Obsessed with weeing in the compost

[pembrokestephen]

Get some pet rabbits and feed all the kitchen / plant waste to them. Put the bedding material on the compost heap and get good compost even quicker.

Shred the newspaper, though, otherwise it tends to make layers, and if there's hay in there, you want to be running your heap in a bin or at least making sure it's getting good and hot, otherwise the hayseeds will end up sprouting in your garden...

 

[Wilson]

as people have said Browns are dry fiborus (sp) material like newspaper cardboard, leaves, straw, dry dead plants, well chipped/shredded woody stuff, hay(contains grass seed)
browns generally contain little nitrogen and much carbon, the carbon is used by the microbes to fix the nitrogen in the greens

greens are grass clippings, young weeds, anything that contains a lot of nitrogen really, coffee grounds count as greens, veg peelings, (dead animals and fish too if your GG ), urine

coffee grounds and newapaper and cardboard can all make for more acidity if you use too much and any pages with colour print should be particularly avoided. Personally i think that coffee and tea leaves make a better direct mulch than putting it on the heap

also urine can be used with nothing but browns in a seperate heap, a straw bail or shredded cardboard, leaves in a bag, its a good way to prevent the waste of the nitrogen in urine which is otherwise flushed leading to atrophication (sp) in the ecosystem

 

[Louloubelle]

Vaguley remembers some women's enthusiasm for adding the contents of their mooncups to the compost.

This whole composting thing has depths that I had never fully appreciated unitl I discovered the internet

 

[gentlegreen]

Vaguley remembers some women's enthusiasm for adding the contents of their mooncups to the compost.

All grist to the mill

And don't forget babies' nappies - preferably full

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[pembrokestephen]

All grist to the mill

And don't forget babies' nappies - preferably full

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Umm, you do need to start being quite careful when you're talking about human excrement (any shit, really). One of the reasons hyoomins are quite so funny about their own shit is evolutionary, and it's quite significant: human shit can carry a lot of bacteria that really are quite nasty, and you'd need to be absolutely sure your compost heap was operating at a sufficiently high temperature to successfully kill all the bacteria in the shit. Cat and dog poo can carry nasties like toxoplasmosis, which forms spores and can survive in the ground for quite a long time and remain infectious.

The other, more practical, reasons for not putting shit in the compost are a) smell - it's likely to get pretty bad, I'd have thought, certainly until the composting process is well underway, and b) flies/other vermin.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

I hate compost bins, being young strong and to hand i'm the poor sod who gets pinged to dig them out, have you ever smelt an egg (god knows how it got in there) that's been decomposing for a year before being broken open by a shovel?

 

[pembrokestephen]

I hate compost bins, being young strong and to hand i'm the poor sod who gets pinged to dig them out, have you ever smelt an egg (god knows how it got in there) that's been decomposing for a year before being broken open by a shovel?

You've got something very badly wrong going on with your compost if it's smelling like that (quite apart from the fact that it's generally not regarded as a very good idea to put dairy stuff in composts)...!

 

[Badger Kitten]

Well thank you for all the handy hints. Truly you know your shit.

Tell you what, am loving the contents of my juicer in the compost.

Fruit pulp makes lovely compost!

What about charcoal ash from the barbie? Too many nasties, or straight in the 'post bin?

 

[pembrokestephen]

Well thank you for all the handy hints. Truly you know your shit.

Tell you what, am loving the contents of my juicer in the compost.

Fruit pulp makes lovely compost!

What about charcoal ash from the barbie? Too many nasties, or straight in the 'post bin?

Tsk tsk tsk, careful not to put too much citrus in there too, it upsets the pH Though, frankly, I think you'd need to be running some pretty wholesale orange-squeezing operation for that to make very much difference!

I would chuck barbie ash in, can't see why not.

My biggest composting sin is to shove loads too many grass clippings in, which then form a solid layer that nothing can get through, and then decompose, anaerobically and stinkily until I realise and give it a good stir. If you get it about right, you often don't actually need to mix the heap at all, but I think that's probably some kind of composting nirvana state: I certainly haven't reached it yet...

 

[trashpony]

Tsk tsk tsk, careful not to put too much citrus in there too, it upsets the pH Though, frankly, I think you'd need to be running some pretty wholesale orange-squeezing operation for that to make very much difference!

I would chuck barbie ash in, can't see why not.

My biggest composting sin is to shove loads too many grass clippings in, which then form a solid layer that nothing can get through, and then decompose, anaerobically and stinkily until I realise and give it a good stir. If you get it about right, you often don't actually need to mix the heap at all, but I think that's probably some kind of composting nirvana state: I certainly haven't reached it yet...

I have a problem with too much grass too so I alternate - one lot goes on the compost, next week's goes as a mulch over the beds

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Tell me of your joy at producing your pwn compost. Inspire me. How long did it take? Any tops? What did it feel like to dig in? And how much wee is necessary?

Mine is just getting good. I made a TV programme earlyer this year about ecoing up your london home and it inspired me to get my own composter.

The mud part of my garden was too small for a council composter but I made my own. It's really getting black and squidgey at the bottom now. I have only thrown one jar of wee on it so far though because i keep forgetting. loads of fun composting isn't it! why do people buy those silly sacks when they can make their own out of kitchen (not meat) and garden waste.

 

[gentlegreen]

Mine is just getting good. I made a TV programme earlyer this year about ecoing up your london home and it inspired me to get my own composter.

The mud part of my garden was too small for a council composter but I made my own. It's really getting black and squidgey at the bottom now. I have only thrown one jar of wee on it so far though because i keep forgetting. loads of fun composting isn't it! why do people buy those silly sacks when they can make their own out of kitchen (not meat) and garden waste.

No probs with meat - so long as it's balanced out with other stuff. As I've said before, I've composted fish guts, a dead rat, a dead pigeon and a side of meat.

Personally I would need to get very good at composting before I trusted my seedlings to DIY compost. Ditto propogation. Add to this the small quantity my household produces.

B&Q multipurpose is quite frankly the bee's knees for such things.

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