Allotments 4 All

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.

Did that include delivery or did you have to pick it up? Only I have a tiny car :'(

Check with your council Roy, here in Swansea it's all free, just pick it up yourself.

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.

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 ::)

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.

Lish are you allowed to put Knotweed roots in there... I thought you had to get a disposal cert or something...
???

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.

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. ::)

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?

i just bought 70 litres of compost from the recycling centre for £3....is that good?

Quote from: wahaj on September 06, 2006, 20:08:45
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

Quote from: SMP1704 on September 06, 2006, 20:55:21

Quote from: wahaj on September 06, 2006, 20:08:45
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!

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.

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

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.

Not a bad haul Wahaj with the pots as well for a fiver!
;D

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!

Quote from: saddad on September 16, 2006, 14:19:29
Not a bad haul Wahaj with the pots as well for a fiver!
;D

tell me about it. it's fantastic!

Quote from: triffid on September 16, 2006, 14:28:48
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)