Allotments 4 All
General => Top Tips => Topic started by: GeeGee on June 13, 2011, 11:31:34
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If you had not already guessed, the allotments I'm on are brand new and in need of a great deal of work and TLC. One of the allotmenteers there has started a course at the local agricultural college in order to do his very best and get the most out of his newly acquired allotment - and good for him I say!
Me thinks he could be a very valuable and proactive member of our new allotments. The other evening he arranged a meeting at a local community centre and brought along his lecturer to give a speech and some very helpful hints on how we can improve the soil, buy en-mass bulk seed etc (meaning better buying power and quality of product).
One thing that did strike me though was that he impressed very strongly on the fact that compost on poor soil was the master of it all. Even going so far to say that if one of us could produce grade A compost we should give that producer a gold cup! :) To all you veterans of allotments this will probably come as no surprise and you already know the value of compost, but I just thought I would share this man's thoughts with you all and maybe pick your brains on how to produce the perfect compost. Not that I want a gold cup! :P Lovely veggies and workable soil that doesn't suck the water up with no profit is my ultimate goal.
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I don't know if mine is Grade A but it looks pretty good when it comes out! And adding compost and various manures every year do help the soil richness, there is no doubt.
I put everything in mine, it's in a wooden box. I put all veggie scraps, rotten fruit and veg, tea and coffee grounds, egg shells, anything organic from home, like dead flowers, and also some weeds (if they are only annuals like dandelion etc : bindweed etc I tend to rot down for several months before adding it), any old plants if they are not diseased, grass I have weeded out, and there is usually a reasonable amounf of newspaper and cardboard that goes in too. It takes a few months to break down, I just harvest a few spadefuls out when I plant things and mix it into the area I am planting. That's it!
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I am on new allotments and the ground was very low in humus. I have been improving it as much as possible with various biomatter. Certainly no grade A compost as I am a failed composter but the plants like whatever I can make. I find it rather difficult to keep it turned inside a plastic dalek. Grass clippings get too moist and make a nasty smelly mess, so I take most those out now after a few days and use them as muich. Cabbage stalks seem to take a long time to rot down. If it is grade B or in my case grade Z once it is buried it soon seems to disappear. Courgettes and beans in particular are not at all fussy.
I have also got some recycled compost Wiltshires results are very good quality but I think it varies considerably from place to place. Swindon's has a very high wood content.
I have also used manure but also been caught by Aminopyralid issues.
After only two years some areas of my soil have improved enormously they have gone from concrete to butter.
I try and source two bucket fulls of bio matter every time I go to the allotment.
I understood it was against the law to take your food waste out of your own garden.
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I'm on Year 3 on the allotment so a total noobie amongst so many vets.
Compost shmompost, I just want any old soil improver as my plot is a brownfield former landfill in a 19th Century claypit.
I have purchased a fancy compost bin from the council, they tell me it gets just that bit warmer, to have a go composting weeds. Of course it is going to take them ages before I can collect it in spite of there being 50 in stock apparently. But like Digeroo I have Daleks which do the business eventually but who wants to wait 2 years?
THE BIN: 10 GBP from the council ....
http://en.mattiussiecologia.com/home_life/compostaggio/composter_310/composter_310
But I really fancy one of those rotating bins that are whoppingly expensive.
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antipodes - your recipe sounds totally divine, I was going to say delicious but on second thoughts that's probably totally the wrong word! ;D
That is the kind of recipe I want to try. I also want to make the very best use of all the horsey poo that our little herd produce on a daily basis - after all we pay a lot of money for them to poop it out the other end! :o
My only problem is convincing the OH to actually stop throwing all the veggie peeling etc straight into the dustbin. He hears what I say and apparently thoroughly agrees with my thinking; but he still keeps putting all the tea bags, etc etc in the dustbin. He also has a thing about security and so every piece of mail goes in the incinerator (which I actually bought to burn the NASTY weeds). Still I did read somewhere you can also put the ashes in the compost heap so I shall be asking for a hand to empty these out of the incinerator into a bag to transport to the allotment.
