Topic: Compost is King!

[GeeGee]

To be honest I had never even heard of a bokashi bin until I started researching composting and compost bins in general.

I personally do not have a bin in my kitchen, cos my beloved little springer and sealyham would be forever in it and spreading its contents around the house!  :o  :)

When I found these bokashi bins I thought, now that's an ideal, small enough not to take over the whole kitchen, supposedly doesn't smell and has a tight lid that can't be pushed off by some naughty little dog's nose!  :)

Also, and this was one of my big tick pluses for getting a bokashi bin, it meant that the OH might actually use it. At the moment trying to get him to recycle or separate any form of rubbish is like trying to push water up a hill in the rain!  ;D

[gp.girl]

Digaroo/DenbyVisitor
Whilst they do indeed keep the material inside warm, they do not allow oxygen into them - shape of and lack of ventilation. This results in killing off all the little microbes etc that actually do all the hard work of breaking down the various material into beautiful compost. Ah poor little things they end up being suffocated, through lack of oxygen - in effect murdered!  :o  :o  :o  ;D

This, apparently, is why the material turns into a stinking, slimy mess instead of the beautiful compost that the gardener is hoping for.

Had one for 6 years and it's totally lacking in the stinking slimy mess department and unless the worms, slug and ants have their own air supplies in there...... Thinking about it the 3 foot snake was looking very lively too  :)

Compost isn't grade A more B-C but they eat anything including bindweed and dandilions, won't try the japanese knot weed though  :(

[GeeGee]

lottie lou, please forgive my ignorance, but what on earth are 'swill bins'? I have heard of them for feeding pigs. Are they anything like that? If so are your council mad? I can't think of anything worse than a bin full of used scraps just outside the house, especially in the summer.  :o

If this is the case either your council are total loop loops or they must have devised some kind of secure bin system to prevent the likes of foxes and rodents getting in.

I think if you had rats you would've seen them by now, bad eyesight or not. I can assure you I am as blind as a bat. However, even without my glasses on or contacts in (neither of which I can find if I don't put them down in the exact same place everytime) I can spy a spider! I may not know for sure it is a spider but its like I have some homing device or in built radar that say 'spider alert'!  :o

[GeeGee]

gp-girl!!!!  :o

Ohhhh! I can just imagine my OH's face if he found a snake in a compost bin!  ;D How on earth did it get in a delek?

He kills the spiders for me and I kill the snakes and wasps for him.  :)

Perhaps there are several designs of delek and some are better than others? Don't know. How long does your compost take to 'cook'?

[lottie lou]

Think I read that it is illegal to take waste from home to the allotment for composting.  Also cannot take home composted material to lottie and has to be used in own garden.   As stated, directed due to the foot and mouth I think.

[lottie lou]

Should NEVER kill spiders - takes a minute off your life if you do.  My house is full of em but on the plus side, no flies.

[gp.girl]

I jumped!!! But looked back quick as I like all creepy crawlies unless they eat the plants.

The bottom of the bin is totally open so I guess it just slithered in. The composter was half full and lovely and warm in the top. Disappeared very quickly too though I have no idea where it went as its in the raised bed on the allotment. They are basic ones, cone, lid and little door at the bottom. Cheap from the council as west sussex are very keen on composting.

I fill mine all winter, spring and summer (the compost drops down constantly so there is room for more each week) then dig or tip them out late Autumn to mulch the beds. Drying out stops the process so a bucket full of water goes if nessesary. Because they are in the beds quite a lot of goodness gets taken up by the plants directly, ie potatos by the composter are bigger than the ones further away. I don't get a lot of compost out of each one but they cover a bed each with ok if earthy compost. Anything live, or uncomposted gets thrown back in for another go and if it does get missed it's very easy to weed out.

The home one is never emptied and never seems to need it but it's mostly vegetable peelings and paper/card to get the mix right. The worm population in it is unbelievable ;D and very active. Never had rats although the neighbours had the pest controllers in twice for 'pet food storage issues' and thats just over the fence.

Tried the pallet method but its not good for perenial weeds like bindweed, couch grass, dandelions and bramble (chop it into small bits) the b!£$%^s just grew  :-[ Unfortunately that's most of my weeds.

Should NEVER kill spiders - takes a minute off your life if you do.  My house is full of em but on the plus side, no flies.

I'm going to live a long time. Do you have a favourite? I've got a lovely one in the bathroom!

Think I read that it is illegal to take waste from home to the allotment for composting.  Also cannot take home composted material to lottie and has to be used in own garden.   As stated, directed due to the foot and mouth I think.

I don't do this anyway but lots of other people down the allotments do, although foot and mouth is not never has been and in fact cannot be spread by vegetable peelings so thats another stupid rule to be ignored if its real. Meats a different matter of course.

[lottie lou]

Sorry all I know about the "swill bins" is that Wolverhampton Council issued them to their householders last year and caused a ruckus and our council is rolling them out this September.  Have no idea how often they will be collected and actually no householder as far as I am aware has been given any information on them.   The only information I have had is via the local free rag, a piece by a councillor supporting them.  We are to receive 2 bins, one for indoors and the other outside to be collected.  I think the contents are to be sent to Staffordshire or somewhere to be made into bio fuel.  I don't know whether we actually just put in the veg peelings etc that I normally bung in my daleks or whether we are supposed to put in cooked food, oils and bones.

