i want to make compost!

Linda32

We have had a family of mice in our allotment bin. I saw them all run out one day so I know there was a lotof them. I thought it was just nature and something you can not do anything about.

we have a few living in our garden as well. They pinch the bird food :rotfl:

Mark_G

have a look at this website, lots of useful info... http://www.askorganic.co.uk/homecomposting.htm

stumpycat

If your council collect garden waste, they may make & sell compost. Ours charges 50p a bag - you bring the bag & it doesn't matter what size it is, as long as you can take it away. I won a ton of the stuff in a competition - that's about a cubic metre and it's amazing how quickly it disappears into a garden.

As everyone has said, it's amazing how much garden matter makes so little compost. It's like when you cook spinach...
I have chickens & their poo & bedding goes into the compost bins & really speeds up the whole process. I'm sure if you found someone local to you they'd be more than happy to let you take some.

I've got really sandy soil, but in places where the chickens tend to compact it, I've mixed in a couple of bags of cheap cat litter - just the grit, not anything fancy. I'm sure someone will pop up & tell me it's terrible, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!
If you read up on soil structure, you want to have a balance of gravel/small stones; sand; clay; silt & loam (organic stuff)
So you might want to increase the sand & gravel as well as adding compost - asking on Freecycle/Freegle can be great. We got a whole big sandpit's worth of sand from a children's playground which was being resurfaced! :j

Mojisola

stumpycat wrote: »

We got a whole big sandpit's worth of sand from a children's playground which was being resurfaced!

Sandpit sand is usually soft sand rather than the sharp sand you need to improve drainage. Adding it a clay soil could make things worse.

Evil_Olive

Agreed, compost on it's own won't improve the soil structure - you need to dig in some sharp sand (it's pretty cheap from builders merchants) to improve the drainage.

It's not clear from your first post whether your soil is wet because it's clay or just 'boggy'? Treatment is slightly different for each of the two. The soil in my last garden was heavy clay so I feel your pain. If it is clay, the tips below might help.....
(If it's clay you'll be able to roll it into long threads which will bend into a ring without breaking and it will 'polish' if rubbed lightly with your thumb.)

For clay, just compost won't cut it, you'll need thick layers of unrotted manure plus sharp sand. Digging in fresh straw can also help if you baulk at the idea of manure . It might take a few years to get it decent. 'Double Digging' and incorporating sand and manure/straw into the bottom layer really works - I did this in my last garden - but it is definitely NOT for the faint hearted!

Treading on the soil a lot or digging/working it when it's too wet can destroy it's structure further so treat it carefully.

The good news is that clay soils are very nutrient rich and, though it takes plants a bit longer to get established, once they do, they tend to do much better than on lighter soil types. It's also brilliant for root veg. Clay soils tend to have an acid PH so aren't any good for plants that need alkali soil. (most plants like slightly acid soil but if you want clematis or geraniums get some pots )

If it's boggy rather than just clay, very few things grow well in boggy soil.
Sometimes it's just due to a high water table - not a lot you can do there. You can try the sand but if that doesn't cut it then it's a case of either choosing plants which like wet soil (bog and waterside plants) or more drastic treatment involving some construction - putting in artificial drainage pipes/gravel trenches/soakaways and the like unfortunately. You can test for this by digging a two foot deep hole in the winter - if water soon fills it, you might need artificial drainage.

If you go the raised bed route, you'll need a LOT of compost to fill it and will need to continually top it up as it rots down. Purchased top-soil would be better but very expensive. I've found that plants never do as well in a raised bed but I've only had much smaller ones than yours - bigger might be better.