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Digaroo/DenbyVisitor
Having never owned or used a delek I cannot comment on them in any form. Having said that I will impart what this lecturer had to say about them the other night.
It is very nice of the various councils to offer them for sale at subsidised prices. However, that is the very last positive point he has to say about them. In his view they are totally rubbish! No pun intended! :o
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.
His recommendation was the cheapest, being the pallet method, where, even the most incompetent of carpenters apparently can turn a couple of pallets into a container for compost within an hour. Because the sides have gaps plenty of oxygen can get in to allow the little microbes etc to thrive and do their job for the expectant gardener and turn all that waste into beautiful compost. As for keeping it warm he suggests covering with sacking or even a sheet of plastic (especially when it's raining etc) to keep the warmth in and the excess wet out.
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Digaroo
I have heard about the Aminopyralid issue. Nasty stuff! >:(
I can't think of anything worse than to have worked all year, thinking you are putting real goodness into your soil only to find that when you plants pop up they have been infected by some latent weed killer that some farmer or other has used on his pastureland. That must have been soul destroying.
I will be using are little herds' poos but then (very hopefully) I should not have that problem as we don't use any chemicals on our grazing and our little darlings are fed the best grade hay that we can source back as much as possible. The real reason for this is that we are very careful regarding ragwort, which is a killer for horses, and results in a very nasty and painful time before the poor horse finally expires. :'( Having said that I will also be double checking with our hay supplier that he doesn't use the listed weedkillers that cause the Aminopyralid problem.
Am I right in thinking that I read somewhere that these weedkillers have now be banned?
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DenbyVisitor
I can sympathise and empathise with you completely regarding your soil. This new allotment I have a plot on was an agricultural field and it is probably the worst soil I have come across in this area. It is clay and has absolutely no nutrients or goodies left in it whatsoever.
It grows stones and flints very well though! :o ;D
As for you being a noobie. Shucks you do yourself a disservice! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do any real gardening for many many years, through lack of space. Just the usual flower borders and containers, some tomatoes in the back garden along with some beans and the much needed herbs.
My dear old dad on the other hand had enormous gardens in Norfolk and his vegetable plot was probably the size of two possible three allotments. He missed them dearly when we moved to Kent and cursed the small gardens here and the 'rubbish soil', so he too just stuck to the lawn and a few flowerbeds. I wish he were still around as he would've loved the thought of getting stuck into an allotment with me and more over would've been a great source of information. Actually at the age he would be now he would've probably been more of the guru figure, sitting in the sun advising me what to do and what not to do whilst he watched me carry out his instruction. ;D
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Aminopyralid was withfrawn but it has now been relicenced with a stewardship campaign. Basically users have to sign that they agree with certain conditions, but actually it is a get out system for responsibility by Dow. They are supposed to agree that the stuff does not leave the land in question. But it is impossible to police if you cannot see it or smell it, and the problem only turns up later when particular crops are grown.
It is more complicated than simply asking the supplier if he has used the chemical It seems to come in on food stuffs. We have been totally unable to track down the source of the weedlkiller. Once in a manure pile is can be very random and one bucket full is ok and the next contaminated. I have one area with a problem with a huge unaffected broad bean right in the middle. It breaks down in the soil and this can be very random as well. The moisiture content of the soil seem to have an effect and the dry spring seems to make it persist longer in the soil.
It is still worth testing all manure with beans, phacelia or fat hen, all of whcih will show symptoms.
I am sure that your Dad with be with you in your thoughts Geegee. I am sure you will soon manage to get your soil sorted. I have found it has been surprisingly quick. Our land had had livestock on so the fertility was not an issue. But it had also been a gravel quarry so I think we win when it comes to stones. But actually the plants seem to be able to work round them. Some of the plots look more like a beach.
Nutrients and goodness is not really an issue either. With a large bag of blood fish and bone everything seems to go crazy. For me it is water retention, and the added biomatter does improve both the moisture holding and drainage. It always seems odd to me that biomatter sorts out both extremes.
I am experimenting with straw bales and hope to prove to myself that soil is totally unnecessary.