At the present time I use an old pan on the worktop to put in veg peelings, tea bags, etc and regularly take them to the compost bin.  If we are supposed to put in cooked food into these new bins I will consider trying out the home made bokashi starter.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I've never had compost in a bin turn into anything nasty yet. I just shove in all the weeds I dig out, leave them till the following spring, and pick out anything still alive as I empty them. Survivors - there are very few, mainly large docks - go back in for further torture. It's not all totally rotted down, but who cares? I mulch the spuds with it, cover it with grass cuttings to deal with weed seeds, and the potatoes love it.

[cornykev]

I have about 6 Daleks on the go and have always had good compost out of them, a good mixture of dead flowers, tea bags, veggie peelings (not spuds), most weeds, scrunched or shredded paper, ash, pee, nettles, comfy, hair, lawn mowing's, toilet roll tubes, etc.
Keep a good mixture and turn once a week with a fork to let some air circleate.  ;D

[Digeroo]

Two grass snakes in lottie compost bin yesterday.

We have had curbside collection of food waste (swill bins) for sometime now (two years).  Not a big issue.  Veg waste goes in one container along with a few torn up cardboard packets and then out in the garden dalek.  Meat, bones, spud peelings in the other then wrapped in newspaper and out weekly in the swill bin.  Rubbish only collected fortnightly but there is nothing in it that smells in fact not much in it at all. 

My OH fills home compost bin with grass clippings and it makes a terrible green smelly mess.  I do try and mix in cardboard and weeds.   But plants certainly do not mind it and it soon sorts itself out when it is buried.  Courgettes love a great big dollup of green slime.  When it is dug the following year you can see the remains of the courgette roots spreading through the stuff and it just mixes into the soil as any compost would.   More of a problem since next door have been using selective weed killer and not stopping at the boundary.  They do not like my flower lawn.

[GeeGee]

In rush this morning.  :(

But question - why not potatoe peelings in the compost?

[brown thumb]

i think the reason being to stop blight spreading if the compost is used for potatoe beds but if your pots is blight free i dont see any problems also ive been told blight spores only live in living tissue also some said not to let volenteer potatos to grow  and then some else said they wont cause any problems if the potato plot was blight free the previous year i let volenteer potatoes to grow if they are not getting in the way of other crops and put potatoe peeling in to compost[ famas last words may be i hope not]

[goodlife]

Commercially produced potatoes may contain chemicals or harbour  diseases that can be transferred into your soil...so there is always the contamination  issues...
But it is matter of they may do so..
Other than that..peelings can start growing in you compost bin...good news is..you may get small bonus crop..bad news is..if you do rotation and are planning to use the made compost to your next years spuds..well its not so good for that purpose anymore..other crops are ok though.
To stop peeling from sprouting..it would be good to let them dry out first before adding into bin... ;)

[brown thumb]

but surely if your bin is (1) hot enough (2)well rotted down  both issues wouldnt apply all my bins is left for a year at least

[Digeroo]

I understood they carried various diseases and also tend to sprout.  Not sure the heat is enough to kill off fungal infections.   It can take quite a lot to kill a fungal spore.

[cornykev]

My bins get hot but I still have growth from the peelings, so as a personal thing I leave mine out and put them in the council waste bin with bread and nasty weeds and thick branch shrubbery.   ;D

[GeeGee]

Should NEVER kill spiders - takes a minute off your life if you do.  My house is full of em but on the plus side, no flies.

AH! There in lies my dilemma!  :o I have a real phobia about the retched things. Really am petrified of them and have been since a child. Have tried everything to get over it - but no joy.  :'( So for me to know there is still one of the things crawling anywhere near me would honestly take more than a minute off my life! There was a giant wolf spider in my hay room once; had to get someone else to go in to fill my hay nets for two weeks till I could get my son to empty the whole hay room and find the thing and dispose of it.  :(

On the bright side I probably have the cleanest tack room and stables going. They are de-cobwebbed every week, brushed within an inch on walls and in corners every day and pressure washed on a regular basis so the beasties don't get a foothold in the place.  ;D

[GeeGee]

Ah, I understand now. Makes perfect sense why not to put the potato peeling in the compost. Maybe they might compost down with enough heat etc, but to me it seems to much of a f*g to take the chance so will follow the suggestion not to use potato peeling in the compost.

Also I remember as a child my aunt used to peel her potatoes and then put the peelings in her veggie plot and hey presto she used to get more potatoes! So the advice above makes lots of sense. Either that or it was because she was not very delicate in her peeling - the peelings were so thick she was only left with a potato half its original size!  ;D

[GeeGee]

So I'm not the only one to read that it's illegal to take household waste etc to allotments.

However, I do agree it's a pretty silly and nonsensical directive Foot and mouth from veggies? Since when?

If I do get a boshaki bin, it probably wouldn't have meat in it as all our left over meat (if we every have any with OH and son being avid meat fans) it goes to the doggies for a treat in their dinner - not bones though.

I'm not one to flout the law and I most certainly wouldn't do anything that might harm or disadvantage someone else, but some laws are totally nanny state stupidity and if people use their common sense and logic they certainly don't need stupid laws like you can't take your veggie peelings and tea bags down to the allotment. Where is the difference between having a cup of tea at the allotment and putting the tea bags in the composter there, to putting the same brand tea bag in your composter that has come from home? Or indeed the veggies come from the allotment in the first place, so why is it so wrong to take the peelings back to the allotment?