The joys of composting

[anef]

Until last weekend we had two compost bins in the back garden. One is a (broken) plastic one which came with the garden (it wasn't broken when we moved in but in the last 20 years the plastic has cracked, it has a big hole in one side and the top part doesn't fit onto the bottom part). Also it has housed at least one bees' nest, though fortunately not this year.

The other is a wooden bin with a roof on top for inserting vegetation and a panel at the bottom from which one can in theory extract lovely new compost. In practice not so much as we don't turn the compost enough as it's a huge faff digging it out and then putting it back again. Also it was full, but with a large space behind the panel at the bottom which had not been magically filled by lovely new compost when I took out some for use earlier this year.

So last week our new rotating compost bin arrived, only requiring "a basic level of DIY skills" to assemble. Despite my doubts that we could muster one of these between us, M managed to put it together and erect it in a functional state.

I also bought a compost turner for the wooden bin, on the hypothesis that this would improve our efforts at rotating the stuff.

I then spent this morning turning the compost in the wooden bin, and moving half-composted detritus from the broken one to the rotating one. I also moved over some woodlice and wormy things on the theory that these are also necessary for the process. I was going to get rid of the broken one, but having discovered a layer of perfectly good compost under the detritus I thought I would leave it until I had used it up, and piled the non-fitting plastic bits back on top again.

Tired now.

Comments

[flick]

We have two sets of compost bins. One gets horse manure, grass clippings and old compost from pots: we get lots of nice compost out of it. The other gets all the compostable kitchen scraps, and after seven years hasn't filled up or had anything taken out of it. I'm slightly scared by that.

[anef]

I don't think it's surprising if your kitchen scraps bin is filling up slowly. There's only the two of you eating vegetables, after all. Ours doesn't fill up fast and we put the grass clippings in as well, though all the twiggy stuff goes to the council who compost it for us. We can go and pick the compost up for free from the Amey site (when it's open) though as it's a 20 mile round trip possibly not that environmentally friendly.