Allotments 4 All
General => Top Tips => Topic started by: ACE on August 30, 2006, 19:14:04
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I had to get a lot of compost today for a job. As i was passing the local tip I remembered they have a garden waste disposal site. So in I went and asked to buy a truck load of compost.
£15 a ton and really good stuff, I went back and purchased another load later and was told if I opened an account I could get it cheaper, So done a bit of paper work and the price went down to £10 a ton. It is cheaper than topsoil, so I know where I shall be going in future when I need to build up new beds.
If your local council recycle garden waste, check them out, I would use this stuff as potting compost mixed with bit of loam it wa so good.
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Did that include delivery or did you have to pick it up? Only I have a tiny car :'(
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Check with your council Roy, here in Swansea it's all free, just pick it up yourself.
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With delivery it really puts the price up, I have my own truck. Hey Mac you are really lucky. If it is free it would be worth investing in a small trailer.
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I'm not sure I'd trust the compost from the Birmingham site...would wonder how effectively they're sterilizing their soil & knowing the knotweed roots, etc I put in my bags... :-\ Still, we'll soon know...BCC Parks take the recycled stuff ::)
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The stuff I got was the same as you get out of the cheap b&q compost bags, really black and I looked around the site and the stuff on the edge where they had be sweeping the paths did not have anything nasty growing from it.
Too late now as I have just top dressed my herbatious border with 3 tons of the stuff. when I clear the border for replanting this autumn I shall rotovate it all in. If nothing else it will lighten the soil.
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Lish are you allowed to put Knotweed roots in there... I thought you had to get a disposal cert or something...
???
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Probably not, but they wouldn't check every bag! Given the amount of the stuff about, it has to be getting dumped, and all the rules and regs on earth won't stop it.
I did once get some in the roots of some plants I was given, and discovered that it's actually quite easy to get rid of as long as you get it promptly before it establishes. After that expeience, any clumps of plants I'm given get checked over regularly for the first year or so. You can't be too careful.
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I phoned the council about ours, they didn't know what they do with it, 4 phone calls and yet another number I'd been given to ring I gave up. A lot of the time I got...compost?...er, er, no,I don't know. I know I'm impatient but thats ridiculous. ::)
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I had a bad case of white rot this year, with quite a lot of onions that needed dumping, I put them in the normal waste black bin, but was called out by the dustman telling me that they had to go in the brown bin for garden waste. Explained that they were diseased and as the brown bin went for composting etc. do I need to say anymore, brown bin or they wouldn't take the waste. I also have tomato plants with grey mould. Anybody want some compost from South Norfolk?
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i just bought 70 litres of compost from the recycling centre for £3....is that good?
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i just bought 70 litres of compost from the recycling centre for £3....is that good?
Well, depends on the quality but for 99p more you could get the same quantity from the GC and it has been screened
I think that is expensive
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i just bought 70 litres of compost from the recycling centre for £3....is that good?
Well, depends on the quality but for 99p more you could get the same quantity from the GC and it has been screened
I think that is expensive
true. he did mention that it was excellent quality and organic.....so who knows.
i guess the garden centre it is then.
though i did manage to buy about 20 different glazed pots for £2 from there which was a nice little bargain!
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My mum's council, every time you take a load to the composting thing at the tip, you get a voucher. 3 trips = free compost (not sure of size).
I suppose with a big enough and well built heap, the temperature could get high enough to kill all those nasty diseases off.
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That's the same where I live Multi - pretty sure the stuff in Lincoln is heat treated to kill weeds and diseases. But then again as William Sinclairs (makers of JA Bowers) is 5 mins away from the tip, perhaps we have expert input into ours :D
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i've just opened the first bag from the recyling centre and it's the most wonderfull compost i've ever seen. it's pure black and smells edible! it's lovely stuff...and very fine. i love it.
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Not a bad haul Wahaj with the pots as well for a fiver!
;D
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On this subject, does anyone know of a source of this kind of council-green-waste compost near Stanmore (bottom edge of Herts/outer edge of W London) -- a friend has just moved there and is hoping to grow veg in her back garden on what is apparently solid clay at the moment.
Many thanks!
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Not a bad haul Wahaj with the pots as well for a fiver!
;D
tell me about it. it's fantastic!
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On this subject, does anyone know of a source of this kind of council-green-waste compost near Stanmore (bottom edge of Herts/outer edge of W London) -- a friend has just moved there and is hoping to grow veg in her back garden on what is apparently solid clay at the moment.
Many thanks!
Triff, I'm in Brum, so just don't know. Can just say that I'd got exactly the same prob here & by dint of double-digging trenches, layering soft cut-back stuff + leaves sprinkled with a compost accelerator between the clay, like lasagne, I managed to produce soil fertile enough to support a) worms! and b) my first runner beans and tomatoes the Spring after I started in the Autumn. And I went on from there. If your friend starts the work now I can guarantee that come May/June they'll be able to plant out stuff grown in modules, next Spring. Not an answer to your original question, I know, but some words of encouragement? 8)
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Alishka, thank you -- will pass on your brilliant advice. She's not work-shy and she has an enthusiastic OH (it's their first home!) so I bet they'll get going right away. They can probably use all the prunings from the overhanging tree branches they're cutting back, rather than 'brown binning' them.
