Allotments 4 All
General => Top Tips => Topic started by: iain on November 29, 2005, 06:20:29
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Can anyone tell me if it is best to buy a compost bin or make one form old pallets ?
If the answer is pallets, how do you buld them ?
Many thanks Iain
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You can check to see if your council sell them.
Or
You can get 4 pallets and hammer them together to make the four sides and place it on top of the soil so the worms can get in grom the bottom. Then just fill it up with weeds and you have got a composter. Find a old piece of carpet as a cover for the top or some cardboard.
I just pile the weeds up in a section of the allotment and cover them up and that works great also.
The_Snail
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Or you can do as I have, and make two open bins from 5 pallets, joined to form a letter E when viewed from above. The open sides are then partially closed in with low walls formed by stacking newspapers ... These low walls are great I find when trimming vegetables, as the veg can be placed on them, or buckets or whatever ...
Derekthefox :D
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I've got an unlimited supply of "food" for the compost bin .... I secretly bagged up all of my ex-wives cooking .... *smacks own wrist* {:¬ (
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plural {:¬ (
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Having said that, I only married them one at a time :P
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Well, yes, but it wasn't a very orderly queue, stopped me from getting to the bar ! :-\
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My E shaped compost bin is tied with string. Cringe how un diy is that.
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If works maggie, then why knock it ...
Derekthefox :D
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My E shaped compost bin is tied with string. Cringe how un diy is that.
Better then my eldest son's attempt to repair his bicycle with sellotape!
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I used wire. However, you are right:
Tie wraps would be better ;D
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Jen, tell him to use electrician's tape, that stuff is very tough and versatile. I even keep a roll in my gardening jacket as an emergency first aid kit (it will cover wounds until properly treated, and can seal bad bleeds very effectively).
Derekthefox :D
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if you are wanting to buy compost bins try e bay.co.uk, i got one for £15.00.
bluespuggy
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Hey Blue..er..spuggy!!
I just hurl mine on the ground, when it's big enough, cover it, then start hurling elsewhere...I did start off with it vaguely controlled in a chicken wire construction, but ended up with so much leaf waste etc, I had to pu it somewhere!! Hurling, answer to all life's little mysteries.. ;D
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I use bins till I run out of space in them, then start piling it. One day, I'll have everything under control and I won't need my piles. The current mountain has taken three years to build, in my first year on the plot I built two. So there's hope.
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I tend to produce small piles all around the allotment, then as they shrink down a bit, generally after about a fortnight, then I will shift them up to the compost heap(s) at the end of the plot. I am not a tidy gardener ...
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I tend to produce small piles all around the allotment
you just gave me a horriblly funny image with that line derek.
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Well I suppose you could consider them my calling cards ... ::)
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I bought a compost bin on ebay for a princely sum of £0.99p and i'm filling it up nicely.....pallets you can get from companies most of the time they are free
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I have three green daleks which in theory makes it possible for me to turn compost from one into another as it rots down. Its a good theory but it hasn't quite worked out like that because a number of slow worms moved in at the end of last summer and now I don't want to turf them out until the weather warms up and I have created somewhere else safe for them to live.
I've also got five really cheap plastic soil sieves from the pound shop, and I use these as a sort of wormery which fits inside the bins. I'm trying an experiment at the moment where I use fresh decomposing veg inside sieves to entice the compost worms out of the compost which is ready to get spread over the beds. Once the worms have chomped their way up into the sieves, I should then have a big pile of worms to transfere to a new dalek when I start one off. I have no idea if it will work but it seemed sort of possible.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50794154@N00/58968409/in/set-1385790/
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Let us know if it does John - I always worry that my compost bin worms do not like living in the soil (but I suppose they must come from somewhere)
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I've also wondered if its 'thin pickings' for red compost worms in general soil conditions and how long it takes their population to build up to sizable numbers when starting a cool heap from scratch on bare earth. I don't know if anyone else has any idea how quickly they lay eggs and increase in numbers?
