Topic: Council made compost,; Any good?

[Uncle Ted]

    I am just in the process of building a large raised asparagus bed, I shall fill the bottom with pea gravel mixed with the existing soil that is all ready there, and I was thinking of then filling it with a few trailer loads of the council made compost. My slight concern is firstly we don't really know whats gone into it (or do we?) and it always has a strange not very 'composty' smell.
   
                                        Has anyone had experience of using this, and was it any good?

[Jayb]

I've not had any experience of using council compost, I think I'm a bit wary of bringing in an unwanted problem. Also possible contamination

This is a problem that is refusing to go away. This year I have seen damage to a commercial sweetpea crop and damage to wisteria and magnolia established plants. All had been mulched with compost. The sweetpeas and magnolia had cupping of their leaves, the wisteria had leaf distortion ( smaller leaves showing heavy veining ).  In 2008 the problem seemed to be with manure from stables. Now it appears to be associated with green waste compost. It is possible the culprit this time may be Clopyralid. This is closely related to Aminopyralid and also made by Dow AgroSciences. It is used on amenity grass and is available for amateur garden use. I suspect the grass cuttings are being sent for green composting. The symptoms are exactly the same as for Aminopyralid. Broad beans are the most sensitive plant, they are affected at 1 part per billion. It is impossible to say how widespread the problem is but it would be good practice to do a "Bean Test" for each load obtained before using it as a mulch.

from RolloP http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,73252.0.html

[Borlotti]

We had Council compost delivered to our site last week about 9.30 am and by 10 am it was all gone. We don't get it so often now, as it has to be shared between all boroughs. It must be good as people nearly have fights over it.  Ask Kev. It is best not to use it immediately but store it for next year.  I went up lunchtime and only got the left overs, one bucket full.  It does smell but imagine that is the heating process, best not to use it straight away.  Just my opinion.

[BritBrat]

I am becoming wary of all compost these days, when you find electrical wire in shop bought compost you have to think where did that come from.

I think about  what is going into garden waste recycling and I know i have put stuff in the recycle bags that I would not put into my compost bin, like freshly cut grass that has been treated with weed killer.

I also think finding a good compost for gardeners is going to get very hard in the future.

This year I used coir in my tomatoes pots and given that this has been a terrible gardening year my tomatoes have never looked more healthy.

[chriscross1966]

I've used a fair bit of it, as in several tons, and have no complaints. I wouldn't use it for sowing seeds but for potting on most things these days I use a 50/50 mix of my own rather gritty garden soil adn council compost with a pinch of BFB per 5" pots worth of mix (if that makes sense)...

Certainly it's.  given me a lot less trouble than the manure I get at the moment...

[Kea]

It's very light and dusty. Also I was watching a GW I recorded so it's a few weeks old and MD says regarding blight affected tomatoes and potatoes "burn your affected plants or put them in the council green bin". I had to laugh when people on my site who are religiously organic bought a trailer load of council compost. It's processed with chemicals and very high temperatures. To be fair the blight spores probably can't survive but it seems they think Japanese Knotweed can as that is banned from our green bins.

[clackvalve]

We have the council deliver van loads of grass cuttings which are dropped in one place and the council also deliver wood chippings which are dropped in another place.
 They are used by many and mixed and stored in thier compost heaps. i have used my first lot since rottting down and i have never seen so many worms. its more grass than brown but the chippings have rotted down really well.
The problem with compost that has already been "mixed" by the council is that you dont know exactly what is in it,and because householders may put a bit of anything in their commpost bins,it wont get noticed at the tip.
My advice is to make your own or make sure you know exactly what is in it.

[gardentg44]

the last lot i got from barnsley council ,looked like it came straight out of the shreadder

[schmelda]

I filled my three new raised beds with such compost this spring.  This was my most successful area of the plot this year! 

[cornykev]

As said you don't know what gets thrown into the green bins, but the compost reaches very high temperatures killing most nasties. I filled a temporary bed for onions and carrots and they were great, when finished with I emptied the bed and had a very nice earthy compost to spread on the soil, I do leave the compost to cool and settle before I plant anything. We get a trailer load tipped every month so there's plenty to go round.   

[Robert_Brenchley]

Pile it for a while and let the bacteria get to work. That'll fix most things short of outright contamination.

[ACE]

We have to buy it if we want it, pretty cheap though. The council are not allowed to call it compost, but sell it as soil improver. I find it very good as a soil improver, but initially we use it as a mulch, then dig it in a few months later.

[Gordonmull]

From my experience, with visits this year somewhere in the teens, it depends when you go to the tip. Sometimes it's been not too bad, a nice crumb. Others, it's been more like bits of wood with some muck in between it, with more than 3/4 of it being returned to the green waste bin after sieving.

I have found decomposing batteries, wire, glass and lots and lots of bits of polythene. (Obviously not returned to said bin).

That said, I've used it as a soil improver in both my beds this year and as the sole constituent of a new raised bed in the front garden for decorative edibles. Obviously I'm still alive. I had pansy, lettuce, chard and mustard green in the raised bed and they all did really well, aside from bolting MG and chard, but i think that was more down to weather.

The real sticking point for me is that to treat a waste and then be able to call it compost, it has to meet a British Standard called PAS 100. Worth having a look at, really, if you can be bothered, because I can see a fair bit of this stuff making its way onto people's veg patches. Anyway, PAS100 states that the "compost" has to be screened for a particle size of 40mm (about an inch and a third for anyone not metric-y) so you can see why it's fairly woody at times. Personally I think if they're going to peddle this stuff it needs to be something useable. 4mm would be a bit more like it!

ACE, even if they just call it "Soil Improver" it still has to meet PAS100 or they can't legally say that it's no longer a waste and has been fully recovered. That they can't call it compost sounds a bit fishy to me...

The biggest problem with CA compost, though, is that I think a lot of folks have no real regard of what they bury in the bottom of their green bins and spread some grass clipping on top of. Not an easy problem to solve.

Anyway, sorry, I started on topic and got a bit distracted with something that's kind of relative. Hope it's of some use.

[ACE]

When I pick mine up, it looks as if it has already been sieved,  sometimes it can be a bit dusty, but at £12 a ton it does me for mulching etc. I spead it over the beds  between 2 and 4 inches thick. The soil in the herbacious borders which started off as a clay and gravel mixture is now a treat to dig over and the plants love it.

[chriscross1966]

I'd second Ace here, even though we pay a lot more for it down here in posh Swindon (it's about 30 quid a ton if you pick it up yourself) with siol as useless as we've got (pretty much all of Swindon is a few inches of brickyard tailins masquerading as topsoil sitting on a thin bed of sand (that marks where the bottom of the bricking clay layer was befroe it was all turned into bricks) with a rathe rgreasy (and not brickable) clay under that.... anything organic going in there helps a lot, even the aminopyralid contaminated manure I get is better than nothing, the contamination fades a lot quicker than the effects of all that muck on the soil structure....

[Uncle Ted]

Well, thanks to all for taking the time to respond. General consensus would appear to be that for the money it's worth a go, I'm going to get a load but mix it with some other farmyard manure/home made compost/topsoil, thanks again

[cornykev]

We've had another lot tipped on site and at 0 quid per tonne delivered it aint bad at all, I let the vultures have first dibs then I  have the better darker stuff at the bottom of the pile and leave it in small heaps where I'm planting.