Talk to me about your Green Johanna

[DesparatePragmatist]

I'm about 6 months in to being the proud owner of a Green Johanna (conical hot composter with a solid base for those not immediately clued in). I was ridiculously excited about getting it, and yes i did get the insulating jacket to keep it snug over winter. Have been lovingly feeding it with 1/3 greens 2/3 browns, shredded and stirred as per instructions. I now need to start using the compost, and find myself somewhat uncertain.

I've always previously used a double bay system and could easily tell when the compost was ready; moist, crumbly and, well, composty. The bottom of Green J is brown and squidgy, still with some bits of twig and leaf in it. I bought a riddler to sieve out the uncomposted bits, but after some very vigorous shaking have ended up with rolled doughy balls not dissilar to donkey poo, and a sprinkling of upset worms.

So I'm turning to the wise gardeners of Mumsnet. Tell me your Green Johanna hacks!

I'm particularly interested in:

When you get it out do you pull loads out, or just remove little and often?

What do you use it for? I want to mix it with soil and use it for potting, but is it really best for mulching?

Is it best not to turn it? I've got a compost aerator corkscrew that turns the lot right up from the bottom, but having seen potato peels mixed in with the finished stuff maybe I should stick to just stirring the surface with the stirring thingy as the layers go in?

Anything else you've learned?

Will post photos when it's light if anyone wants to do some composter gloating

I think this would be perfect. It really gets quite hot with all the compost action, mine is in the shade most of the day and I worry it's getting too hot in the 90 mins the sun does get to it. You definitely need one!

I'm happy to report that everything I've potted up or mulched with my weird plasticine compost balls is doing marvellously. I mixed it with topsoil in most cases, and for my tomatoes I mixed it with Dalefoot wool/bracken compost, which is wonderful but £££. I've discovered the easiest way to get it out is by putting an old plastic dustpan up to the serving hatch thing, and hoiking bits out with the stirring stick. Then I can easily just pick out the bits that need more composting and drop them back in the top.

I’m a very amateur gardener and take a bit of a meh if it grows it grows approach to most things.

We’ve had a green Johanna for 5 ish years now and are extremely lazy with it. We chuck pretty much all of our food waste in it (rarely if ever anything meat related though but that’s more to do with not having leftovers haha), most of the lawn and hedge cuttings, leaves that are raked up in autumn. We didn’t take anything out of it for the first three years and we’re pretty lazy with stirring it. We don’t have the special jacket for it either. It’s full of worms and although it rots down slower in the winter it still seems to be active.

The last two years we’ve been using the compost from it to grow things in. It’s not perfect compost I guess, pretty similar in appearance to yours. Occasionally find the odd thing in it that probably should have gone in the actual bin instead (found an avocado skin in it yesterday). But everything we’ve grown in it has done very well. Usually mix in some normal bought compost and put some on the top too.

I’ve debated getting a second one as since we first for it we’ve had more children and now have more food waste and I’ve had to start paying for our green bin to be collected again as well so must have more waste than before.

Will probably get roasted for my shoddy composting but oh well 🤣

It sounds like your Johanna appreciates the laid back approach! Although you must be very waste-efficient if you didn't empty it for 3 years and still had room; mine was looking pretty full within 4 months. Glad to hear this is just how Johanna compost looks then. I'd dearly love a second and be able to let the first one be really thoroughly digested - but dont have the room....