since last spring. And what we had, well, it wasn't, quite, compost.
So, my local council, and for anyone who is interested your own local council as well, offers a compost bin at a silly price, and they deliver it to your door! Plus you get the princely sum of £1 off when you order online. If you're interested, here's the link.
http://www.recyclenow.com/compost/
It is of course in their own interests as the less you put in your rubbish bin, the less the binmen have to collect, and in green terms, the less goes into landfill. I find I put out much less rubbish in the normal bin now than I recycle and compost. I even have a caddy which sits in my kitchen ready for tea bags, coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, egg shells (crushed), those bits of lettuce you peel off from a head when you first get it which are a bit wilty (no cooked food or meat/dairy products, please), and of course, any weeds I pull up from the garden. Not to mention lawn clippings, and leaves.
Ay, here's the rub. You need a good mix in your compost bin, of "green" and "brown" (Recycle Now, the website above, has lots and lots of tips and advice). The problem as I see it is, during the summer, when you're cutting the grass on a regular basis, you have lots and lots of green. I try to get around this by adding shredded paper, and the core of a roll of kitchen paper or loo roll. But then in the autumn, you have leaves. Dry, and brown, even if you do have a leaf blower/vac with mulch attachment (yes we do). What to do?
I tried, valiantly, to create the perfect compost. I also added a product called "Garotta" which is supposed to speed things up by creating the necessary heat (available from most garden centres or the big DIY stores). I was really hoping that by now, or at least in a month's time when I start to prepare the vegetable patch, that I would have rich, beautiful compost from all my leavings. Not quite.
So, although the bin itself seemed to be a good thing and was a great idea, and a great present, I just couldn't make it work. It was taking much too long for my needs!
I bit the bullet and ordered this different kind of bin, round and enclosed on all sides, and top to bottom. As my husband says, much like a black plastic Dalek.
It sat in the communal hallway for a week, waiting for me to make the changeover ... which was, shall we say, less than fun. But necessary, so I wasn't going to back down. One of the problems with the old one was that firstly, it was difficult to put together, and then secondly difficult to keep together when you are trying to dig down with a fork to turn the compost over. The sides came apart, so for the last several months it was held together by a bungee cord. For a novice composter like me, this seems the better option.
The old bin was also something of a spider haven, due in part to it's square construction (corners, you see) and the many ridges available for web making. Now, it is something of a handicap when a gardener hates, and I mean hates, spiders. The worst time of the year is September when the spiders seem to love to build their homes in and amongst the plants in the borders. I am truly unable to work in the borders in September, which makes it difficult to get the bulbs down. I am trying to overcome this problem, and don't run screaming in the other direction when I see a spider (any more!) but I still can't get anywhere near one. I will only scream if one happens to run across my foot (it happened).
When I took apart the old bin, first the one side that wasn't staying together anyway
and then forked out the detritus, into a pile by the side, I took the three sided construction (carefully) and plonked it down onto the cement. Dozens of little, and not so little, spiders scurried away. Ugh. Then I proceeded to fork through the soil underneath as recommended (so the worms can come up and do their magic), and placed the new bin in the same spot. And then, yes I know it seems tedious and believe me it was, I had to refill the new bin with the stuff out of the old one. I half finished last night, but I was losing the light, and frankly I was losing the will to live.
However! Today the project is finished, and fingers crossed, we SHALL have compost at some point in the future. I shall keep you posted!