I like to think that if I can set up a bit of a wormery on the top of a pile at a time when their food is running out elsewhere in the heap, they will 'smell' the fresh pickings, move into the soil sieves and live to chomp another day when the sieve contents get mixed together at the beginning of the next dalek full of worm nosh.
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My council subsidises compost bins as part of their recycling campaign - worth checking out if yours does the same. I have a couple of £5 eack black daleks - they don't seem very robust compared to the £40+ ones you can buy, but they work. And they were delivered to my door FOC.
I'm also using them to help over winter a coupe of semi tender plants in pots in the space between the bins as the colour and contents keep that little corner from freezing so quickly.
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And Wardy is better known as "QUEEN OF THE BINS" round the board
I think !!!!!! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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I just ordered 2 big green darleks from my council (kent) for £10 each and they also give you a free "kitchen caddy" to collect all your veg peelings, tea bags etc (that's the bit I'm most excited about, will hopefully stop a mountain of tea bags growing next to the sink)
I've got a massive pile dead of couch grass, dandelions and bind weed in the corner of my lottie and was going to make a pallet bin to put all them in and leave my nice new bins for non perenial weeds - is it worth it? how long will it take for the compost to be safe to use? or should i just have a bonfire?
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Don't own up to using teabags fingernails - they get all hoyty toyty about that on here - even if they are Ringtons. Tea leaves only I am afraid even though tea bags are much more use for a gardener in my opinion. ;D ;D
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I use teabags and I don't care who knows it. It's the only practical way down on the plot.
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I know he wasn't being serious; I'd have noticed any anti teabag threads. I compost everything in my daleks; anythiing still alive gets picked out as I spread it. If I do miss anything, it doesn't matter as the spell in the dalek always seems to weaken it to the point where it can't establish itself that season, and it just gets dug out later.
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....eh....scuse my ignorance....why are tea bags or tea leaves good for a lottie gardener....apart from drinking!!!!
Gerry
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they make lovely compost!
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If you go with the homemade bin, and intend to be organic, I would be careful covering the heap with old carpet.
I have read here and elsewhere, that the chemiclas used in the carpet's manufacture could leach into the heap. Not sure about cardboard, but I would probably avoid that also for the same reasons. Not sure what would be an effective alternative though.
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That smaller?
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:o :o :o any chance you can make the pic smaller, Ken, please?
;D Lish
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I know he wasn't being serious; I'd have noticed any anti teabag threads. I compost everything in my daleks; anythiing still alive gets picked out as I spread it. If I do miss anything, it doesn't matter as the spell in the dalek always seems to weaken it to the point where it can't establish itself that season, and it just gets dug out later.
the reason i heard that my council didn't like tea-bags was the fact that they'd probably been exposed to milk and they didn't want any dairy products contaminating the whole shebang.
with that in mind, i brew a pot rather than make in the mug now and keep my bags for my own composter.
???
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I do exactly the same MrsKP because I do not want anything but tea and water (plus the cotton bag thingy) in my bin.
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i've heard other nasty stories about the bleach in the cotton bag, but i'm just sticking my fingers in my ears tra la la ....... "I can't hear you!"
;D
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I've got a massive pile dead of couch grass, dandelions and bind weed in the corner of my lottie and was going to make a pallet bin to put all them in and leave my nice new bins for non perenial weeds - is it worth it? how long will it take for the compost to be safe to use? or should i just have a bonfire?
Alternative views on perennial weeds gathered from the site: put them in a bucket of water for nutritious drink (for the plants!); set aside a compost area like you're thinking of, cover and leave 2 or 3 years; do a RB and just bung them in to the heap as you go, pulling out anything alive when you spread it. This latter is what I do, as life's too short to separate them out when weeding, and I'm not sure I'd know the difference 100% anyway :P ::)
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If you live in Lancashire County, Blackburn with Darwen or Blackpool they are giving away free compost bins plus free lidded bucket.
www.compost-it.uk/scheme/komp250.htm