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Compost do's and don'ts
SunBrown
Posts: 1
Hi,
Looking at ways to deal with our food scraps.
Worm farm or compost heap?
Is there anything wrong with just blending the food scraps into tiny pieces and putting this onto the garden?
Thanks in advance.
0
Posts
What sort of food scraps? Cooked food, meat etc will attract rats if put on ordinary garden compost heaps or spread in the garden.
Some people use more specialist Hot Composters or Wormeries to process cooked food waste ... these need to be kept frostfree and wormeries can only cope with small amounts at a time.
More information here https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=726
and here http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/how-to-make-compost/
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
for my garden I have compost bins, for household waste I have a wormary as they prefer little but often and they'll also deal with cooked food and meat scraps.
Most councils collect food waste. If you put it outside you will attract all sorts of undesirables, including rats, badgers, foxes and other people's cats. Herring gulls, too. Now, I know some on this site will cheer at the prospect of some of these, but be warned, they all bring problems which you may not wish to encourage.
If you have cooked food waste you need to think about reviewing quantities or using leftovers for soups and stews and stocks. Fresh fruit and vegetable waste only on compost heaps.
I use bukashi bins - or that might be bokashi - to process cooked food, meat scraps etc that I can't put in the compost bins. The process is fungal and the food isn't composted as such, more pickled. Whatever the process, once a bin is "full" I leave it a couple of weeks, until I can see the fungus (white fluff) covering the surface and then empty the bin into the compost bin, covering it with other compostable waste, such as dead leaves. This usually coincides with one of my two compost bins being full and once I have emptied bukashi into it, I leave it to "cook". I find the compost breaks down more quickly as a result and apparently it is very nutritious. Certainly the compost bin is full of worms. I have two of the bins. You have to buy bukashi, either as a spray or in bran. I use the latter. You add a layer of waste food and sprinkle the bran on top. I have two bins so that one can be filling up when the other is full and "cooking". The bins are tighty sealed as the fungus should not be exposed to too much air. And it also stops the smell seeping out, which is good as it stinks to high heaven! You also get a very smelly run off which you drain out of the bin via a tap. This makes very good plant food but I call it "stinky juice" for reasons you would find out if you go with this system! I don't put bread or mouldy cheese in as I am not sure fats would break down well and bread hasn't got many nutrients in it, but in go all my plate scrapings - I have to say I don't waste much. As I live on my own it takes about three months to fill a buksahi bin but a family would probably fill one a month.
I totally agree with the above..That is exactly what goes in my bin....Never cooked food waste ever..