My compost won't!!!

[invisiblepiper]

Hi - simple (?) question - how to get my compost to do just that. It's in a council provided green plastic bin thingy - but does not seem to heat up and decompose. I have kept it moist-ish, it has mixed contents but it can't be turned or anything. Is it true that you can add urine as a kind of catalyst?

[Rosendula]

Hi - simple (?) question - how to get my compost to do just that. It's in a council provided green plastic bin thingy - but does not seem to heat up and decompose. I have kept it moist-ish, it has mixed contents but it can't be turned or anything. Is it true that you can add urine as a kind of catalyst?

You don't mention how long you've been trying to compost. It does tend to take a while, and when I first started I felt like nothing was happening for a long, long, long time. It's only now I've been composting for a few years that I feel less nervous about it. I have 4 bins (well, 3 daleks and an old dustbin, plus various piles of leaves and stuff here and there ). I now start a new bin at the beginning of autumn and continue filling that for a full year. If it gets too full I leave it to break down for a while, but then add to it again when there's room. After filling it for a year, I turn it once, then leave it another year. Then it gets sieved. Anything that's too big to go through the sieve goes into the next bin. So doing it that way, it's taking me two years from when I start using a bin to taking out the compost (or one year from when I stop putting anything in, if that makes sense ) You don't need 4 bins to compost successfully though - I just managed to acquire that many and so use them all.

You call yours a "green plastic bin thingy" . Err, is it an actual compost bin (a dalek?), or is it more like a wheely bin that the council think they're going to collect but you've perhaps decided otherwise? The reason I ask is because composting works best if the bin has an open bottom and is on the ground so the worms can get up. It would have been helpful to the worms, too, if you had been able to fork over the ground before putting the bin there. You need to make sure it's nice and full of a variety of creepy crawlies - woodlice, slugs and snails, worms. Basically, any creature you don't want on your veg patch (+ worms) you can chuck in the compost bin.

It really does help to turn it. Why can't you turn yours? If you really can't, then at least stick a fork in it and give it a wiggle about now and then to let the air circulate a bit.

There has been a lot of discussion about urine. Most people believe that men's urine is beneficial, but women's urine isn't. I can't remember the details though.

Hope that's of some help.

[Annpan]

Yup... pee in it, we both pee on ours - well, we use a bucket in the shed when we are out working in the garden, and the bucket gets emptied onto the heap.
Turn it if you can at all - if it has an access hole at the bottom just take a few shovels full out and put it on top. I turn mine after about 6 months and to it up to the top again (it reduces in size dramatically after a few warm days)

Might help if you put it in a sunny area of the garden, even this time of year the sun can make a big difference.

Don't know what else to suggest, but it does take time...

[JulieSherris]

You can wrap the outside with a piece of old carpet, or bubble wrap if you can find a large enough piece - that helps to trap the heat as well.

My compost bin in the UK was just about ready (2 years in the filling, turning, adding...) when we moved last year - I hope the new folks used it!!
I've yet to start a compost bin here - but we have piles & piles of leaves in the forest that I can use... a farm for manure next door & when we get the chooks in, they'll have the kitchen scraps, so I might not need a composter yet... we shall see!

[Odsox]

I have to come clean here
With all the "green" things I've done over the years, I have never ever made proper compost
I've tried all sorts of bins from wooden ones to plastic ones and they all end up the same .... wet smelly gunge, not dissimilar in smell and texture to month old cow manure.
All my bins (now all commercial plastic ones) are covered, get turned now and again, I try to keep a balance of nitrogenous and carbon content, leave for a year and I still get smelly gunge.
I have to say that my plants don't complain when I dig it in, but that's not the point .... I've read just about every article about how easy it is to produce "friable pleasant smelling compost", but it don't work for me folks.

Has anybody here tried the rotating/tumbling compost bins ?
From what I've read of these they claim to make perfect compost in as little as 4 - 6 weeks during the warmer months, even with grass mowings, but the horrendous prices for them plus the even more horrendous carriage charges to SW Ireland have so far made that a non-starter, especially when I'm told that all I need is a few old floor boards and a piece of carpet.

[Thomzo]

Hi
In my experience you get wet smelly gunge if you either:
1) have too much grass (might explain the cow manure smell) or
2) have nowhere for the water to drain out.

I have made the mistake of putting grass into the bins before. It really needs to be mixed with something first. Shredded paper or fallen leaves are ideal. If you put grass in on it's own it either forms a wet smelly gunge or dries out and becomes thatch.

I have an old dustbin that I use as a sort of wormery. I made a hole in the bottom and put in a water butt tap which I left open for the liquid to drain out. I hadn't realise that it had got blocked so the liquid was just stagnating in the bottom of the bin. The top part of the compost was really good, lovely and moist and full of worms but the bottom half was just wet, smelly gunge.

