My name is voodoopenguin and I'm........

[voodoopenguin]

My compost smells lovely, no stinks here. Kitchen waste goes in to it but as the family is vegetarian there is no dead animal involved.

Tell a lie, occasionally we find a mouse or bird in the garden that has snuffed it and they get put on the heap.

[Mac-A-Matic]

I like it, I like it! Been thinking about building a composting site at the house but not sure what goes in or not. Any good sites you recommend? Or a list of what should not go into the pile?

[voodoopenguin]

My compost bins were made from some posts I had left over and old floorboards. Almost everything from the garden goes in it, grass clippings, weeds, trimmings and also kitchen waste like vegetable peelings. The secret is to have a heap that is big enough to really generate some heat which helps kill the nasties and partly sterilises the resulting compost. Small bins will still work but might take longer and lose too much heat so weed seeds will still germinate. Don't put too many leaves in it as they take longer to break down, best to have a separate leaf pile. Don't put too much of the same thing together, best to have several different layers. An inch or two of grass clippings, then some herbaceous prunings, then some shredded paper if you like. It will all go. Avoid very woody items but I still put soft hedge trimmings in but if they are harder I will send them through the garden shredder first. Depending on the season I get a bin load of usable compost every 4 to 6 months but it does help if the heap is turned once during that time. Either drag it all out and then stick it back in again or, what I do, move it over in to the next empty bin. This helps loosen it up letting the air circulate.

The thing about waste meat and cooked items is that they attract vermin. You can still compost those items but you should do it in a completely sealed container.

[Lux Interior]

Just as long as you pronounce it correctly:

It's kom-poe-st,


not kom-pah-st!

[OWC Jamie]

$tevie wrote:
I thought carnivorous poo was bad for composting/gardening.

You can compost poop, but not if you are going to use it in a vegatable garden. A compost pile doesn't get hot enough to destroy pathogens which could possibly end up back on your table..I doubt if the bacterial and enzyme processes are adequate, either. E.coli, etc..



Pet poop in plastic bags going to the land fill to be entombed forever (or at least until minimg becomes proftable) doesn't make much sense ( beyond the convenience and sanitation of the moment) so I'm looking into a Doggy Doolie ( pet outhouse) with enzymes to break down all the 'crap'. (I just don't want to walk back into the house with it nor necessarily just 'out into the woods' either.)

[OWC Jamie]

Just plain green lawn clippings in a pile can smell pretty bad, (downright disgusting and un-neighborly, actually) more so in July and August. It doesn't compost well by itself, either. It doesn't take the mixing in of many of last year's brown leaves to eliminate the odor.

[davester]

voodoopenguin wrote: It's big enough for a couple of sofas and a coffee table, we had afternoon tea in it today. As it's at the highest point of the garden we can look over our plot while relaxing with tea/coffee or something stronger as we head in to the evening.

So you're a bit like a plebian version of the queen as she sips her tea in Windsor Castle while looking out at her gardens and kingdom beyond.

[voodoopenguin]

An Englishman's home is his castle.

[ztirffritz]

We do Worm Bins around here. It works much faster than compost bins and the dirt seems to be higher quality.

[AAA]

I'm glad the UK is downwind from us USAers.