Composting for idiots

[QueenOfWeeds]

Help please! We have recently bought a new house with a much bigger garden than we are used to. There used to be an open wooden compost bin type thing, but it’s now just a sort of…pile of sticks and twigs and leaves where the garden was presumably cleared for photos.

How do we start to fix it? Or should we scrap everything, buy a new compost bin, and start again? The house also has a garden waste bin, so I’m assuming we should just put all the dry garden waste in there?

@MereDintofPandiculation I found your comment particularly interesting as I too am dipping into the world of compsoting and this is really helpful. So thank you for posting

We made our heap out of pallets (2 separate but conjoined bins). It's tucked in the corner of the garden. We've also got a separate leaf net, as leaf mould makes brilliant mulch. It starts out in November brimming with leaves and over the winter it halves in volume helped by the rain, frost and worms.

in the summer, the heap really gets hot and steamy - you can literally feel the heat radiating of it which is great for the decomposing process.

to make good quality compost you need diversity - alternating layers of green matter (green leaves, soft cuttings, vegetable peelings, small amounts of grass cuttings) and brown matter (dead leaves, thin chopped up twigs, shredded paper and wet cardboard).

Good advice! I think take a look at what's in this big pile OP. It takes a bit of a reset from thinking of garden waste as stuff you want to get rid of, to stuff that's useful! You could always put the chunkier stuff in the base of a raised bed as pp suggested, and amend the finer stuff to get the balance of greens and browns. In my case it involves asking neighbours for grass clippings occasionally to mix in (especially this time of year as there won't be much 'green', except fruit and veg waste, over winter).

Composting is so addictive and satisfying!

I’ve found everyone’s posts really informative, thank you.

Definitely much more complicated than I was expecting!

Definitely much more complicated than I was expecting!

It can be complicated, but you can also (like me) be a slatternly slovenly composter and get mediocre but very usable results. If your compost doesn't quite turn into beautiful velvety stuff you can still distribute it in the garden and dig it in slightly.

I just use two daleks and turn the contents rarely and erratically. I always get several wheelbarrows full of adequate compost each year. And just occasionally I dig in and get a shock: absolute black gold that makes me imagine someone has broken in and replaced my garden waste with bags of shop-bought compost.

And billions of lovely worms.

It's one of those things that you just get better at with experience. You get more of a feel for what to put in and what to let the council refuse collections take away. So don't be AT ALL put off if it doesn't work out well for the first year or two.

BTW, @MereDintofPandiculation, I thought your post was really helpful and interesting. I'm fantasising about a spherical compost bin now

It's one of those things that you just get better at with experience. You get more of a feel for what to put in and what to let the council refuse collections take away. So don't be AT ALL put off if it doesn't work out well for the first year or two. I think too that the particular mix of organisms to break down your selection of waste develops over several years, and your compost improves with time. I can remember when I’d only use mine for mulch, and I comforted myself that whatever it looked like, it was transformed from what went into it. I’ve now haven’t bought in compost for pots and seeds since pre Covid, and I get the “black gold” every year, despite being a “slatternly slovenly composter”.

My only problem with using my own compost in pots is it doesn’t kill all the weeds, and I have to weed the pots, mainly Petty Spurge.

Definitely much more complicated than I was expecting!
I think many gardening tips are a counsel of perfection. IMO good enough is good enough! (Just like parenting.) Most things decompose eventually; the composting tips are merely trying to speed up the process.

My only problem with using my own compost in pots is it doesn’t kill all the weeds, and I have to weed the pots, mainly Petty Spurge.
Same here, though pots are easy / quick enough to weed. When I use my compost for making a potting-on mix (therefore small quantities) I zap it first in the microwave.

Thats really what I meant by 'turning it', it's hard work to do a regular turning. Friends left their manure fork once when they delivered the contents of the hen house to me, it was brilliant and I went and bought one to help shift stuff around. It's also useful for discouraging DH interfering with my compost!

I have two biggish open sided compost bins and I noticed a few months ago that one of them was not breaking down at all, it was very strange.

When I use my compost for making a potting-on mix (therefore small quantities) I zap it first in the microwave. Do you not worry that you're killing all the microorganisms as well?

Do you not worry that you're killing all the microorganisms as well?
I try not to think about that!

'BTW, **, I thought your post was really helpful and interesting. I'm fantasising about a spherical compost bin now'
@MereDintofPandiculation I stand corrected, your recommendation of a spherical compost bin WAS useful (facetious... but it was interesting). I just felt a bit 'Aaaaactually-d' by your response.

OP it's not complicated- most peoples responses are various takes on 'make a big pile' with varying levels of detail you can take or leave. But even if you can't make it to one of Charles Dowdings courses, he has loads of youtube videos including some on composting which are great.

@napody Your post felt like a personal attack and I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve it. I was upset, but didn’t show that in my sniffy reply. I certainly didn’t mean to put you down in my original post. Shall we forget all this, put it down to mutual misunderstanding, and resume friendly relations?

We have one of the big Dalek Bins , started it in April 2021 when we had to move it but I have no idea if the compost is anywhere near ready . There's a door at the base , I'll get DH to remove it and have a look.

@MereDintofPandiculation I fully apologise- I was snippy and it was uncalled for. And over compost, one of my favourite things (genuinely!). Absolutely, let's do that x

@napody ❤️

And over compost, one of my favourite things It’s genuinely one of my red-letter days when I get to the bottom of a bin, and can turn into it all the unrotted stuff in the next bin and reveal the beautiful new compost beneath.

I always feel that I actually grow compost, and that all the flowers, fruits and vegetables are merely a by product