the growing plants.

My seed compost is often just sieved leafmould.

Does that help at all or just add more murk to the mysteries of compost-making?

[Baldy]

^^^ all good...

[bikermike]

when turning my heap at the plot, I found dry grass and leaves in it... how on earth does that work? shows why giving it a good stir and a prod helps though

[jonahjonah]

I will be interested to hear how everyone is managing their compost. We inherited pallet-based compost bins that are rapidly falling apart. They had some bits in but no proper compost (this was last summer). I've heaped so much in there over the last year just to get it out of the way while clearing the ground. Definitely too much brown, dry, woody material.

I'm trying to move it around a bit more this year (as much as possible without knocking the whole system down). I'm also adding kitchen waste and more green bits. Perennial weed roots are being drowned with the intent to put them in the compost. I'm not patient and thorough, though, so I keep chucking lots of too-large things in. I'm scavenging for a suitable additional compost holder, which I will try to be more diligent about filling properly.

[bikermike]

I'd not get too worried about it, if you pile stuff up you will get compost of some form if you leave it long enough.

The techniques are all about getting it better. It won't fail if you don't do them. The drawbacks with not chopping stuff up are that it takes longer to do and it's a sod to shovel. When you come to use it, just put the big uncomposted bits back (and break them up a bit if you have time).

IMO, the main thing is getting all the stuff that can go in there in there. Don't forget also that in winter you will get more brown than green as nothing is growing that much. A couple of loads of grass-clippings will bring the balance round.

That being said, I inherited some compost this year with the plot which looks absolutely amazing. So I'm going to mulch all the edge beds with it, and pretend I made it

[jonahjonah]

The excess brown material was a function of starting to pile things in late in the year. It has broken down a bit even with the lack of care. I mostly just want to create some free, absolutely amazing looking mulch in a timely manner.

[ESBkevin]

Size is important - there I said it. A good large mass of compost will heat up and kill just about anything from weed seeds, dandlion roots, potato peelings etc. But a recommended 3ft x 3 ft is just too big for some peoples garden space. Daleks can get nice and hot in the summer and still do the same.

I too tear up anything paper with my name on it for the compost, Including those stick on lables from the pharmacy, junk mail, envelopes, odd invoices or delivery notes etc. I shred my leafy hedge trimmings and bag them to mix with all the grass clippings during the summer. I add brown corrugated cardboard as applicable and I've managed to get some coffee grounds from a supermarket cafe which I add in from time to time. I also accumulate sawdust and wood shavings when I make stuff from pallet wood, it's not ideal but again I sprinkle some in from a bag everytime I add lawn clippings. I really do gather lots of material and have done for years. My soil (formerly Heavy Clay) is now crumbly and frieble and I already have spare compost to start the summer with as well as creating more.
once you are ahead of the curve and have a stock of compost the need to turn/mix becomes less so I am less particular and the workload goes down.

In the end Mother nature is clever enough to fix pretty much anything I mess up.

[Cadalot]

Making Compost makes me



I have been collecting Browns all over winter see Alans Allotment: Tip & Trick Shredded Paper

My brother-in-law turned up on the door with a huge woven sack of grass. The grass was already cooking in the sack and I had nowhere to put it and I really needed to get it down to the allotment and in the Dalek, so on the basis that I've been playing catch up with work on the wet weekend and evenings it seemed only right that I goof off for an hour and take it down to the allotment.

Multi layered with two and a half food buckets about 25 litres of shredded paper as browns and all watered down as it was laid, the Dalek that I have just emptied is now about half full of what will become some wonderful compost in about a years time.

I sprinkle coffee grounds on top of the grass and I also water with diluted Liquid Gold as an activator but as I say the grass was cooking.

I have a couple of Dalek armies and currently have 14 of them.



And once I have the new plot sorted I will be growing Green Manure each year in beds between different types of vegetable families some for cut and cover for the worm to take into the soil and some for the Daleks as greens.