Composting, do you?

rascal

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Do you make compost for the garden? We used to just put in a bin for collection every week. My wife's been buying compost from our garden centre, but recently she just bought a compost drum. $90 I think she said, she wants to cut out the middleman, plus she's a bit frugal,lol. It's workin because flies are around, I think the process takes 6 weeks, we are half way in.
Do you compost to help your carbon foot print.??

Russ
 
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I really should do so but I don't garden very much at all so rarely use compost. We have a compost bin which is collected by the council weekly.
 
It brings back memories from my nanas place, they were very frugal and grew everything, grandfather had a compost area, stunk like hell. He said it was gold for the garden. They had chooks as well. And an outside toilet. With newspaper for toilet paper. I loved going there when they got the toilet inside.

Russ
 
I did when I had more of a garden. Not worth messing with now that I'm just growing a few things in pots.
 
I have made my own compost for decades.
Typically if there are flies around and/or it stinks then you have the carbon to nitrogen mix wrong, unless you are making a liquid nitrogen fertiliser.
I've got a leaflet somewhere which is excellent in explaining it but roughly is a 80:20 mix and just about everything from the kitchen is classed as nitrogen(greens) and most of the garden is carbon (black) except for grass which has issues of its own to be addressed. I usually have way too much carbon and end up with it over dry. You have to water the tumbler ones . Basically add water until it runs out , now turn the tumbler to mix in well. Keep moist but not wet/soggy.
 
We used to but we too always struggled with the balance between green and brown so found it difficult to get decent compost in the end and then bin would be full up but showing any sign of breaking down. We now have a green garden waste wheelie bin from the local council (which goes to a large composting plant), but sadly any kitchen waste can't be included. I really really want one of these hot bin composters - supposedly they work much better and I love the idea of being able to include all kitchen and food waste in them. They're rather expensive though :(

We do compost on the allotment, but again not very effectively.
 
I have a hole in the ground that i toss stuff. Bad potatos, nana skins, pine kitty litter...i have never noticed a smell. Sometimes i notice the thrown veggies have a few bites out of them so some critter visits it.
 
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