This guy has ideas for making your own hot composter small bin with glue, straps and insulation board. You can buy the boards, but certainly around me a lot of people are chucking out insulation board into skips often.
I haven’t got much space for a compost bin, but I’ll i’ve managed to fit in a hotbin
@TheVanguard I do recommend watching a few Beanie videos on best to use a Hotbin, esp the ones about cleaning it out. Nobody I have found goes into so much detail.
Its the under gardeners job, too hard for me. It is satisfying, getting ready to spread our black gold on the garden, it keeps the ground moist, I can tell what parts haven’t had much on them, ground bakes on the top layer, it doesn’t do that with plenty of compost on it. We’ve never mowed anything, but we do have a chipper for shrubs and tree bits.
I never feed the garden, if you can get your soil in good condition, which is what the compost does, your garden will make what it needs.
Now experimenting with seeds, I’ve got lupins and Lichnis Molten Lava up in a week, potted my peppers in that alone, best I’ve ever had.
It seems a pity to put out bins of waste green and pay to have it taken away when they are going to pass it on to compost makers and sell it back to you.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Probably a stupid question, but do people compost all their windfall apples? I have hundreds in varying stages of decay on the ground and wondered whether to pick them up and stick them on the compost with llts of cardboard or whether that will just create a giant tub of apple sauce 🤔 Perhaps I should add them in stages with other green waste?
Compost them, they'll rot down lovely mixed with some brown stuff - as you say, cardboard. It doesn't matter massively if they all go in at once with the brown compared to drip feeding them in more gradually, but the latter is better if you want to do it. Whatever they bring to the party (acid? sugar?) is better evenly distributed from day one, but it'll all get mixed in anyhow when it gets turned or eventually thrown on the garden.
I'll have to get some insulation for my bin. I used closed storage bins previously and everything just got wet and stinky, so I thought air circulation was the missing factor. I'm still afraid to put my weeds in there, as many are tuberous or tap-rooted perennials. Does anyone have problems with those regrowing, even with good hot temps in your pile?
I'll have to get some insulation for my bin. I used closed storage bins previously and everything just got wet and stinky, so I thought air circulation was the missing factor. I'm still afraid to put my weeds in there, as many are tuberous or tap-rooted perennials. Does anyone have problems with those regrowing, even with good hot temps in your pile?
He said 'Put them all in, no problem!' then on camera took the lid off and started pulling bindweed roots out of a finished compost and showed some growing
Posts
Weirdly as debs64 says I finding it remarkably enjoyable, far more
so then I ever imagined!
Absolutely. A cross between cooking and zoology.
Extra important for @Wilderbeast as he grows a lot of his food. Successfully.
🥕🥕🥕
I do think the compost helps loads with the veg, I dug up a 1 kilo parsnip today and have hardly watered them at all.
Its the under gardeners job, too hard for me. It is satisfying, getting ready to spread our black gold on the garden, it keeps the ground moist, I can tell what parts haven’t had much on them, ground bakes on the top layer, it doesn’t do that with plenty of compost on it.
We’ve never mowed anything, but we do have a chipper for shrubs and tree bits.
I never feed the garden, if you can get your soil in good condition, which is what the compost does, your garden will make what it needs.
Now experimenting with seeds, I’ve got lupins and Lichnis Molten Lava up in a week, potted my peppers in that alone, best I’ve ever had.
It seems a pity to put out bins of waste green and pay to have it taken away when they are going to pass it on to compost makers and sell it back to you.
It doesn't matter massively if they all go in at once with the brown compared to drip feeding them in more gradually, but the latter is better if you want to do it.
Whatever they bring to the party (acid? sugar?) is better evenly distributed from day one, but it'll all get mixed in anyhow when it gets turned or eventually thrown on the garden.
He said 'Put them all in, no problem!' then on camera took the lid off and started pulling bindweed roots out of a finished compost and showed some growing