Composting Earlier Notes

Sunday, July 24, 2022

I begin carting Robert's hay. It is very light, having dried out for a day or two before being brought here, and a day or two here. There is not the rotting moisture content of fresh grass clippings. "Wetter is Better"

I have spread four barrow-loads or sawdust to make a foundation for new bins. This too should cut down weeds.

I find that I can toss armfuls of dried hay diagonally to the corner bin.

Today's forecast reads "Sunny this morning then a mix of sun and cloud with showers and a few thundershowers beginning this afternoon. Amount 15 mm in thundershowers." And I hope that 15mm will tamp down the dried hay.

I cover all nine? Bins with hay-to-be-wetted.

There are, as usual, drippings, this time of grass clippings, which means that I have begun the next compost bin.

Thought: In theory I could elevate each bin six inches above the soil/ground level, which would give me an extra 6x36x36 or 0.167 cubic yards of compost when the bin is removed.

Then I have three bins of campfire fuel to remove.

Please see also Soil Remediation .

Please see also Most 'home-compostable' plastic doesn't fully break down in compost bins, UK study finds

Please see also “ How to Spend a Lot of Money ”

Monday, December 02, 2024

A common complaint is “I don’t have enough space for a compost bin”

Really? Not even a one-cubic-metre bin?

Suppose that you have a vegetable bed of some ten square metres; roughly five yards by two yards. Not a big bed. Just ten square metres.

Let’s now put a cubic-metre bin in one corner.

This leaves just nine square metres for this year’s vegetables, a 10% drop in capacity. This year.

Next year you will have up to one cubic metre of rich compost that can be spread on, and mixed into, your bed. Your nine square metres will now double their yield of vegetables. Your second year will therefore yield vegetables that would have consumed 18 square metres of your original bed.

Your bed is still 10 square metres, less one square meter for the bin, but is producing the equivalent of 18 square metres.

That is an 80% rise in productivity. Your are growing 180% as many vegetables as you were in year one.

How can you refuse such a deal?

No wait! There’s More!!

For the past twelve months the rain has fallen on that bin, and rain-water has washed nutrients into that square metre of the bed below the bin.

Once the bin is emptied, you move it one metre to the side, and use that rich square metre where it sat as a growing bed.

Each year you re-site that one cubic-metre bin and the soil beneath it rests and is enriched.

You don’t need any extra space for a compost bin. Your compost bin acts as extra virtual space in producing healthy vegetables.

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