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My Dad had an allotment too but as a younger girl I was too clueless to pay much attention, I thought it was something that old men did. But I did stuff like fill his water butts with buckets of water from the site trough (and it was blooming hard work as I remember). He's dead now but it gives me some comfort that he must have found that quite useful so maybe I wasn't quite 100% clueless.
Digeroo, there is a lawn weedkiller product that is widely available that I was looking at buying: Verdone - but from the label it seems to contain a weedkiller from the same class as aminopyralid. So I didn't buy it but I was looking at some of those grafted tomatoes from Suttons in the local GC and they had the charateristic fern leaves from aminopyralid exposure - so it is still about and perhaps all too easy to introduce into compost, amateur and commercial.
Guys, be careful out there!
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It never ceases to amaze me how these people can get around the law to suit their needs and the government and associated authorities all turn a blind eye. It seems to be a sad fact that money always seems to talk over everything else including the health and well being of the everyday man. >:(
Do you know if there are any 'weeds' or other wild plants that would grow in pasture land that would show signs of being affected by this stuff? I only ask because if there is I will have a good look around our paddocks to see if any are showing signs of being affected by it.
Failure to do that I suppose I could shove a few beans in the compost heap at the yard and see how they grow! ;D
The farmer who normally comes and collects it will think I'm even more crazy than normal if I tell him under no circumstances is he allowed to take it away because I'm waiting to see how my beans grow in it! ;D ;D ;D
I must admit it is quite scary to think that this poison could be lurking just anywhere. What could it be doing to the animals for instance and us when we eat those animal etc. It is all too depressing to think of the consequences that could happen. :(
I certainly won't be discussing this subject with my daughter. She is so careful about what she feeds the horses and will only feed them premium hard feed and analyses the complete content to ensure they have exactly the right diet and nutrients to suit each individual horse.
This whole thing smacks of past outrages such as DDT and the like. :(
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DenbyVisitor
I had heard that there was still a lawn weedkiller around that still had the same compounds as aminopyralid.
I read somewhere that if you use particular weedkillers on your lawn you should not use the grass cutting in your compost heap to ensure aminopyralid is not transferred to your vegetable plot.
I wouldn't say I am or want to be a totally organic vegetable grower, but as far as I possibly can, I will not be using chemicals. Simply because there are so many unknown factors that the chemical companies are certainly not going to disclose unless forced to!
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Digeroo
Blood and fish and bone were on my list of must haves! :)
I agree with you it is really strange how the old bio matter in the soil solves both the problem of moisture content and drainage all in one.
That is one thing this lecturer chap said. The more compost you get into your soil the easier it is to work, the better the drainage and most importantly the better it will retain water and the crop will be fair heavier as a direct result. He said to put as much compost in as possible and do so year on year. He is on sandy soil (no problem with clay or flint just micro stones called sand! ;D ) and he has a large farm trailer load of cow manure delivered every year for his garden at home.
Going back to the subject of fertiliser, I was also contemplating collecting the nettles in the hedgerows around our yard and taking them back to soak and using the resultant soup as a liquid fertiliser as I have heard that (or indeed a comfrey soup) makes a very good liquid fertiliser. Also it's free! ;D Which is something nowadays. ;D
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DenbyVisitor
I am absolutely sure your dad found your help invaluable. You were probably more help than I was to my dad as a young girl.
I was an only child and my daddy was my hero. I went everywhere with him and watched what he did like a hawk. It was him that taught me how to wire a plug and later more complex electrical things, paint and wallpaper, do small things on my car etc. I probably slowed him down with all my questions and constant 'show me daddy, show me', 'why are you doing that?' 'What's that for?' Where does that go?' ;D Thinking back he was probably proud to show me all these different things, but at the same time he must have had the patience of a saint to always be so calm and informative to my nonstop questions. :)
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I don't think the daleks are that bad, they've just got a bad rep because Councils sell them to households who don't produce anything like enough waste to fill them. So they just become an eyesore in the garden which doesn't produce much. Compost bins are also associated with rats which is a big downside.
