Homemade compost is so exciting! (MERGED)

hungrynurse_2

dido these, however if you were planning on putting it on beds, just spread it. Its slimy because its got too much water in it, if you spread this on the beds, the water will drain out as you mix it into the soil

arkonite_babe

We have a thread similar to this already, I'll add your query to it so all the replies are together. Posts are listed in date order so you'll need to read from the beginning to catch up

MrsChips

I emptied mine for the first time yesterday and got a full Grow Bag of very healthy looking Compost and 5 Potatoes!!! :T

Must Remember not to throw Potatoes in there in the future !!

kacie

I just bought a compost bin from recycle now looking forward to when it arrives and I can start making my own compost

tomsolomon

What I want to know is....
How is it possible to make enough compost to sustain a garden or allotment without adding anything from external sources?

I have had a compost bin for 2 years and it only just getting near full. I have put everything in there, and I mean everything apart from weeds, which I seem to have an awful lot of.
If I could manage to compost the weeds then I recon I would have somewhere near the amount of compost I needed, but there is the worry that any compost I make from weeds will end up back in the ground and continue the problem. And, if I get rid of all the weeds would I have enough organic material to compost?

Is there a way to do this without using animal dung or buying expensive compost from the garden centre?
Lets face it, most of our money goes on compost, does it not.

A._Badger

I wouldn't say most of my money goes on compost but you are absolutely right about the impossibility of making sufficient! I compost every scrap of material I can get my paws on, but I end-up with nothing like enough to go around.

Lotus-eater

John Seymour said that it is impossible to have a closed system without animals to provide waste products.
What he said was you can grow the best nutrient providing plants on your land return the crop via composting or another way to the land and every year the fertility will get worse.

You have to remember even in this closed type of loop, that is not what we have today, or what he was talking about. Our personal dung and urine leaves the premises, losing all the goodness we put into it at the same time.

We gain some from bought in vegetables, but only a tiny percentage of these go into our land via the trimmings in the compost heap.

So if we can get animal manure and bought in compost we can keep up the fertility of our land.
Other ways are not putting your urine down the toilet, but returning it to the land via fertiliser, compost heap, wood pile, leaf compost heap etc
Bringing in amounts of bulky vegetable material like nettles collected from hedgerows, leaves from anywhere you can get them.

Of course almost everyone used to do it via chemical fertilisers, but I hope we have now learnt our lesson about that.


Tom, I hope I have given a quick idea why you shouldn't beat yourself up for not making enough compost, it's virtually impossible and impractical to do so without external sources of material.

However you can compost annual weeds, perennial weeds you can either leave out to dry completely on a path etc, or drown in a tub of water for a couple of months, then you can use the water as a fertiliser as well. Beware however, this stinks, to my mind much more than my usual cocktail of comfrey, nettle and urine tea fertiliser.

tomsolomon

Thanks Lotus, I thought I might have been doing something wrong.

savemoney

Heck I aint got a big garden small lawn, and two small areas round the back and my bin gets full all time, I just emptied half of it a few weeks back and its half full now and it will be full in a few months.

I use garden waste lawn cuttings, some paper, egg shells, old compost, food waste (green stuff) I also use compost maker, just got some from Wilkos other week.

http://www.wilkinsonplus.com/invt/0135397

avantra

Some good advice here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jgzfj/Gardeners_World_Specials_2009_For_Peats_Sake/