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i have just recently got into gardening and its got me thinking is home composting a good idea ? ok i know i wont see the benefits from this till at least next year . anyone got any views on it?
oh and if you are thinking about it i found this website very interesting
http://www.recyclenow.com
benefits of composting? where does one begin I compost anything compostable.. biodegrad nappies and all the rest!... you getting rid of all your household scraps and the nutrients from them are making you compost so you don't have to buy peat from the store that they take out of our bogs! GREAT STUFF! are you hot or cold composting?
as i was saying , im relatively new to gardening and homecomposting is completely alien to me. i'm not sure what you mean by hot and cold composting, could you explain the differences please?
Hi
THE Homeaid shop has a display and contact info for SCRAP who will provide you with a compost bin or bins for £5 each if you are in Caithness. It also comes with instructions and an enthusiastic person if they deliver who gives handy hints.
If anyone wants rabbit shavings for composting let me know it is supposed to be excellent for composting.
depends on your needs... if you are just composting kitchen scraps and a few bits from a garden.. you'll prolly buy a bin.. this is cool composting....
only trick is having the right mix.. enough "greens" and "browns".. so, that it is neither mushy and wet or too dry... and also to keep it aerated.
Browns...
dead leaves, cardboard, wood chippings, sawdust, straw, hay, dry plant stems, twigs, scrunched up or shredded paper, crumpled packaging, eggboxes... stuff like that.. make sure your packaging is the plastic coated paper kinda thing.
Greens....
Grass,weeds, urine, manure (no cat or doggy poopoo though), peas and beantops, raw fruit and veg (cooked food can attract unwelcome guests!), fresh plants...
for example.. a bucket of kitchen scraps needs to be mixed with at least a bucket (can be more) of shredded paper or other browns. wood or charcoal ash is good to but, NO coal ash.
you're going for mixing wet sloppy stuff in with absorbent dry stuff... or else! it will stink to high heaven! if that happens... stir it up with a fork well and add some dry browns.
The smaller you cut everything up and the more you stir it up to aerate it the quicker it goes.. I try to stir every week or fortnite at least. We've got a jar in the loo and every now and again my husband pees in it and puts it in the compost heap cause ours tends to get on the dry side.
When yurt dwelling.. we have an old skool commode chair except retrofitted with a bucket on the bottom... when full it gets put on a huge hot heap usually built with old pallets and they get hot enough to kill bacteria and all the rest of it... cooked food scraps can go on here too. this composts super fast. you can do a hot heap smaller by insulating whatever is containing it.
if you go for the bin...and you have slugs and snails in the garden... they will all go straight for it rather than your radishes!. real blessing! you'll be amazed at how many bags less of trash you'll put out!
every now and again you can add a little soil (introduces lotsa bacteria) or seaweed and even nettles.. this gets it "going" a bit! grow a big patch of comfrey in a space in the garden where nothing else will grow well... chop it down after it has flowered and add it to the compost .. when it's all composted.. make a bucket of compost tea! put compost in a sack and put it into a barrel of water for few days... remove the sack squeezing all the "juice" out of the sack... strain it and dilute it like 1:10 and spray it on your foliage in the garden..
comfrey leaves can also just be added to a bucket covered with water, then cover the bucket and wait about a month. Dilute it 1:30. I swear by this stuff! works great on the veggie garden.. especially tomatoes.