Thanks for all your comments, I am being patient and carrying on as I did before and hopefully it will work ok. PurpleRose you have made me feel better about having a square bin now and convinced me that it is not the bin itself, I just have to fill it it with as much as I can. Yes as you say, I have picked up lots of info off this site, I was looking all over the internet previously and just got more confused so am grateful to all on here for their advice Thanks TopBird for your advice, I do tend to keep the green stuff to one side as I seem to gather a lot of that but never seem to have enough brown stuff to go with it, I keep it in a bin till I have enough leaves, shredded paper and cardboard and then mix it all up before I add to compost and just stir it in to the top layers SidRoy I will never ever ever watch spiders or think they are interesting. They terrify me haha I do think I make it all a much harder job than it should be but maybe when I become a bit more confident I will be more relaxed about it
Hi Susan. You seem to be overthinking this. Hostafan is right......patience is the key, that and three bins so that two are rotting down while the third is being filled. Don't worry too much about the content of the bin. All this mixing green and brown stuff etc. etc. You use what you have. Never add too many dead leaves.....they need a bin of their own......and don't overdo the grass clippings. The bin you are currently filling should have a vibrant colony of worms and slugs, possibly ants and flies too. They will help with breaking everything down. As for urine, I have heard it needs to be male but you really shouldn't need that. If you are adding enough green matter and fruit and veg peelings, you won't need to add any liquid. Coffee grounds and teabags (non-plastic) rot down very nicely in the heap.
Basically ignore the heap, once it is full leave it for months and months and months while the other bins fill up, and then you should have something decent to chuck on the garden.
I have finally managed to get my heaps to heat up all the time, BUT it didn't happen until I got a huge garden, We can fill a 1m2 heap in a week then it heats up for a couple of weeks, shrinks to 1/4 of the size and then (since I am way to lazy to turn) gets left for a year to finish. One way I found to get a heap to heat if you don't have much, is to wait until it's ready to turn and then mix in the lawn clippings as you turn it. Of course that isn't practical in a bin situation. If you only have a little just drop it in and wait it will take a year or possibly even 2 but it will turn into compost.
Another alternative if you don't generate much waste is to use a wormery. Useful info here https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=726 Might be a step too far if you can't deal with worms but there are modular systems which reduce the need to handle them.
Thanks everyone for your comments. Hahaha Ceres you got that right I do worry about it more than I should and make hard work of it. However the advice I have had on here has been brilliant and so am going to continue with this bin till next year and continue collecting stuff till it is a reasonable amount to add to compost and stop worrying about it Am not going to totally discount the Hotbin mark2 and am also going to look into a wormery, something I had not considered before. Thanks for that info steephill This gardening lark has most certainly kept me entertained during the lockdown
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PurpleRose you have made me feel better about having a square bin now and convinced me that it is not the bin itself, I just have to fill it it with as much as I can. Yes as you say, I have picked up lots of info off this site, I was looking all over the internet previously and just got more confused so am grateful to all on here for their advice
Thanks TopBird for your advice, I do tend to keep the green stuff to one side as I seem to gather a lot of that but never seem to have enough brown stuff to go with it, I keep it in a bin till I have enough leaves, shredded paper and cardboard and then mix it all up before I add to compost and just stir it in to the top layers
SidRoy I will never ever ever watch spiders or think they are interesting. They terrify me haha
I do think I make it all a much harder job than it should be but maybe when I become a bit more confident I will be more relaxed about it
Hahaha Ceres you got that right I do worry about it more than I should and make hard work of it.
However the advice I have had on here has been brilliant and so am going to continue with this bin till next year and continue collecting stuff till it is a reasonable amount to add to compost and stop worrying about it
Am not going to totally discount the Hotbin mark2 and am also going to look into a wormery, something I had not considered before. Thanks for that info steephill
This gardening lark has most certainly kept me entertained during the lockdown