GeeGee be a bit wary of getting all your info from one source. Sometimes people can be quite selective with their facts to support their own agenda. And have enormous blindspots when it comes to things they are passionate about. But they are also inspiring. And you can see the benefits in only a season or two as Digeroo says. These days I beg grass cuttings from neighbours and fish stuff out of the site skips for my bins. But I still can't make anything like enough compost for my garden.
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I also use lots of comfrey and stinging nettles which both grow in profusion locally. Only downside there is the smell and with stlinging nettles it gets fly larvae in it which is a bit disgusting.
Denbyvisitor is right about professional advice but it may be a good place to start until you find your own way of doing things. I recently did some volunteering under professional guidance and found myself constantly at odds with the techniques being used. They actually threw away the weeds rather than compost them. ???
A lot of people on our site throw away their weeds and hence loose a great resource. We have voles and snakes in our compost bins. I do not think they are such a health hazard as rats but they do seem to nibble strawberries and pumpkins.
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Digeroo/DenbyVisitor
Many thanks for your advice regarding not taking advice all from one source. To be honest I wouldn't. This lecturer was a commercial grower before he turned to lecturering and therefore does not have any apprehension when it comes to using chemicals for weeds and extra growth. Now me personally, I, at the moment, don't agree with him. My dear old dad grew veggies very well without the need for all those chemicals so unless I'm pushed or can't find any other way I won't be using the old chemicals.
See I didn't know about the fly larvae in soaked nettles! Many thanks for that one Digeroo. Just goes to prove your point in not getting all the information from one source, and also how invaluable forums like this are for sharing experiences. :)
Whilst the lecturer didn't go into vermin in the palette type composter, I had read elsewhere about the problem. So I thought I might try a bokashi bin at home, so that all the food stuffs were already composted before I put them into the compost bin on the allotment.
Don't think I should have a problem with voles (could be wrong) but snakes are another matter, know I have to be careful down the yard that they do not slither into the hay barn in the summer. Think a wooden compost bin would have to be made (or one bought) with very small apertures on the side and an enclosed front (with the little door at the botton to access the 'cooked' compost). Now rats could be a problem because the allotments are only across the road from a large shopping centre with a large supermarket and food outlets in it.
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From what I have read about bokashi - you have to bury the fermented "compost". As our council, in their wisdom and probaly in the interests of "saving money", have decided to issue all household with "swill bins" I will attempt to make bokashi starter as I believe it is easy - rice water and skimmed milk. The pallet compost bins allow air into the compost, and best of all they are free. I personally haven't seen rats in my bins but then I have ext remely poor vision but I expect they exist.
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Oh by the way I did know about the disgusting smell from soaked nettles and comfrey! ;D Remember it all too well from when my dad used to use it!!!! :o Phew!!!! ;D But very good stuff, and lets be honest no fertiliser smells very pretty. :)
This lecturer was also going on about automatic watering systems and drip hoses! Absolutely agree with him totally if it is in your own garden or you are lucky enough to have an allotment with one water tap per plot (fat chance of that happening very often though I would think).
My thought was, hang on there, there's going to be one water tap between something like 12 plots. Can you really imagine if you had an automatic watering system or drip hoses attached to the tap and someone else needed to use the tap? What would happen if they forgot to put your automatic system/drip hose back on? Dry wilted veggies! I'm all for saving water/putting it to the very best use, but unless you have the agreement of all those other plot holders, or worked out an automatic water system that was timed between all the plots involved then it would never work. Then of course you have the lovely little vandals and the ones that would come along and pinch your ever so expensive watering system! I think some cut up plastic bottles pushed into the soil next to the plants is quite efficient, far less expensive and totally indpendant of other plot holders and not impinging on other people's needs for water.
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Lottie Lou
Thanks for info on bokashi, will have to do some more research on them. Have done a little bit, but obviously not quite enough. Still I assume even if you do have to bury it, you can put it directly into the soil on the allotment can't you?
This is exactly where Digeroo is so right, information has to come from variable sources before you can get to the truth or find what is going to really work for you.
