1. What have you found the best type of bin to use?
2. What do you put in it?
3. Do you turn your compost?
4. How long do you have to wait for something decent to come out of the other end?
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Pip at Home |
Setting up a composting system |
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I definately need to get myself organised with composting. At the moment I do not have a compost heap at all. What I need to know is:
1. What have you found the best type of bin to use? 2. What do you put in it? 3. Do you turn your compost? 4. How long do you have to wait for something decent to come out of the other end?
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Laura Penstemon |
#1 | |||
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Well blow me down with a feather
I have found wooden slatted compost systems to be the best. Have three, then you can rotate them.. Trouble is you will need loads of stuff to fill that
many, so maybe one or 2??
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scissorhands |
#2 | |||
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I have 4 wooden bins 2 daleks (black plastic bins) and an Anderson shelter.
I agree with Pens the wooden ones are my favourite. I dont routinely turn but in effect I do as I take the top off them and put them in an empty bin when I want to get at the good stuff underneath or all my bins are full (like now) and I need to create space. I do this about twice a year with everything but the Anderson shelter which I do rarely. The compost is no worse for not being turned it just takes longer to decompose |
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mammaj |
#3 | |||
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Well having the space I just chuck everything in a huge mound & once it's gone down dig thru the top & hoick out the underneath stuff but I
don't suppose that's of much use to you. I don't know why people don't add stable/farmyard manure to their heaps surely they'd rot down
quicker? I chuck the fresh stuff in, it keeps everything moist. I find that mine does tend to sit there over the dry months but from the start of autumn it
goes down enormously so perhaps you could wet yours if it gets dry. I've only recently started composting everything as I can have as much as I want of
farm manure but to do my bit for the landfill I've started recycling everything so all rottable stuff wings it's way to the end of the garden! I do get
a lot of weed seedlings tho & I beleve that a really hot heap should kill them off
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Jean78 |
#4 | |||
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I use red worms and they get through a lot of un-rotted stuff - I have 2 blackplastic bins 'dalek' style but years ago I had 14 bins as I sold the red
worms to fishermen and had 2 x 175ft gardens
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Pip at Home |
#5 | |||
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It seems that people with larger plots tend to do composting more successfully from what has been said here. My problem is that I don't have a great deal
of 'soft' garden waste, apart from grass cuttings and I generate two large binfuls of these a week during the summer and one a fortnight throughout the
winter. As I live by myself I don't get much kitchen waste and I don't have a newspaper.
I'm definately bothered by the weeds MammaJ. You are talking to someone who laid their new front border fallow for six months to make sure all the perennial weeds were killed before they started planting I rather like the idea of using worms. I seem to remember someone having a wormery. Was it Lass?
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bilnrobn |
#6 | |||
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Compost heaps take too long, need turning and it's hard work, sometimes smelly and (here at least), flies breed in them. If they are available in UK buy a
big compost tumbler. If used properly you avoid all of the above. We have compost in two weeks. (It might take a bit longer in your colder climate, but ours
does work through our mild winters almost as quickly as the warm summers. Outside temperature doesn't seem to make a lot of difference.) The turning is
done via crank handle once every day or two. Try to get one on a stand that your wheelbarrow can fit under. When it is ready you just wheel the barrow under
it, take off the lid and rotate it half a turn. Compost is in the barrow ready to wheel around the garden to where you want it. There is no way I would make
compost any other way. We have used them since, I think, the late 80s.
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Pip at Home |
#7 | |||
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Sounds fantastic Bill. Just looked on the internet and seen just the thing - barrow fits underneath - 14 day turn around and only £345. They do give you a
free instruction manual though
I looked here - http://www.harrodhorticultural.com/HarrodSite/product/Composting_Compost%20tumblers/GCO-185.htm Obviously I haven't scoured the internet at the moment to find one that fits my pocket but is this the type of thing you are talking about?
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Christine Ann |
#8 | |||
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We hd one of those once but couldn´t get it to work properly, may be we didn´t turn it enough.
Three wooden slatted bins for us. Must rush as I´m running out of computer time
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bilnrobn |
#9 | |||
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The top one Pip. Ours is poly plastic and that one appears to be metal, but that isn't a problem; our first one was sheet metal and I thought it would rust
out but it lasted for about 15 years. The one in the lower picture would be more work to empty as you can't get your wheelbarrow under it.
From my experience, people who say they don't work don't understand how to use them. The thing you don't do is just keep adding stuff to it. The correct way to use them is to do your pruning and lawn mowing at all more or less at the same time. We munch our prunings which speeds the process somewhat. You don't want a very dry or very wet mix. Lawn clippings are good, but you need other stuff with it as clippings on their own clump together and you don't get the air circulation you need. We use no more than half full of grass clippings and the rest munched or cut up prunings, maybe a bit of sawdust or shredded newspaper and a small quantity of some manure of some sort, natural or artificial to act as a starter. If you have comfrey that is a good starter too. With each subsequent batch leave a little of the old batch behind as that helps get the new batch going as well. Kitchen scraps of course are also good. You can add more while the mix is still hot, a few days at most. Give the drum about five rotations once a day to start with. Later in the cycle once every second day seems enough. But don't add more material. You should have good compost ready to use in a fortnight or so.
Last Edited By: bilnrobn 04-07-33 21:10.
Edited 1 time.
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Mrs Muggleton |
#10 | |||
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We've got a "beehive" style bin that we made ourselves and it works a treat. We get compost fairly regularly - 2 -3 times a year maybe, which is
fine it never fills up even when you think you've run out of space! We put everything in it except cooked food (the RHS adviser said this was a bad idea as
it attracted vermin). We put torn up cardboard in ours too, and cut flowers. I don't put much "woody" stuff in it, that goes in the green
dustbin.
Edit to say we never turn it! Good luck with it Pip |
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