How to speed up composting?

[Robson Valley]

I run a wide open compost box as the summers are quite wet in my district.
The box is self-defense. The gardener takes off maybe 30 lawn mower bags of clippings over 4 hours of work.
Where to put it all?
I add nothing from my kitchen. Plus, it's at the far end of the yard.
I add nothing woody except perhaps shrub and vine prunings which get mulched by the mower.

When I lived in the city, the biomass volume was even greater with several massive birch trees.
I built two boxes at opposite ends of the yard. They both still get used.
One seems attractive to the great big Pileated Woodpeckers. Some sort of insects, I suppose.

 

[Toddy]

Sounds like big gardens
Grass makes great silage, but too much in a compost heap is a mess. How does yours' break down ? do you get enough prunings and the like to keep it aerated ?

Do you get worms where you are RV ? I was told that it was fungus that provided the decay process in much of North America and that it was immigrants from here who took in worms. No idea how true that is though.

 

[slowworm]

Grass makes great silage, but too much in a compost heap is a mess. How does yours' break down ? do you get enough prunings and the like to keep it aerated ?

Depends how you grow your grass. I know most gardens with grass have a frequently cut lawn but if you let it grow not only is it much better for wildlife but the clippings are a more balanced mix of nitrogen and carbon. My clippings are more akin to hay, so fairly dry and aerated. I also use them to mulch things like the earthed up spuds rather than throw all of them on the compost.

 

[Toddy]

I confess my own grass cutting is a mixed bag
It depends on how close we're prepared to cut around the ponds and herb beds. When the newts are out and about we just let it grow, and cut it back before it seeds. Often I just use a pair of old fashioned hand shears to do that, but it means that it's as you describe and more inclined to be hay like.

I can't say that that's true of most folks who cut their lawns though, and short mulched grass and moss piled up in a compost heap isn't the ideal, is it ?

I was working at one of the castles for a series of workshops, and the gardener (I always see if I can have a blether with the gardeners, they're a mine of information ) proudly showed me his compost heap.
I jest you not, it was as big as a full size container. It was walled off so that it was hidden from public view but he said that every scrap of biodegradeable stuff from the gardens went in to it. He said he cleared it out once every two years and it took a week to dig it out and three men to shift the good soil around the beds.
He said that on the whole it was worm worked but in the height of Summer it did get pretty hot and then he hosed it down occasionally.
I was quite envious of his compost heap, tbh.

 

[Erbswurst]

@MrEd
The tannic acid of walnut leaves nearly killed our rhubarb plants (where the leaves were located by accident) which had been the ten strongest selected out of 50 plants from another professionaly used field.

I think oak leaves have the same effect.

 

[Erbswurst]

@Toddy
I mainly have fruit trees in my garden, the twigs come from cutting them. Perhaps that's the main reason for our different experiences.
But perhaps it's mainly the weather. I think it's warmer in Berlin during the summer than in most areas in Britain.

 

[Toddy]

Heat matters

I prune my apple and cherry trees, but I strip the leaves for the compost heaps.
If the shredder will take them, it's rather fussy about sizes, it won't do more than thumb thick and small short prunings just get spat out. It's not an ideal tool. I thought that buying Bosch that it would do well as a garden shredder, but I ought to have done a lot more reseach before I bought it.

I didn't know that about the oak and walnut leaves. Interesting and something to be aware of too.

M

 

[Erbswurst]

The shredders they offer us are simply to small. Professionals use shredders mounted on trailers. They take everything until arm thick. But they are a bit expensive for use just in the one garden.

In my opinion a privat gardener is fast enough with small and large garden scissors. Of course from Felco and nothing else...

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A walnut tree is very nice next to the house. In its large shadow grows as good as nothing. No work with any weeds.
Where you put the leaves grows nothing. It's a natural herbizit.

