Composting queries

This post is basically a shameless plea for help! As our garden at home is so small we've never had the space for a compost bin, now we've got the plot and more space I need to get the compost bin going so I've got some nice organic material to dig into our horribly dry clay soil for next year. The problem is that I have no access to green leafy material as yet as nothing has actually grown on the plot and we're not allowed to bring kitchen or garden waste from home.

So, the organic material I can get my hands on at the moment is:

Chicken manure mixed with hemcore/aubiose

Stuff from the Bokashi bin

Some grass clippings but not loads (our grass is mostly eaten by the chickens)

Newspapers

That's about it, and some of that is stretching the definition of 'kitchen and garden waste'. I'm also trying to source some horse manure but haven't had any success yet. I'm digging up vast quantities of weeds still (see picture for impressive looking root of something or other, that's about 10" long in real life) but obviously won't be adding those. Later in the year we'll have waste green things from the plot itself.

So will I be able to get a usable compost from the above? I've Googled a little bit but am getting confused with green/brown material, hot composting, dire warnings about too many grass clippings, slimy compost etc. Am I over thinking this? Should I just shove it all in together and stop worrying??

Any advice would be gratefully received!

Got Dirt Under my Fingernails Again.

First sign of spring? Dragging the nail brush out from the farthest flung corner of the bathroom cabinet. Today I dug up the last of the Jerusalem Artichokes and dug over the artichoke bed with some bokashi compost then I transferred the somewhat overshadowed clump of chives from the back to the front garden.

Also, I have something rather foolish to confess. After drawing up my carefully thought out list of what to grow this year, I noticed that Lidl had fruit trees on special offer - two year old trees at £5 each - so what do I do? Buy a plum and a pear tree. Do I have space to grow them? Clearly I do not. It's the Butternut Squash all over again.

To compound the error further I forgot to look up which varieties would be best suited to my garden so I just grabbed the ones with the nicest pictures (blush) when I was in store. Back home I check out my haul. I've got an Opal Plum which has a superior, gage like, flavour, easy to manage but the buds are attractive to birds. OK, sounds reasonable, I can manage birds til the blossom comes out. And I have a Doyenne Du Comice, texture and taste outstanding (hoorah) but a poor choice if you want a reliable crop. And it needs a pollination partner. Oh. Bugger. So that means I need to house a third tree? And even then it's likely it won't fruit very well? *Scream!*

My plan was always to plant the trees temporarily in pots in the garden for maybe a season or so until I get this theoretical allotment and then I'd transfer them permanently over there. The problem is my small, high fenced garden is rather shady so not well suited to fruit trees, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't get any fruit while they're here. Plus there really is no room for a third tree.

I'm wondering if the solution could be to find someone, maybe via Landshare or Freecycle, who would be willing to let my potted trees sit in a sunny spot in their garden in return for a share of the crop/some wild fruit/my rather lovely jam, depending on how well the tetchy Comice crops. Or there's guerrilla gardening, I could sneak out under the cover of darkness and surreptitiously add my trees to the row of recently planted council trees just down the road. No-one would notice - would they???

So I dug the Bokashi compost in!

Following some very useful advice yesterday from Al and Karen I decided to go ahead and dig in the Bokashi compost. I'm reasonably confident it was fermenting as it had an almost alcoholic/bready smell to it plus some of the bits of fruit etc had begun to take on a brownish colour. Digging it into my narrow border was somewhat fiddly due to the confined space and the pesky bamboo runners sneaking in from next door under the fence, it's like trying to cut through thick, nylon rope laced through the soil. Still, chopping the blighters off and digging them up may help retard their progress.

Next problem is the roving mob of neighbourhood cats who gleefully embrace my freshly dug borders as a deluxe latrine. I've gathered up every bucket/garden chair/toy lawnmower/football I could lay my hands on and piled them over the soil to try and put the cats off.

As I was finishing up, a large crow perched on a neighbour's ariel, cast a weather eye over my efforts and, just as a dark cloud blotted out the sun and a cold wind gusted around my ears, he bellowed a grating caw. That's not a portent is it? Not by anyone's definition. No I thought not. Couldn't be. No. (shiver)

Bokashi problems

I'm really hoping to hear from someone with experience of using the Bokashi composting system. I set up my tub in the playhouse in the garden (no room in the kitchen and garage too far away), it was filled by mid December. My plan was to leave it for 6 weeks to ferment followed by 6 weeks to rot down in the soil ....


...... However


Had a peek in there and the kitchen scraps look no different to when they went in, plus I haven't had much liquid coming off it. I'm wondering if the freezing weather we've been having could have delayed the fermentation process and if so, will the material in the tub be suitable to dig into the soil?

If it's going to work I really need to dig it in now so it has enough time to rot down before I start planting in March, so what do I do? Should I go ahead and dig it in and hope for the best? Or will there be dire consequences?

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Composting in a small garden.

I'm the kind of person who goes all out to try and be green. You name it, we do it, energy saving lightbulbs, water butt, recycling, freecycle etc etc The one thing we don't do which I feel incredibly guilty about is composting - but we did have washable nappies for Xanthe so that's got to off set somewhere along the line hasn't it?

I've struggled to find a composting solution for our small garden. I genuinely haven't got space for the traditional kind of compost bin which needs to be in direct contact with the ground. I'm also a bit worried about the smell as we'd be barbecuing/playing/drinking summer evening wine all around it. We tried a wormery in the garage once but fairly rapidly killed all the occupants - no idea how - we felt appallingly guilty and didn't feel confident having another go and risking another massacre until we knew where we went wrong.

The other problem is what to do with the compost once you have it. My tiny yard is about 5m x 6m. The shady side where nothing grows is occupied by a chicken coop. In addition I have 2 borders making an 'L' shape which are crammed with veggies, a mini greenhouse (pictured with it's winter seedlings a few weeks ago), several hanging baskets, a handful of pots and my radish skyscraper. My only real opportunity to dig in compost is around January/February before the main planting season begins and I actually don't need a huge amount of compost for my borders and pots - so what to do with it the rest of the year?

I currently assuage my guilt by using the local council's garden waste collection scheme. They very kindly take away our garden waste and take it to some sort of community composting arrangement. Kitchen scraps are dealt with by the combined forces of our cat, the chickens, the African Land Snails and Adam. But this still leaves me with the problem of how to re-vitalise our hard working soil over the winter period.

Last year I planted green maure (field beans) which seemed like the ideal solution. The only problem with this is that they're really hard to dig in properly, the pesky seedlings kept re-sprouting from the soil like tiny green phoenixes which played havoc with my legitimate broad bean crop though I suppose I could get around that problem with some sort of toilet roll tube arrangement.

My latest idea is the Bokashi Bran system. It's speedy composting, aided by a 'bran' mix which contains friendly bacteria and it can compost stuff that a traditional heap can't, like small bones and cooked food. The mixture is then dug into the soil and allowed to break down for another 6 weeks before crops can be planted on it. My theory is we could just collect kitchen scraps in the Autumn and turn them into compost for early spring. The only trouble is timing is a bit tight at the moment, I believe the box we have takes about 6 weeks to fill with scraps so we'd have to fill the box up really quickly which is fairly unlikely given the troop of scavengers that inhabit this house.

Still, I've sent off for my bran in the hope we can make it work, maybe I'll fall back on the green manure if we don't have enough leftovers to make it work. Or maybe Adam can stop having seconds for a little while - who knows ....