"Note: While screened through a 1/4 inch mesh, this green waste compost may still contain small amounts of non-organic foreign objects (glass, metal, plastic, wood, etc). Accordingly, always use gloves when handling it. Furthermore, check its internal temperature before amending with it to ensure that it has cooled down enough for your purpose.
Use gloves! glass, metal, plastic, wood, etc!
Someone should have told them that beer bottles and beer cans and left over cars parts DO NOT GO INTO THE COMPOSTER!
the unfortunate things that happen to municipal waste. i've seen it first hand. you do not ever want to take compost from any facility without personally inspecting the load they are bringing first.
that is why i largely stopped taking bags of leaves from some people because of the crap that was in them. but it was not the only issue i had because i had some compost delivered and made the mistake of not inspecting it first. i'm still picking glass, metal and plastic out of my gardens from that
10yrs later.
if you are looking for compost i suggest finding someone who does tree and/or lawn services and asking them if they have any wood/tree/shrub chippings and that if it was clean you would be happy to take it for free or even to pay them a small amount. since some of these places have to pay to drop off materials in some areas this is often a good thing for them.
the other approach is to find a wood/lumber mill type place that does their own wood chipping. we've done a lot of this the past few years and the quality is much more predictable, but you lose out on variety of materials and nutrition/trace nutrient content (because ground up green bark and wood stuff and leaves means more nutrients and also diversity).
i still will gladly take organic materials like chunks of wood and wood chips and leaves from people here in trade for garden goodies, but i always insist on inspecting it first before they bring it and/or dump it.
once it's in a garden and if it is a mess then it is way too hard to take it back out. same for weed seeds that can be brought in.
properly composted though at a high enough temperature the weed seed issue can somewhat be taken care of, but do not count on that happening for each and every weed seed so you do have to keep an eye on any garden you use any new amendment on. this would be the same for any garden you use new seeds on when they've been bought in bulk and some weeds seeds may be in there.
ok, that's a lot to read, but i had a few minutes to type. :) good luck,
Same here. The vast majority of compostable materials here comes directly from the garden and the second-largest source is "weeds" that I pull up. Nothing comes in from the outside world. not even bagged leaves (dried leaves are not a particularly good compostable, anyway). Aquisition of the last load of ostensiby drug-free horse dung was epic, the telling of which generates much laughter from the audience, after enough beer.
When you are the one composting you know exactly what's in the mix. I hadn't followed the link but assumed a commercial blend. Having followed the link it claims to be organic so, again just guessing, I think they are covering themselves should something random appear in your garden.
Same here and I am forever amazed at the amount we put in the bin compared with the amount that comes out. I like to think of it as my secret concentrator.
At least you were forewarned with the gravel and were not surprised but the glass and plastic in your "fish" compost would have had me saying rude words.
i've been dehydrating food scraps for many years now and it never ceases to amaze me at how much they will shrink by the time they are done.
i dehydrate them because it is an easy way to store them until i get them put into the worm buckets. when they get put into the worm buckets they soak up water again and the worms chomp their way through them pretty quickly.
i've been happy how it has been working out here, alas Mom doesn't like any mulch left on top of the garden soil for the veggie gardens or i'd be a lot further along, but it is still gradually improving as the years go by.
My kitchen waste goes in to a 2 litre box and that is emptied in to, I would guess a 50 litre, black compost bin, with a lid to keep the flies, parrots and ravens at bay. I have never seen the compost bin more than half full and that would be on a leaf collection binge. As the bin is lightweight plastic with an open bottom I move it about the garden every 3 to 6 months and just rake what's there in to the current garden bed.
since i use the results that come out of the worm farm as my fertilizer i normally put down trenches in gardens where i need to use it then cover it back up and then plant. as i've been doing this coming up on 11yrs now it has been interesting to see how the gardens respond and the worm populations change.
when starting out a new garden in this clay it is often that i won't find any or many worms in the soil as i dig, but after a few years of gardening and using the worm compost i will start finding worms that survive our hot and cold seasons.
of course the worms love any organic matter i can find and bury in any garden. full clay isn't their favorite place to be but some clay is preferred over all sandy soils especially for the night crawlers.
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