I read somewhere that councils had forbidden vegetable peelings from household waste being put in a compost bin on allotments due to some government directive regarding the spread of foot and mouth. Whether it is completely true or only partially correct I don't know and was something I had ticked in the back of my mind to double check. However, the man in charge of our actual allotments was at this meeting last week and he did not put up any legal objection to vegetable peelings being put into compost bins on the allotments.
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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
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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 :(
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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
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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'?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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In rush this morning. :(
But question - why not potatoe peelings in the compost?
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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]
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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... ;)
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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Regarding compost bins vs deleks. Now I am completely confused! :-\
At this moment in time I have visions of me having both and possibly different varieties all lined up to find out which is best. ;D Then of course there will be the horsey manure pile and the leaf mould cage and the water butt (possibly butts) and ........... ops no space left for the veggies! ;D
I did read somewhere that the art of creating a good compost is a science! :) Beginning to think that never a truer word was said. ;D
Or perhaps, with hats off to you guys who seem to create brilliant compost, it is more a natural talent, like anyone can cook but it takes talent to produce those really mouthwatering meals and delectable cakes. :)
Can't see where this lecturer chap thinks the council sell deleks cheap though. Looked it up for our local council and they were around £50 each. Suppose it could be something to do with the cuts they are having to make.
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I bought my Daleks about 5 years ago and they were about £5 on a special deal at the time which has since rocketed with the new found interest in allotments, and aquired a few freebies along the way.
I don't know where this illegal to take home compost to the lottie comes from, when we had our recycle wheely bins delivered last year, we asked for a smaller green bin as we take most of ours to the lottie, we were given a smaller bin and were told its good to to see you recycling your veggies, grass etc in this way. :P
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Maybe the illegal thing was some directive put in place at the time of the last outbreak of foot and mouth, or maybe someone somewhere has misread it and over a period of time it has become passed on as a fact rather than the real truth. Bit like an urban myth! ;D
Suffice to say I shall be sneaking my veggie peelings or boshaki bin contents down to the allotment. Even if it has to be done in the dead of night with black clothing on and a balaclava! ;D
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There actually exist laws regarding transferring waste from one site to another, and it does include home-waste being taken to your lotty. :o
According to the research I did regarding setting up our own allotments, your landlord or association should apply for a waiver to the law. I can't remember quite: hang on.... "Google!" "C'mere"...
Google says have a look around here if you've a mind to environmentlaw.org (http://www.environmentlaw.org.uk/rte.asp?id=83)
We all have a duty of care nowadays.... It probably sounds daft to us like-minded people, but without this kind of legislation people would simply keep tossing their waste anywhere they think they won't smell it.
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I have pallet bins and 2 daleks for 'finishing off'. I'm also much more choosy than I used to be about what i put in my bins. Couchgrass and its ilk go to the council. i don't bother contaminating my compost.
On a lottie with a lot of it I'd burn it and use the ash. The old rasp roots have also gone out and a lot of the rose prunings. All my veg waste goes in and I keep an orange builders bucket under the sink for all household compostable waste from flowers to tea bags. Emptied and washed and lined with brown paper/ envelopes something to keep it 'stickfree'.
Even with a big weelie collection once a fortnight I still make a good load of compost and yes the mice do get underneath. I leave them until they start attacking my poly seedlings and then I take action.....BTW my compost gets turned as often as I can manage or get my grandson to do it. In a perfect world it would be every couple of weeks then it wouldn't suffer from lack of oxygen. If you want a lesson[and a cup of tea] drop in- i'm in N. Lincs ;D ;D
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I just had a new roof and am using the old batterns to build a leaf cage and a compost bin
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We have five pallet bins at the lottie,takes about nine months for it all to turn into luvverly crumbly compost..we now have two daleks at home and it doesnt seem to break down anywhere near as quickly. Even with the rabbits bedding in them. Still,they look a bit 'nicer' seeing that they are in our garden,and we won't be using the resulting compost till the chav neighbours move out anyway,and we can start to garden.
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I've got five compost bins and a pile. Everything gets recycled; if a weed root isn't quite dead when I turn the bins out in the spring, it goes straight back in. In practice, the only things that survive are big dock roots, and they're so weakened they probably wouldn't re-establish themselves anyway.