Can I rescue my homemade compost?

[Ironfloor269]

We've been collecting all fruit and vegetable peels, eggshells etc. in a compost bin since last year hoping to use for our garden.

Unfortunately, it's not suitable apparently. DH had a look online and says that our compost is too moist hence could be harmful to plants.

Please tell me whether there's a way to rescue it before shelling out for garden centre compost?

Thanks.

Have you been adding ‘brown’ to the compost bin - shredded paper, cardboard, leaves etc?

I don’t think you can rescue it in time to use immediately but you can definitely get a better system happening to use it next year.

In what way is it too moist?
Has it gone slimy as no brown has been added?
Compost is a mix of green ie grass cuttings and kitchen waste and brown shredded paper and cardboard.
Add some brown and mix in.

Apart from the occasional egg box, nope, no brown has been added. I think I see where we went wrong. @Proudboomer it's too slimy due to the lack of brown stuff.

If we add a good quantity of brown stuff now, would we be able to rescue it for next year, do you think?

If we add a good quantity of brown stuff now, would we be able to rescue it for next year, do you think?
I should think so. Take all the compost out of your bin and then put it back in, alternating layers of sludge green and brown (paper, card, etc).

I would consider sieving some garden soil and mixing it into the compost, so the garden soil provides the texture and the too-moist compost gives the nutrients.

It's a lot easier to make compost if you add all the garden waste - weeds (not the roots of troublesome perennial weeds, or leave them in the sun to dry out and completely die first) and prunings. the twiggier bits of that will give you your "brown". We don't put very much paper and cardboard in ours, most goes to the council recycling. Compost should end up a rich dark brown, nice and crumbly so it pours easily, and something that you wouldn't feel "yuk!" about putting your hands in.

Thank you so much for the advice. I didn't realise how much paper, cardboard etc you need to add to absorb the moisture. Our is 90% fruit and veg peels. Oops.

We don't have much brown garden waste as our garden is mostly lawn and there are no trees to give leaves.

DH was complaining the other day that our compost doesn't look soil-like enough, similar to the stuff you buy from garden centres and I told him that you can't expect homemade compost to look 'posh' like the shop bought stuff and that the shops probably treat it in a million ways to get that consistency. 😊

Use all your Amazon etc. boxes - you could even offer to take some off other people's hands. There's nutrients in what you've already got that you won't want to waste - it's eminently rescuable. All a learning process!

For future ref - I line my kitchen compost caddy with newspaper or brown paper that comes with deliveries, and Chuck the lining in with each addition of kitchen waste. My compost is not wet, despite having no cover so getting rained on fairly regularly. I do also compost garden waste in the same bin - but I think the addition of paper with each water heavy kitchen waste addition is helpful and easy.

Oh yes - mine never achieves the fine consistency of shop bought, but the plants appear to like it!

Straw and hay are good brown matter but they might not be easily available to you. You could also leave the lid off the bin, if its got one, to dry out.
It will never look like shop bought.

You need to add cardboard egg boxes, brown cardboard in layers, crunched newspaper etc to add air and stuff into it.

It’ll take time though.

Ours looks like shop bought stuff but it takes at least 2 years to get to that state.

It will look like shop stuff eventually.

Like others simply add things like broken up egg boxes or delivery packaging paper randomly if you don’t have a huge amount of dry garden things

We don't have much brown either, mostly just toilet roll inner tubes and occasional egg box type packaging. But compost goes ok eventually, we have 2 , one for active disposal and one to mature. When the active one is full we empty out the mature one. I don't compost tea bags or peach pits or egg shells anymore as they stayed lumpy. And I try to avoid tomatoes as they were seeding everywhere. I use it more as a mulch or soil enricher, I still buy compost in bags for containers and seedlings etc. I'm not an expert gardener, for me it's another reducing waste system as much as a compost maker.

Thank you so much, everyone. This thread is such an eye opener.

See, I do put the weekly egg box in but only the bottom part because I thought the glossy sticker on the top part is not suitable for composting.

I think having two bins - one for active and one for maturing - is a great idea. I'll try to get hold of one on freecycle.

So no teabags then? I've been chucking those in but I slept them open before putting them in.

Yes you totally need to add more than just grass cuttings and green waste.
We have a shreader so do a layer of living product then a layer of shreadings.
We shread all paper, envelopes, light cardboard such as biscuit containers like Jaffacakes toilet rolls etc.
We collect the leaves that fall in the autumn( from our garden ) and keep them until they go brown and also add. You also have to give it a stir now and again.

So no teabags then?
The tea is fine but the bags are made of some plasticised material that doesn't decompose. It comes back out, months later, looking like leaf-skeletons.

Ooh what about those compostable bags you can buy from the supermarket? Can I put those in? I line my kitchen caddy with one of those babies and collect all fruit and vegetables peels in there and chuck the whole thing in the compost bin.

The compostable bags ime do not. You will retrieve their sad and still intact remains from the compost when it is ready. I don't know what circs they need to actually degrade but I have never produced them...

Switch to the brown paper caddy liners, OP, they will decompose nicely.

Brown paper caddy liners it is then. Thanks @NoSquirrels and @BewareTheBeardedDragon.

See, I do put the weekly egg box in but only the bottom part because I thought the glossy sticker on the top part is not suitable for composting.

I rip the sticker off. If it isn't going to come off I one, I put water in the top half and then tip it out, and the sticker comes off easily!

come off I one = come if IN ONE

Ffs. Come off in one...

I also dispose of badly worn natural fabric items in mine. Ie cut the collar and button band off DH’s cotton shirts when they are worn out and throw them in (he is very hard on shirts). Plus if pots need emptying I do it via the compost bin so there is drier soil mixed in with the compost.

If you layer and mix it might be ready in a couple of months. If you just dump brown material at the top and bottom and leave it will take more like a year.