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The make your own compost thread

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  • punkdoc said:
    I don’t disagree, but the threads author, has been very abusive to a number of posters, on this and other threads, and has had a number of posts removed.
    This is not acceptable and if it continues he will, I am sure be banned.



    Maybe I'm thicker skinned - I just shrug my shoulders & move on..
    I was going to suggest the ignore button until I discovered you can't if a user has opted for their profile to be private...which seems to negate the whole premise.
  • Uff said:
    I was thinking of this last night Woodgreen after I'd read a post yesterday and wondered how, for instance worms, get into the heap after the heat that kills the weed seeds. I daresay that bacteria regenerates (or does it?) but how do the insects find their way back in?
    Worms worm their way back in Uff  ;)
    It's amazing where things like that end up, the other day a mouse in a bucket. Slugs will regularly scale buildings to get to chimney pots. Worms? Everywhere! If you leave a car/caravan/trailer standing on a tarmac driveway for long enough before moving it then there will be worms under the tyres.

    I wish they'd stay out of my cabbage and sprouts though, haha.
  • WoodgreenWoodgreen Posts: 1,273
    I was just thinking about it and remembering how my dad would occasionally manage to produce combustion in mum's compost bin. I never did get to the bottom of how, and suspect a too dry heap and a carelessly discarded match, but her finished compost was always good. Mum gave me her 'Rotol' conical compost bin when she changed over to a 3 bay brick built system, a thing of beauty made for her by my late husband. I've had the Rotol for thirty years and it's this method I've had to stop using. But what a piece of kit, to have made compost since around 1970.
    The delivery men who brought it told her they'd been having bets on what its purpose was!

  • UffUff Posts: 3,199
    Amazing what we remember.
    Thinking back now my dad's heaps were just that, heaps against corrugated iron. He once said to me, I could cook an egg in there Uff. I'll show you. And he did, pushed an egg in and a few days later fished it out, cracked it and it was cooked. I thought it was magic. 
    SW SCOTLAND but born in Derbyshire
  • LunarSeaLunarSea Posts: 1,923
    Uff said:
    Amazing what we remember.
    Thinking back now my dad's heaps were just that, heaps against corrugated iron. He once said to me, I could cook an egg in there Uff. I'll show you. And he did, pushed an egg in and a few days later fished it out, cracked it and it was cooked. I thought it was magic. 

    Marvellous! That's got me thinking @Uff. According to a Sous Vide (water bath) cooking temperature chart I should be able to cook a steak in my heap (currently 60°C) in an afternoon  :)
    Clay soil - Cheshire/Derbyshire border

    I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful

  • UffUff Posts: 3,199
     :) Are you going to try it LunarSea? 
    SW SCOTLAND but born in Derbyshire
  • LunarSeaLunarSea Posts: 1,923
    Uff said:
     :) Are you going to try it LunarSea? 
    Probably not, but it's killing me thinking I'm wasting all that lovely heat  :|
    Clay soil - Cheshire/Derbyshire border

    I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful

  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,618
    I started off with a square wooden bin made of pallets and followed instructions at the time to layer it, thin sprinkling of soil, bit of lime alternate layers. It was absolute rubbish.  Daleks I find best for first cook. I pile as much as I can in, cut small, and it heats up. Green becomes brown. If the next lot is three buckets of grass cuttings, I mix it all in with the previous stuff that is now brown.  if it gets too dry, I chuck in a bucket of water.  When a couple of daleks are full I turn them into a larger bin to mature, adding some rock dust.  Eventually I get lovely compost. It works for me.
  • LunarSea said:
    Uff said:
     :) Are you going to try it LunarSea? 
    Probably not, but it's killing me thinking I'm wasting all that lovely heat  :|
    The Victorians used to grow pineapples in them.
  • WoodgreenWoodgreen Posts: 1,273
    @fidgetbones This sounds a bit like our old system.
    We would fill the Rotol in one go, using grass mown that day and stored weeds etc from through the week.
    The following day the Rotol would have dropped to between a third and half full. We'd mix it a bit with a fork as there would be gaps where it had shrunk from the sides. We'd top it up again with more mowings and weeds etc. and again the next day but not for more than three days.
    A week later it went from the black Rotol into a green dalek for a week, heating again when turned. Then on week 3 it went into one of 3 bays, to cool and mature. (When this bay was full it was turned into the next one and eventually into the third bay for using.) This filling of the Rotol and green dalek was a regular weekly task and in this way we moved three or four times the amount of material than if we had simply kept topping up a bin. The plastic bins were in a large greenhouse too, so that helped heat them up. 
    That Rotol! I doubt you could buy one now that would last as well. It's a sort of rubbery plastic, not brittle, so it's withstood the handles of countless forks on its rim, and only split a bit towards the end of my using it.

    I too found that my early attempts at making compost following the layering idea weren't too good.
    Possibly one of those things that got churned out as gospel, but doesn't always work in practice? And of course at one time there were no plastic bins to help with heat generation in small quantities.
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