Homemade compost is so exciting! (MERGED)

olibearhorse

oh I don't think it matters, just attracts mice and rats that's all so they are best avoided. I don't know the solution but I am sure if you wash your egg shells and avoid bread, you should see a difference. I never got any little visitors!

maow425

With the bread, would it help (or avoid the little visitors) if it's just all dry breadcrumbs?

olibearhorse

albeit very little knowledge but you shouldn't put any bread in a composter at all. I remember my Mum getting most upset when I tried to be helpful by putting crusts in the compost bin once, damn me! I have also read a little about it since then so veggy peelings, clean egg shells, grass cuttings, weeds, egg shell boxes, paper/cardboard only!!

katskorner

I have three compost bins at my allotment and one at home. I have all the neighbours grasscuttings from them (as long as they haven't been treated with weedkiller) and also use all my home veg waste and paper shreddings as well as teabags, eggboxes and shells. Great stuff. I rotate the boxes so I fill one (about 1.5 metres high) and cap it with grasscutting and an old carpet, then start the next. As the original rots down I move the boxes over the raise the height of the new one and then build that up. Then when number two is full, I start number three in the same way and by that time, number one is ready to use. I have about a foot and a half high of lovely compost in heap one to use this year (I am on year three of my allotment). At home I have a full bin and should really start shifting some of the bottom stuff onto my garden!

You can't beat it - but remember - buy compost to pot seedings up as it has been sterilised and will serve them better than homemade.

alanobrien

stefejb wrote: »

I think I've got a rat in mine exoh was turning it and something nasty scooted out - what to do?

We had one nesting in ours last year. This year i put a wire mesh at the bottom of it to try and keep them out. They like the warmth and the food source (depending what you put in it of course). Its also worth watering the heap now and again as that makes it uncomfortable for them.

squiggle37

i was thinking about a compost bin but i live next door to a chippy and !!!!!! and other smaller food shop rats put me off getting one, not that i have seen any rats in my gardens but have seen them behind the shops when i go to the bottom of the garden.

dianadors

Male urine is very good for accelerating the rotting process and apparantly the male "feramones" in in keeps the rats at bay

olibearhorse

I've heard that male wee is very good but I can't quite bring myself to ask my boyfriend to carry out that task, he has enough bad habits!

Squiggle 37 - I think you should give it a go, from the posts in this thread there are obviously successful ways to deter them.

I would feel so guilty now throwing good veg waste etc away, I even comtemplate bring old work teabags home with me (now that is sad!)

skyepark

i read somewhere that homemade compost cant be full of bacteria and disease, how can we make sure that our compost is good and wont damage our plants?

katskorner

Not sad at all! I have all the grass cutting from my neighbours.