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I'm no stranger to making compost. We have 2 wooden home made holders.
While one is composting down with the correct stuff, the other is being filled up. The compost is used for our raised beds and for plants.
This year has been a really good year and I've filled about 4 large rubble bags. Which are being stored in the greenhouse.
Do I wet these occasionally? Should I keep the bag open at the top?
Any other advice welcome.
The plan is to dig up more of our lawn and grow more edible stuff.
Wee on it. Or get NBT to do that.
Yeah leave them open at the top or poke holes in them. No need to wet them.
Onzadog - heehee. I have actually asked him, but he's not keen. Next door have cut their hedge back and there's a gaping hole, so I don't want any complaints. I on the other hand.....
Must be a record for STW as the thread has hit base level at only post one :0)
Must be a record for STW as the thread has hit base level at only post one :0)
Apparently it's really effective. They were talking about peeing on it on Gardeners Question Time the other day.
You can buy urea for compost.
I am trying to turn mine each month, and have decided to add sawdust to it as I have too much nitrogen. We have a 1.5m x 1.5m x 1m high pile of it at present - and it hasn't got going as well as last years which I managed to get more brown leaves in earlier.
I am tempted to put the lawnmower on the flat base and run all the leaves, current green compost and some handfulls of sawdust through to aerate and mix thoroughly....
Matt - you could try some brown cardboard. Its worked really well in ours.
I leave a pile of it next to the compost bin, to give the woodlice a head start, and then rip it up & chuck some in when its been rained on.
I've got 2 on the go and one being used. Decided that on balance it was better to be lazy and it take 12-18 months than to spend half my life digging it over!
You can buy urea for compost.
That's taking the piss.
I was too embarrassed to add to the what did you last male thread but I was pleased with my efforts to recycle a 5L muc off bottle, a bit of pipe and an old tube of silicone. Haven’t tried the compost yet but very convenient for a garden wee!
We also have a hot box but this has been attacked by vermin so can only use food that has first been in the bokshai bin for a couple of weeks. We compost everything this way and have really fertile soil for growing veg.
I have an allotment and compost everything that i cut with the strimmer, barring orrible stuff like mares tail, bindweed, etc.
What I normally do is get all the green stuff, mix it up, then add something which will kick start it heating up. I piss on it, and sprinkle blood fish and bone in it .
Make sure you get a good mix of green and brown, and what really helps is if you get the odd shovelfull of soil into it to inject fresh micro organisms now and then. I started off using John Seymours recipe and its held me in good stead.
What I do now as well is when im going through it and find bits which havent broken down so well, or have trouble heating it up, i lay a layer of fresh, steaming manure and bedding down, put the troublesome stuff in the middle, then build more manure on top, aiming to get the manure stack big enough so that its as tall as I am, and a pallet wide in each direction. Gravity will collapse it in time to next to nothing.
This then gets absolutely scorching, and anything in the middle will deteriorate very quickly due to the insulating effect of the straw/manure walls around it. I've put all manner of rubbish in it, corn stalks, cabbage stalks, twigs, bamboo canes, and all been digested to a beautiful crumbly loam in weeks, not months. Hope this helps. Not much better than a steaming compost heap on a cold winters day.