[Christine]

With the problems that have appeared with chemical (!) farmyard manure this season, it's going to be essential to compost in order to get good crops next year off the allotment or out of the garden. Your own home made compost is free.

My favourite basic instructions come from the Garden Organic site - it's basic, sensible and all it doesn't teach you is experience. I found these instructions after I'd been doing it this way for years.

Now I go round and scrounge for my compost heap - you've never seen such fast sweepers up on the allotments and gardens around me now that they know I will have anything that isn't cleared up fast.  :roll:    Last year's compost heap rebuilt the strawberry beds and the left over huge heap is covered in marrows, courgettes and pumpkins at the moment.  The youfs who help on the allotment bought in some manure last year which has caused no problems on the one side where it was used. The other side was under green manure all last year so basically got some bought in compost but I ain't paying that price again.

I've got two more heaps on the go now.

[Knoblauch]

I've got at least 2 years' worth of hedge clippings to compost so got a Wickes quiet shredder the other weekend and emptied my bin of ready compost, refilled it mainly with privet clippings (about 1/3 of the available material), hoping to make a 'hot' heap like in the instructions on your site; it's started settling down but hasn't really taken off, should I try bunging some horse manure in or is it the wrong material in the first place?

I also wonder that if you do the 'hot' heap how much compost do you end up with?  I've been refilling and refilling my bin for at least 2 years and have so far got 3 sand bags full, it settles down so much.

[Christine]

Yes you do need a variety of things to go with privet clippings and your idea of a bit of horse manure mixed in thoroughly now that it is settling would work with me. Don't forget that you need to keep the heap damp but not sodden. I'd suggest that if you have other things available such as weeds, vegetables peelings, a bit of browns like crumpled up newspaper or egg cartons these would all help your hedge clippings. I've found that hedge clippings need mixing with lots of other things to help them to rot down - not very good by themselves. Also as I haven't got a container at the moment I find it quite easy to go and have a stir periodically. It seems that the stirring every six or seven weeks has helped mine to hurry up.

Probably the real trouble is that the weather has been so miserable that it has not been warm enough to get compost heaps to hot up.  If you can do some of the other things and then turn on the sun things would be so much better.

And yes you can put an awful lot of "Stuff" onto a compost heap and get a very small amount in return.  I'm lucky in that the some of the things that I grow on the allotment (think peas, runner beans, nasturtiums, sweet peas, wild flowers, carrots, beetroot) do add to the compost heap quite well. My suggestion is that you consider crops which do add to your pile and see if you have friends who will give you offerings for your pile.  

[compostqueen]

I took another load of home made compo to my plot from home the other day, kitchen and chicken poo mixture

The bins do slump quite considerably when they get hot enough but there's always plenty of material to add if you have a garden.  It dismays me to see lotty folks burning their green stuff or taking it away in the council green bin. What a waste  

[Knoblauch]

Thanks Christine for the excellent advice - I shall be walking behind horses with shovel outstretched to acquire some 'activator' as fresh as is possible.

[GrannieAnnie]

We've got 3 pallet compost bins and when I started to get a lot of dock and nettles, I put them all on their own into one of the big 1tonne builders bags we've got, and I'm amazed how quickly that sinks!

And the chicken poo was rather taking over, and as some of it is more shavings than poo after cleaning out the chicks, Brian set light to it and its burnt a lot of the chicken poo, so once that's cooled down, it will go on the bins too.

I shred my waste paper and tear up cardboard, not much gets missed!!

[Christine]

Someone came passed my allotment to return something this afternoon, looked at the nasturtiums, sweet peas, runner beans and peas. "Compost" was the first word that he said. Then he looked round the plot with a gardener's eye.  

[Knoblauch]

I had some of the clippings in a large polyethelene bag for a few days, then came to scoop some out to mulch on the garden.  They had definitely warmed up to 30-40 degrees, so something was happening!

I've just been trying out cardboard on my shreddder and it works quite well.  I'll mix with horse poo and clippings and see what happens, hopefully the steam will rise!

[SnooziSuzi]

I'm going to take several large black bin bags to work in the next few weeks when the leaves start falling so I can make my own leafmould.

There's loads of trees around, and the leaves just rot in the gutters, causing them to block up, so I'd be doing a public service really