Best and cheapest compost?

wellused

How do the councils process their compost, I only ask because due to the wet weather and upsetting some allotmenteers with my smokey bonfire I had to resort to putting my allotment perennial weed roots in my brown bin. Do the council compost the waste so as to kill the roots of docs, bindweed, and couch grass?

SailorSam

I don't know about them being the best, probably not but last year i think i paid £2 for 40ltr at Lidl, and 3 bags of 40ltr for £10 at Asda.

foxgloves

I buy whatever's the best offer from local garden centre (prefer peat free, but admit I don't always buy it if it's a lot mroe expensive). I mix it with our own home-made compost, which I sieve first. I find this cuts costs well. I wouldn't sow tiny seeds in it.....though I have successfully used this mix for bigger seeds such as peas, beans, squash, etc.

Pixiechic

A B and Q club card!!! I will definitely get one and try to take advantage of the 20% off days, great idea, thanks.

I am definitely going to start to making my own compost too

I am a bit concerned as to what is in the council bags of compost, I don't really want to be bringing all sorts of things into my garden! I wonder what others experience has been like with it?

My local garden centre do have 'offers' but not really that much of a bargain. They just can't really compete with the bigger shops I am afraid.

B and Q with a loyalty card on discount days with highly rated compost seems to be the way to go!

Thanks everyone

foxgloves

Re council compost....I've never used it. The theory is that composting garden waste on a big scale will mean that the compost gets to much higher temperatures so that weed seeds, etc, will be killed. We have 5 compost 'dalek-type' bins plus a worm composter so we don't throw out much garden waste. However, the stuff we do chuck out is very much the stuff we wouldn't compost ourselves.....roots of pernicious weeds which spread, ground elder, tough woody stuff where diameter is too wide to go through our shredder, etc. If most people are chucking away similar 'baddies', I'd want to know that council compost is reaching a high temperature before using it, but maybe that's just us.

floss2

COuncil compost is excellent to use as soil improver, or for more "robust" plants, but I wouldn't use it for seeds or seedlings as it will be a bit too rich & lumpy.

Our council compost is £1.50 a bag, and is great for BNS and pumpkins.

Leif

wellused wrote: »

How do the councils process their compost, I only ask because due to the wet weather and upsetting some allotmenteers with my smokey bonfire I had to resort to putting my allotment perennial weed roots in my brown bin. Do the council compost the waste so as to kill the roots of docs, bindweed, and couch grass?

As foxgloves said, they are supposed to compost at a high temperature thus killing weeds. I had a huge pile of green waste at the bottom of my garden, 1m high and 2m across, and when I turned it, the inside looked like ash, smoked like a fire, and was too hot to touch comfortably. In my case not all the compost got to a high temperature, so some weeds would not have been killed.

Leif

Shop around. One local garden centre has 180L of Westland compost (3 bags) for about £10. It is peat free, I avoid peat.

DaftyDuck

Just to add my two pennyworth.

Aldi and Lidl compost is cheap and fine. They have seen & potting compost in at the moment , at £1.49 for 20 litres. It's quite fine and well-blended, well suited to starting things off, and isn't prone to moulds as much as the heavier Homebase and B&Q compost, both of which seem to have chunks of unrotted wood in them. (This year, Homebase compost appears to be much heavier, less well milled, and has a higher unrotted organic level... they have a (?)Plus version that's meant to be superior for a few pence more.... None of the bags were split, so I couldn't investigate without being a vandal )

Aldi/Lidl is also easier to deal with in the smaller bags, carting to the car, and around the garden.

Aldi & Lidl should soon have their standard compost bags, which are normally £1.99 for 40 litres (last year's price... possibly up this year). It is also good, but does benefit from a little (only a little!) inorganic compost.

A money saving tip is to save last year's compost and growbags, and stick it in a compost Dalek, or back in a bag with holes in, if you have less of it. Stick it in there with a little inorganic fertiliser (nitrogen rich is best for this... even the pound shop muck works wonders..) and ideally a bit of organic enrichment (you can buy buckets of chicken poo which are ideal). Mix it over winter, and by now you'll have compost that's superb. You can even mix about 25% garden soil to improve drainage. It's not ideal for seedlings (too much risk of die-back), but great for potting on.

Asda do "professional" compost in bags and growbags. Yuck! Horrible stuff, in my opinion, prone to moulds and nutrient-poor. I may have had a duff batch last year. I think many stores change supplier year on year, and the drive to remove peat from compost doesn't help consistency, even if it helps keep Eire beautiful :A! I've never found a Council's "soil improver" to improve anything except their bank balance; others may have had more luck.

For inorganic fertilisers, Wilko are selling Phostrogen 1kg plus 50% free for £4:50, which seems to be a best price. Asda are selling Miracle Gro for £4 for a kilogram, and that's the best price I've seen. Pound shops sell 750g for .... a pound (wonders never cease to surprise!). I've not used it, so can't comment.

A._Badger

Ugh! I've long thought Which? tests.... um.... idiosyncratic... but if they seriously believe that J. Arthur Bowers compost is usable for seed sowing then they must have utterly lost the plot!

20 years ago, JAB was a good reliable product. recent years have seen the anti-peat crusade and general penny-pinching turn it into something I wouldn't even want to use to top-up my raised beds, let alone sow fine seeds in!

Not that this year's B&Q (aka Verve) is much to shout about. As a previous commenter said, it has chunks of wood and other undigested materials in it.

In previous seasons on this forum some people have said the only way to ensure a good mix is to make your own. I've resisted this due to pressure of time but I'm coming round to that point of view. The commercial mixes are becoming unusable.