Following advice at this fount of learning I bought a Bosch garden 1.8kW shredder at B&Q for 130 euro (about 85 pounds), and it has been performing very well.
Now I'm wondering if I can add the output to my wormery? Will it convert within a finite time to compost?
A few years ago I hired a shredder to clear my back garden and it composted well when mixed with green stuff and grass cuttings, but I'm not sure how long it took - I tend to make more compost than I use so it sits there for a year or three.
| Following advice at this fount of learning | I bought a Bosch garden 1.8kW shredder at B&Q for 130 euro | (about 85 pounds), | and it has been performing very well. | | Now I'm wondering if I can add the output to my wormery? | Will it convert within a finite time to compost?
Maybe not a wormery, but in a compost bin they will be OK. The thick bits will take longer than the thin bits, give them a year. We do.
Thanks for the advice. I hadn't looked in the wormery for a couple of years, and was quite surprised when I opened it to see the little beggars running around, especially as I had been told to bring the wormery indoors in winter, which of course I did not do.
So I'll add my shredder output to the bin.
Incidentally, the one thing that has not rotted at all in the wormery is the outside of tea bags. Other paper has rotted well, so I guess tea bags are not normal paper. Also egg-shells, which we were encouraged to put in, remain as egg-shells, as one might perhaps have expected ...
Anything will compost eventually, even teabag bags. But why not put it straight on the garden where it will do most good?
When the Dutch closed of the Zuider Zee they found their composters were eating into the glass shards that got into the recyclers. I have never heard of any more research on the subject though.
I did hear that garbage put in a swamp, south of New York, was recovered for research several decades later and even newspapers had survived in readable format.
So heat, damp and time are not everything to a compost bin, are they?
| So heat, damp and time are not everything to a compost bin, are they?
Air, is essential. Anaerobic conditions inhibit decay as at Vindolanda
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>>The remarkable survival of the tablets is due to the anaerobic conditions. Clay dumped to seal earlier occupation layers and level up for rebuilding combined with the wet conditions to deny a supply of oxygen to the bacteria that would otherwise rot organic materials.
If the shreddings are woody then doing so can rob Nitrogen from the soil as they decompose. It is always best to compost, at least partially, any woody shreddings.
I visited a closed vessel, liquid (oxygenated soup), composting facility for supermarket food waste a couple of years back, near Tonbridge, orange peel was one of the things it couldn't handle even after maceration.
Indeed. about six years ago, I was involved in a landfill borehole, and orange peel and a newspaper from 1956 (I assume this paper was contemporary, as combined with the [limited] landfill records this is a correct date) which were remarkably well preserved. As the landfill was an old gravel pit and a clay barrier was installed, I can only assume that that is why no worms approached it. The swamp would have been anaerobic, another good preservation regime.
Air (more specifically oxygen) and the appropriate biota. Avocado skins and eggshells tend to be difficult.
This is especially true where the people in charge of the land treat it the way that farmers in the west of europe have been doing since Haber invented the Haber Process before moving on to a quicker method of wiping out lots of creation.
In a wild wood or in an orchard that has gone to seed, the soil is full of all sorts of fungii that is missing in fields and orchards where the "green revolution" has performed it miracles.
From "A Year At Kew":
There are 50 times more species of fungi than there are species of vegetation and there are 6 times less scientist studying fungi than there are studying vegation. (Only the quote used big words and I don't remember what they were.)
It wouldn't suprise me in the least to find that global warmin/climate change was down to the amount of water the soil was able or rather not able to absorb because of this absence of fungus.
The only reason not to put the shredding on neat is that it might attract rats. If there is that danger then by all means compost - if you can keep the rats out of the compost.
Once the shreddings have begun to decay they will return the nitrogen that they had absorbed and increase the ability of the area to deal with nany more that it may recieve.
On the other hand, not all fungii are good to have, some may kill the host. Honeydew for one. The hope is that other organisms encouraged by the mulch will enable the soil to deal with it.
There are farmers that "fallowed" their land by giving up on it. (Having drained it's ability to support life so badly by over production and the use of factory made chemicals.) Then the weeds and worms etc., encourage natural recouperative processes that rekindled fertility in the soil.
I don't have any links though, as if that would prove much -or change anything.
Not even strychnos (?see CURARE, NUX VOMICA, STRYCHNINE) would do a terrible amount of damage as a mulch though.
And it would at least save the bother of steam sterilisation that is used on pine bark. And even that rots eventually. If you use fresh lawn clippings on top it "goes down" faster.
What is the urge that gardeners have to keep their plots sterile and then compost everything in it? Is it one of those nervous illnesses? An as yet unstudied (though not rare) accute compulsive disorder/order disorder?
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