Garden compost

[fred]

Anyone with experience of these hot composters? e.g.

Incidentally is it just me, but does anyone hate the way Americans pronounce compost. Com-post (Post as in post a letter)

[alan_m]

First, Put your postcode into

and see if your local council has partnered with this organisation and is maybe supplying bins at a cheaper price, including the type you may be considering.

Second I have no first hand experience with these bins but there doesn't seem to be that much in-built insulation.

The video seem to show a commercial compost with polystyrene beads emerging from the bin - in the real world it will not be that clean and will be somewhat compacted at the bottom of the bin. Fake results!!!!

In my experience if you want to hot compost then you probably need to fill that bin in one go with a mix of soft green and harder brown composting material. It's the bulk of the material in one go that has more to with hot compost. A little and often will usually result in cold composting and take maybe a year.

[Adrian Caspersz]

None. Also the bottom is open, so rats burrow under and feast.

[Chris Hogg]

No experience, but there's also these, that I had been thinking about for my garden as and when I have the space organised to put it

[The Natural Philosopher]

not half as much as I hate the way Mancunians pronounce 'us' as 'ooz'

[PeterC]

The only one that I've used (Dalek type) was open at the bottom but on concrete. No rats of course (when rats can burrow through concrete we're all doomed!). Within a week the material inside had a lot of those little red worms in it (from where?) and, once filled and going well, produced very good compost at the bottom. I wonder if being on an impervious surface helped it at all.

[jon]

I have had one for fifteen years and recently got some new worms from Amazon.

[alan_m]

In all the decades of having open bottom compost bins I've never seen this. Slow worms yes, rats no.

In fact if the composting is slow and cold having an open bottom will attract hundreds of (earth) worms which is an important part of the process.

[alan_m]

In many compost bins, and about a couple of inches below the surface you will often find a layer of hundreds of worm. This is compost and not a wormery/

[jon]

Egg shells and egg boxes very quickly disappear.

[jon]

Haich.

[Adrian Caspersz]

I'm in urban land. There is an ongoing war over compost scraps between foxes, rats and squirrels. Inside our bin is a well travelled pathway, that is a magic receptacle for me getting rid of orange peel and egg shells in that the items simply vanish - no composting action required!

<if eating food, stop now....>

As I said, it is a war. We found a freshly dead headless rat the other day. Executor unknown, but whatever decapitated it very neatly. Bit puzzled why the head was missing, perhaps found more tasty than the rest of the body?

I should pee on mine, apparently.

[Chris Hogg]

When we had cats, and they caught a mouse or rat in the garden (we lived next to a farm), they would often just eat the head. I always assumed the brains were either more nourishing that the rest, and the cats instinctively knew this, or they just tasted nicer.

Adds nitrogen. Most compost accelerators contain either a little ammonium sulphate, potassium nitrate or urea for that purpose.

[NY]

And the converse: Americans pronounce "herb" as "erb". I first heard this when I watched "Pushing Daisies" and Jim Dale (the narrator) who is British has evidently been told that the pies which feature in the programmes are seasoned with 'erbs.

Not wrong - just different!

[Roger Hayter]

I have seen it when, for reasons, I was putting one or two acovado shells a week in a compost bin The rat (I have IR videos!) burrowed up through two feet of compost. They don't seem interested in low fat vegetables such as leaves, carrots, potatoes. So my impression is they won't bother for foodstuffs that can be found all over the garden, just for something high energy.

[Graham Harrison]

There is an element of skill involved in composting. In the end, anything will decompose but the speed with which it does it will depend on how you manage your heap/bin as much as the bin you use. You probably know that but if you're new to composting I suggest

I have a hotbin (as linked previously by Chris Hogg). Last year was my first attempt and it went reasonably well but not perfectly. It certainly heated up during warm weather but I actually had problems keeping it fed. The end result was a little too damp so this year I'm putting in more shredded prunings from trees and even a little newspaper. I will be putting a VERY restricted amount of grass in I'm also stirring it more frequently. That said, it was an improvement on previous attempts with various other bins including the cheap, local authority funded daleks which I'm not a fan of.

When it comes to vermin I've decided that a solid base is preferable. I've used bins placed directly on the ground in the past and suffered problems. My cats have caught a very small number of rats but the local supply of rabbits seems to be more to their taste. At this time of year the supply of young rabbits almost means we don't have to feed one of them!

[Chris J Dixon]

Watching a Quest programme about fishing in Alaska, they showed vast quantities of pollock being processed, and turned into fillets. Not only was "fillet" pronounced as a fillay, but the clever mechanisms were correspondingly fillaying machines.

Chris

[fred]

Thought that was a Birmingham thing. BUZ for bus

[fred]

The reason I asked was SWMBO has an annoying habit of keeping a wheelbarrow at the top of the garden and throwing her cuttings, weeds etc. into it. We do have a compost heap at the bottom of the garden but she couldn't be bothered taking the wheelbarrow down there and emptying it. The end result is the wheelbarrow collect rain and the lot turns into a stinking mess which I then reluctantly have to empty on to the compost. Over the years I have read all these wonderful stories about others success with making compost. We cut a lot of grass and I gave up trying to compost the cuttings and got a mulching deck mower. Not perfect but better than storing a black heap of festering cuttings. When the compost heap gets high enough a new one is started and after about a year the first heap can be attacked. Anyway I thought if I switched her wheelbarrow for one of these compost bins it might offer the ideal solution but thanks to the answers given here I have my doubts. Thanks to all for the input

[PeterC]

Could be useful to stand it on 25mm st. st. weldmesh to allow snakes in but exclude rats. The mesh might not last long under those conditions.