 

[Toddy]

Sorry, lovely though a walnut tree might be, if it does that I'm not having one.
My garden is a wee Scottish jungle
I'd rather howk out weeds than live in a desert.

IMG_0159.JPG

 

[bobnewboy]

Hi All, just an update.....In order to maintain brownie points with the missus, today I finally turned the compost bins I originally asked about. To my surprise and the missus’ delight, around 50% of the depth of the first bin was well-rotted compost, moist and dark. Even the small twigs in it were good and friable, so the compost should work well in our tomato and other large pots. I shovelled that dark matter into the third bin, which is where the missus takes HMC (Home Made Compost) from for the greenhouse and other planting duties. The top 50% was dry really, but getting better the further down the pile I went. That all went into bin 2, and with a little watering (of both types ) it should hopefully break down, and then I will move it along to bin 3 in time.

So thanks again for all the suggestions. I will follow those that I can.

Cheers, Bob

 

[Toddy]

Sounds excellent
It's always something satisfying when you get the top layers off and there's beautiful soil below

M

 

[slowworm]

Hi All, just an update.....In order to maintain brownie points with the missus, today I finally turned the compost bins I originally asked about. To my surprise and the missus’ delight, around 50% of the depth of the first bin was well-rotted compost, moist and dark.

Good news. Do you pot up plants directly into the compost or mix in with other stuff?

We could use far more compost than I can make at the moment, so buy in MPC. However, I'd like to buy in much less of that and this year potted up toms and other plants in a mix of garden compost and soil. It'll be interesting to see how they compare to some grown in shop bought MPC.

 

[Robson Valley]

My compost box is just a place to get rid of lawn grass clippings. Effective, to say the least.
The lawn grows about 1" per day, often needs to be knocked down with a weed whacker first
as it's too much for straight mowing ( obviously, I really care a lot.)

If it appears "stuck," I do several things.
1. Lift and turn maybe the top 12" with a big garden fork. That's my token effort at aeration.
I never see any earthworms in there. But lots of them in the soil all around the box.
2. Throw a handful of fertilizer on it. Might be 20-20-20 in the shed, I forget. Very effective.
3. Drench the pile with water. Despite all the summer rain we get, less than a week of clear weather
makes this place dry as a bone and the wildfire hazard risk skyrockets.

All the woody prunings from the berry bushes, grape vines and apple trees get bagged up for disposal.
I did chop them and put them into the box but they seem to persist for several years so I quit.

 

[bobnewboy]

Good news. Do you pot up plants directly into the compost or mix in with other stuff?

We could use far more compost than I can make at the moment, so buy in MPC. However, I'd like to buy in much less of that and this year potted up toms and other plants in a mix of garden compost and soil. It'll be interesting to see how they compare to some grown in shop bought MPC.

We put our best small tomato plants at approx 15-20cm tall into £1 builder’s buckets from Wickes. We keep a few plants as backup, and then give any others away to neighbours. Each bucket holds 13 or 14 litres of compost/soil, and I have drilled holes in the base for drainage. We put the home made compost in the bottom until the plants with their original pot soil sit at the correct depth. Then we infill with John Innes #2, or MPC, and finally top off with a little more home made compost as a mulch. This means that bags of bought compost or JI#2 go much further. The plants seem to like it, and currently many of our plants have fruits of about 2-3cm on them, flowers on the others. We split the potted plants about 60/40 in/out of the greenhouse which seems to give us some progression in ripening and hence picking. Lucky we both love tomatoes

Finally we also save last year’s MPC etc, and mix that with the home made compost. That gives us more media to pot up with but I wouldn’t suggest that if you ever have any issues with blight etc.

All our tomato plants come from seeds we have collected and dried, out of store bought toms. With beefsteak toms costing 70-90 pence each it’s a big saving. So we pick a few types of tomatoes at the supermarket that we might like, and if they are good tasting we will save the seeds and dry them on kitchen towel. Generally they have a good germination success.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, Bob