This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
compost heap advice please.
My compost heap is under a very large tree and faces south so it gets very hot and dry. How much should I water it?
It was getting very high so we trampled on it.
I know there's good stuff at the bottom but can't get near it. Have tried in the past to organize it into sections but the garden takes a lot of pruning so it always ends up as a great amorphous heap!
Any advice about watering or whatever would be much appreciated.
In London. Keen but lazy.
0
Posts
When you take out an average handful, it should be like a damp sponge (if you squeeze that handful hard, a few drops of water should come out).
Are you mixing as you go with 50% greens and 50% browns? You really could do with mixing/turning the heap, unless you have now got a monster! What are the dimensions of the heap? A problem with big heaps is you cannot easily get air and moisture into it at a later stage, which affects the composting process...
Get yourself a shredder B3. Once shredded, prunings etc take up a fraction of the space and the composting process is hugely accelerated. I shredded a pile of about 3 cubic metres of stuff last weekend and it now only half fills a 1 cubic metre compost bin. I know from experience that it will be ready for use before the end of the year.
Had a bosch shredder but it died. Can you recommend one Bob?
Paul, the heap is as wide as the garage it's up against and half the height .there's plenty of variety in there and sticks are in a separate pile. Just wondered how much to water it. The top layers are nowhere near the squeezing stage more like dry straw and crunchy leaves!
Bit hard to recommend one but mine is an Alko and still going after about 15 years (on the 3rd set of new blades though.) Look at the path the material goes through is my best advice - those where it goes straight through tend to clog less and feeding plenty of dry or woody stuff when also shredding soft green stuff helps. I try to feed 80 per cent dry to 20 percent green.
Bought Bosch recommended by which. Had one before but it was the screw one. Was good but we lent it out too many times. This one is a secret!
My husband is enjoying the new toy. Hopefully he doesn't lose interest before we hit paydirt! Lovely haystack smell coming off the heap rather an the equally good damp compost smell .
Sounds enormous B3. Has it been added to for months or years?
If you can face it I'd suggest digging it all out from the top and dumping it in another heap, watering it and activating it (with urine, poultry manure, fresh grass cuttings etc.) as you go and mixing it all up. That lot should heat up in a few days and consquently rot quickly and make good compost. If you can confine it in a bin (made of pallets for example) so much the better.
When you get far enough down that the stuff looks like compost, feels like compost and smells like compost......
Keep it secret B3! I don't think I'd lend any of my gardening tools to anyone these days - I'd miss them too much if they were damaged or not returned.
'Recycled beer' is an excellent compost accelerator by the way, so hubby can save himself a trip to the loo if no-one is looking and it will really help things along!
There's plenty of that. I'll tell him to #@$$ off down the end of the garden!
Steve the top layer is since the old shredder died and that's a good three foot. Ivy green walls ,euphorbia rose and tree prunings take up a lot of space!
That is a big heap. I'd recommend that you do exactly as Steve 309 says above. If you make up smaller sections with pallets, then it won't be as daunting in the future and you can deal with one section at a time...