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Garden waste...how do you deal with yours?

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  • SkandiSkandi Posts: 1,723
    edited March 2018
    Other
    Anything soft and all suitable kitchen waste goes into the compost heap, along with the chicken bedding, and some but not all of the grass clippings. The remaining grass clippings get dumped in a heap to go all slimy in an out of the way corner! We have a lot of land so we produce large amounts of woody waste, anything over 5cm or so gets cut up for the fire, along with all paper and cardboard (wood central heating) anything smaller gets put into piles, and as soon as it dries out, probably in a couple of weeks it will be pulled apart, checked for critters and burnt.  There's no green recycling here that is collected, and even if there were we would not be using it, as the bits are way too big for that! we could take it to the tip for free, but we do not have a trailer.

    I should add that we do or did buy council compost at approximately £5 per trailer load. Until this year it was just garden cuttings, leaves etc only recently have they given people in town food waste bins. We've not had any weed issues from that compost, I had a pile of it sitting for over a year and nothing germinated in it.
  • BobTheGardenerBobTheGardener Posts: 11,384
    I don't have any garden waste only free raw material as everything here gets shredded and composted including perennial weeds and ivy.  Wood over 2" in diameter goes on the wildlife woodpile.
    A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
  • LiriodendronLiriodendron Posts: 8,328
    edited March 2018
    Other
      
    The council won't collect green waste from my house because the road is too narrow for the waggon.  I compost what I can, take "nasties" to the tip, have stacks of woody stuff in quiet corners for the insects, and keep twiggy prunings for pea sticks etc.  But I have an incinerator too, where I quickly burn dry stuff.    
    Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    Be super organised and divide into piles for shredding, composting etc.
    Small compost bin in the kitchen for peelings and egg shells and coffee grinds then goes o the bigger compost bin in the annex which then gets emptied into one of the compost bins in the veggie plot.   We also have a long, concrete composting space we inherited and another pile of stuff waiting to be shredded to go on the compost heap.

    Twigs go on the kindling pile or get fed into the muncher with bigger ones.  The very big ones are piled up to dry out and then be cut up for our fires or else burned on an occasional bonfire.   In this new garden we have inherited clumps of Provençal cane which yield enough canes for our use for the rest of our lives in just one season.  We cut those in late winter and pile them up for the birds to take the soft, frondy ends for their nests but we need to find a way of using or disposing of them as there are hundreds.

    We save cardboard packing for covering bare soil in the potager which will be a no dig venture.

    Nothing, so far, goes to the council tip.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • WaysideWayside Posts: 845
    Compost it only
    I always think the hard work is in getting clippings and other stuff into a manageable size for the wheelie bin.  Frankly it's more effort to do that, then to heap, and shred/clip the heap.  I have noticed that my collection has gotten a little out of control.  So may burn the more woody items if we ever get a dry patch to down size.  Bees nests and toads sometimes prevent mucking about with it.
  • adamadamantadamadamant Posts: 278
    I dont have a shredder so I throw into a 'hot composter' everything soft from the garden and kitchen, then as it fills up (which they do surprisingly quickly) pull a load out of the door at the bottom and we load it into a compost area next door which is 1m x 1m x 1m where it cold composts down further till I use it on the beds.  I dont get the lovely compost from the hotbin which the adverts show, probably because I dont manage it properly, but it certainly more than kick starts the process.  I only have a 100 foot city garden but I produce more waste than I can compost, so I get a green waste collection fortnightly for 50.00 per year and I probably fill that bin 48 weeks a year.  I consider it good value as I dont have to lug boot loads of stuff which is too bulky or woody to the municipal dump.  The hot bin is good although it needs alot of shredded dry material added to it, but in the summer it reaches up to 50C so I dont mind putting in annual weeds etc.
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    Be super organised and divide into piles for shredding, composting etc.
    adamadamant  Useful to know
  • Nanny BeachNanny Beach Posts: 8,719
    Large council bin, free up till now, talk of changing companies and might start charging, 2 compost bins, electric shredder, bin is emptied all year round and always full, (hard stuff, pruning roses  peren weeds,etc.) big garden.  Uncooked food veg waste compost in garden, there isnt much, I freeze even little bits.  Tried leafmould, the sacks rotted, the leaves did nothing!
  • DampGardenManDampGardenMan Posts: 1,054
     everything here gets shredded and composted including perennial weeds and ivy. 
    Interesting - do you count ivy as a "bad un"? I've chucked chopped-up ivy on the compost heap for years and never had a problem, though I carefully avoided chucking perennial weed roots in.
  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    Be super organised and divide into piles for shredding, composting etc.
    I don’t put ground elder and buttercups in the compost. I have a nice secluded corner ( it’s actually a bit I’ve never got round to taming) so throw those sort of weeds in there.
      
    I don’t ever have cooked food waste and put out one small compost sack of rubbish once a fortnight, recycle bin about once a month, if that. 
    I really can’t understand the piles of black bags along the road on bin day😱
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

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