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It seems my council ( South Glos near Bristol) have a honesty box and you just take some bags and help yourself only just heard about it guy who told me thinks it,s OK
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triff, glad I posted, then :) 2 spits into clay is b. backbreaking at the time but the good news is...it'll only need to be done once in a lifetime, so by the time they've also removed all the half-housebricks & roots they'll come across they'll know that the depth is going to support, unhindered, anything they're likely to grow. Garotta's the name of the accelerator I couldn't remember earlier ::) and if they cover the trenches with black binbags will help accelerate the composting and warm the soil up for spring planting. Keep them fit too ;D A win-win situation 8)
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It seems my council ( South Glos near Bristol) have a honesty box and you just take some bags and help yourself only just heard about it guy who told me thinks it,s OK
Oh what? thats it I'm moving, our council won't even supply the green garden bins anymore, they told us to put it in the normal black waste bin. Think Canterbury council should be named and shamed , obviously not very enviroment friendly.
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Most councils have this but it isn't up to much.I know with my council that there is too much heavy metals in it to be called compost so it is labelled soil improver of conditioner. Fine for non edible plants but DEFINITELY not for edibles.
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we get about 8 tons delivered every month for free :-)
We now get horse manure delivered free and wood chips :-)
Dont ask dont get.
Try getting your allotment association/parish council to call and see what can be arranged.
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WOW!!! free compost and manure!!!!! shocking
we only get free leaf mulch
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you guys so much about what you can get from your local council. who do i ring to find out what i can get free and what i have to pay for with regards to gardens/allotments?
the last time i rang them to ask about compost bin prices they treated me like i was asking for a free car.
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have a look at who collects your green bin and see where it goes then contact that company directly its what we did.
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have a look at who collects your green bin and see where it goes then contact that company directly its what we did.
oh.....like...follow them, lol.
i'm pretty sure it's the local council that collects it.
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I'm tempted to :
go round early on the morning the "green bag" lorry comes round and empty the bags for them
or
drop a note through the door of the houses in the scheme to volunteer to take their green waste away for them and compost it myself !!
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have a look at who collects your green bin and see where it goes then contact that company directly its what we did.
oh.....like...follow them, lol.
i'm pretty sure it's the local council that collects it.
it should say on the council truck on there web site where it goes
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I'm tempted to :
go round early on the morning the "green bag" lorry comes round and empty the bags for them
or
drop a note through the door of the houses in the scheme to volunteer to take their green waste away for them and compost it myself !!
Where in the world are you??
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Try your local council website, Ours puts all the refuse collection details and civic amenities etc. No need to leave your armchair.
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I'm in Elmbridge Council, Surrey.
I e-mailed the council to see if there was a possibility of getting some delivered but here is what happens;
They charge you to take away the green waste, compost it then you can buy it in the Garden Centres !
I'm tempted to :
go round early on the morning the "green bag" lorry comes round and empty the bags for them
or
drop a note through the door of the houses in the scheme to volunteer to take their green waste away for them and compost it myself !!
Where in the world are you??
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Our 'soil improver' comes from donarbon in waterbeach (cambridgershire) and its free you just have to turn up bag and take :-) You can always head up and collect some if you have a way of transporting it.
Big tip is to look out for these places durning national compost awarness week, they usualy have tours.
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I've just started using the second of the 2 bags i bought from the recycling centre...and there's a handfull of corn kernels in there that have germinated in the dark inside the bag. they've only just sprouted....but i've had to pick them out and throw them away.
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unusual - we have not had such issues.
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unusual - we have not had such issues.
yea...i mean it's not bad compost...but i wouldn't use it to put things. it's just pure rotted material....not very good drainage. obviously no peat or particular nutrients for pots. It's good to put in the borders though.
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...yep, I have filled my raised beds with it.
I have added some sived broken down clay soil & bone meal to it and i am looking to add perlight or vermiculite to lighten it.
This sits on my heavy clay soil dug over with some horse manure.
Yum
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Our council give the allotments piles of free compost to use. However I went to start using it the other day only to find it full of bindweed. Thankfully I had only used one barrow load, although this is more than enough. Nice gesture, but you really need to be carefull. The cheapest compost I have found round here is 5 75ltr bags for £10 or £2.50 a bag.
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Yep, council compost can be a bit of a Trojan horse ... or at the very least a curate's egg :)
In the past I used to buy from one of the companies that processes our council's brown-bin-waste. Gave up -- stones, glass, bits of charred bedsprings were just some of the joys. But it did get too hot during the processing for seeds and weed roots to survive.
I've been hearing that they've got better re the non-organic additions (bedsprings and glass not appearing anywhere in my reference sources as recommended growing materials) so I might try them again.
It may well be worth asking around your area to see if similar companies exist, southernsteve.
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we've now found we can get, free of charge, wood chippings from one of our tips, just take bags along 'n' fill them up, so that's next week's job, when we drop off the plastic bottles we've collected :)
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Last time I asked Selby council, they said the green waste goes to local farmers. They sell bags of soil improver but I think it's about £2 for a not very big bag.
Unfortunately our allotments are run by the town council rather than the district and they do nothing except cut the outside of the hedges occasionally, and we don't have a society, it's everyone for him/herself!
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Had a chat with a few Environment Agency guys at a composting project in Snowdonia. They reckon that most councils can't get rid of compost and will give you as much as you want. I know that farmers can't use it because it holds fewer nutrients than plain soil.
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My local council (vale of white horse) want you to recycle stuff, but wont reply to emails regarding getting compost, or replace the recycling box when it goes missing...typical council me thinks :-(
Maybe one day I shall find out where all that plant waste goes too and I may get my hands on some!!
Regards
Matt
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Hi Manic
I get the chippings delivered if the tree gangs are working in the local area, if you need any horse manure delivered or want a tel No for the tree gangs either send me a message or a email & I will sort it
Phil
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where are you, phil ?