Hope this helps.

Zoe

[Marc]

It is difficult to make good compost on a small scale and you are unlikely to get it to heat up if you add small amounts at a time. You can still make useful (and nice textured) compost though, albeit more slowly. It's mainly about adding the right ingredients in the right proportions. The best I made was when I had a big area of rough lawn that I cut with a rotary mower and left the cuttings to dry and make a kind of hay. I kept a pile of this hay next to the compost bin and added a thin layer after each layer of wet or green compost material. I'm not keen on adding urine, anyway if it's already soggy that will just make it wetter. If I think it needs more nitrogen I buy some pelleted chicken manure and give it a sprinkle of that between layers. If you can add a decent quantity at a time, get the moisture content right, with a bit of chicken manure (or urine) it will heat up beautifully and quickly. Keep trying, it's satisfying when you get it right

Marc

[red]

we don't turn out compost. just pile it in trying to make sure its a mixture of stuff.. but not trying very hard, it just seems to woke out. Our compost bins are old pig sties - open to teh elements. we stick a bit of carpet on the top when one is closed.

to hot compost you do need to get the mix just right, but cold composting works.. it just takes a lot longer.
let me see we started the compost heap in winter 06/07, filled it sometiime that year and moved onto another one, and started using it spring 08; but you have to have space to be relaxed about it like this.

[Peggy Sue]

I love this subject, I read a whole book on composting once- brilliant!

I don't use the green things I understand they are cold composter and take about 3 years. To hot compost (quicker) you need a minimum of 1 metre cube (a pallet each side does nicely) and about 80% muck. The muck generates the heat and the size keeps it hot. Turning it, preferably weekly accelerates it, as does pee, nettles and comfrey.

Thats my method!

[red]

ack excuse the typos and spelling in my last post!


if you compost heap was 80% muck.. then to my mind its not really a compost heap but a muck heap! The secret to hot composting i think is getting the mix right, and an insulated container helps the heat to stay in... at C.A.T. they use old chest freezers to compost in..

[Peggy Sue]

The probelm is Red, that without muck the lack of heat and worms makes it really slow. An insulator like the freezer for example will only keep the heat in that is generated, unless you get the compost process going no heat will be there to keep in, so to speak.

Even if you don't want 80% muck I really recommend you get some either horse or cow muck to kick start it, then all the worms will move in, from some miracualous hiding place they have, who knows where!

I started a new heap a few months ago, I had a problem that the farmer had sprayed the field with something I didn't want in my muck where my own horse lives (conveniently right next to the allotment!), so I went without for a few months, it wasn't composting at all, so I went to a friends field who hadn't sprayed , added a bag and hey presto this weekend its crawling with worms and steaming.

Poo is the easy way!

[MikeM]

hate to say this, but I've never had a problem making compost (well, I don't make it, momma nature does that bit I just put in the stuff). And I don't carefully add 4" of this and 2" of that and turn it after a week. I just bung in whatever kitchen scraps and weeds that I have to hand. What I do add tho, is fresh farmyard manure. We get a gurt great cart load of the stuff delivered to the lotties every month or so. Most of what I take I heap up on any empty beds I have, but if I have any spare I bung that in the compost bins. Guess that must act as an activator or whatever, but it makes great compost.
The only problem is that I have those useless plastic bin things, they make it so difficult getting the compost out without making a right mess. When they finanlly give up the ghost I'm gonna make wooden ones.

[red]

The probelm is Red, that without muck the lack of heat and worms makes it really slow. An insulator like the freezer for example will only keep the heat in that is generated, unless you get the compost process going no heat will be there to keep in, so to speak.

while I agree that a bit of poo definitely gets the compost heap going it is not absolutely necessary to get hot composting established. we have managed to acheive it on my occasions just using a plastic darlek and kitchen waste, and going for months.

Have to say my best compost has always been from a heap rather than a purpose made bin though, and like Mike we dont make a science of it, just add the stuff to the heap and it seems to work out.

[Odsox]

I'm still confused

I take all the vegetable waste from the canteen at OH's works, and also a good proportion of they shredded paper waste.
I also have a shredder that I use for the large woody vegetable parts like cabbage stalks.
When I turn the heap I have millions of bright red worms in the bottom 2 thirds of the heap.
The bin has air holes up the sides and holes in the bottom.
BUT ... it is still a stinky gunge even after a year or more.

[red]

perhaps yo have too much kitchen waste? it does tend to go a bit skanky... can you mix in more earthy stuff like weeds... grass clippings?

and cardboard rots down nicely.

its probably lovely stuff for the garden.. just not lovely stuff for you to have!