Composting Awareness Week 4-10 May 2008
This week is
Composting Awareness Week and it runs from 4-10 May 2008.
This
site has some great offers on composting systems such as the Can-o-worms for £66 and a pair of Bokashi buckets for only £25, both of which are great prices.
The site is also a mine of information on how to compost both your garden and kitchen waste to stop it going in your bin and filling up landfill sites.
For further information on both Bokashi and the Can-o-worms check out my earlier post about how I compost -
http://www.sherlock.co.uk/blog/2008/02/my-composting-setup.html
My new (eco friendly) lawn mower
I recently bought a new
mower from
Wiggly Wigglers and have been so impressed with it that I have written a review for them.
The review can be seen on the
Wiggly blog Labels: Brill, lawn, mower, razorcut, Wiggly Wigglers
My composting setup
I make compost and am fascinated with the various methods of creating it. My reasons for making compost are partly because it truly is black gold when it comes to the garden and partly because it's a grand way of recycling cardboard, shredded paper and all sorts of kitchen waste that would otherwise be thrown in your bin where it would rot and smell until it got carted off to land fill where it would then rot and smell some more, producing greenhouse gases and filling up the rapidly depleting space for all the rubbish that can't be recycled (and the sooner land fill area runs out then the sooner a new incinerator comes to your neighbourhood and none of us want that to happen). And probably a large factor in why I compost is because I am a tight Northern short arse who hates spending money when he doesn't need to!
So, small garden or not I compost in three different ways:
WormeryI use a Can-o-worms wormery, bought from
Wiggly Wigglers in 1998.
The joy of this is you start with just one layer and once full add the second and then the third and so on. Once you have run out of layers the bottom is generally ready i.e. all your kitchen scraps, weeds, cuttings, toilet rolls and shredded bank statements/bills have been eaten by the worms and turned into vermicompost, an amazingly high nutrient compost (so high in nutrients that it needs mixing with other compost before being used for house plants etc, though it can be chucked on your borders as the best soil improver you will ever come across).
Bottom layer once top one not far off ready:
Middle layer once top one not far off ready:
Top layer - still being added to:
So to empty the bottom layer you take off the top ones, remove and empty the bottom one and that now becomes your empty top one. That way the worms are never disturbed (or at least not too much), and you can get straight to the good stuff without getting overly messy.
Compost binsI have a three compost bin system i.e. three of the dalek type plastic bins which are rotated.
I have one bin with almost ready compost (the nearest, on the right of the photo), emptied twice a year. Once emptied I empty the second bin and fork everything into the newly empty bin. Then I empty the bin with the newest stuff in it (furthest away in the photo) - this is usually quite smelly as new stuff is still being added to it. The contents of this now goes in my middle bin leaving that third bin empty ready for me to start adding new stuff. Notice there's a fair bit of cardboard in front of these bins. This is a) so I can get to them without getting too muddy and b) so I can add it to the working bin as a layer of carbon between grass cutting and kitchen scraps etc. The act of turning the compost (by moving it from one bin to another) aerates it and kick starts the composting process thereby speeding the job up.
Because of the amount of kitchen waste and Bokashi added these three bins attract a lot of worms and I basically have three massive worm bins on my hands. This speeds up the process even more and compost is ready within about 6 months - I empty a bin twice a year and it's generally good quality stuff.
Of course it helps that the woodier cuttings (hedge cuttings, prunings etc) are shredded by the lawn mower before being added to the bin. I also add cardboard from cereal boxes, Amazon parcels etc as well as shredded paper and the odd Bokashi bin contents and the standard grass cuttings from the lawn. I also add urine (I kid you not) as it is high in nitrogen and also helps speed the composting process up. However, it's well worth taking note of the
following a few weeks before you're due to empty the bins...
I'm hoping to start a new vegetable patch this year (see this
recent post for details) and intend to start a more traditional compost heap/pile where I will be making use of plenty of fresh horse manure and straw to get it nice and hot. This will be the more traditional form of composting and will get so hot that the worms will keep well away for a few months - they will start their work once it has started to cool down in the centre.
Bokashi
I also have a Bokashi system (again bought from
Wiggly Wigglers) as it is a real fast way of composting and is used when the worm bin can take no more. Generally I make sure there's only a couple of inches of uneaten food in the top layer of the wormery otherwise it starts to putrefy - a wormery working well smells only of freshly dug earth rather than rotting food.
Bokashi can also take cooked foods such as meat and food scrapings - all the stuff they advise against in a wormery or compost heap for fear of attracting vermin. The food is added to the Bokashi bin in layers, pressed down to get rid of air pockets and then sprinkled with bran that has been treated with EM (Effective Micro organisms). The lid is then tightly put back until the next batch of tea bags, coffee grounds, vegetable peelings and left over food stuffs is ready to be added.
Once full the bin is left sealed for about a fortnight and the contents, once ready, look like they have been pickled. However, bury it in your borders and it will have rotted down within a few weeks. I often add it to my wormery as it speeds up the worms and gets them munching quicker, turning it into more usable compost quicker. It also speeds up the compost bins as well. But mainly, it is in your kitchen so it saves you traipsing around on a cold winters night in the rain going to the wormery or compost bins!
Both wormeries and Bokashi bins produce liquid that can be watered down and used as plant food both for vegetables and house plants, saving you a fortune on often inorganic fertilizer full of all sorts. I used "worm tea" on my tomatoes last year and had the best crop ever and they tasted great (very sweet). It's great knowing you can produce totally organic food that tastes so good. In fact my son loves the cherry tomatoes we produce so much we bribe him with them to make him finish his main course! :)
Where the bloody hell is Winter?
"Winter" 2008 has to be the most prolonged bout of Autumn ever: We've had so much rain here in the UK that you'd swear it was actually Summer, except it's cold and it goes dark earlier.
Yesterday, 28 January 2008, the rain and wind stopped leaving a beautiful 'Spring is just around the corner' type of day backed up by the sounds of the birds in full song - you know it's nearly Spring when the birds start singing naughties to each other.
The grass had grown so much with the recent mild weather that I had to mow it (though I just topped it really). This is by far the earliest I can remember mowing and I also managed a good deal of gardening; clearing up dead stems from last years bedding, tidying up leaves and digging the borders (being careful to avoid the almost in flower Daffodils and very much in flower Crocuses). So now, when everything comes out properly they should look stunning rather than a few dots of colour set amongst an unkempt mess like last year.
Typically though, I arrive home from work this evening, get out of the car while smugly admiring my beautifully kept garden only to hear that Winter is about to descend! Temperatures are going to plummet and we'll likely have snow by the weekend. Let's hope that singing naughties is as far as the little birds got and they put their nest building on hold for a while. I hate the years where everything gets into the full swing of Spring only to be killed off by Winter having one last tantrum.
I also visited a plot of land that my Dad used to use as a vegetable patch: He has said "we" are going to get it sorted this year, and as I need somewhere to grow my beans (a few pots worth last year were lovely but not nearly enough) I have said I'll help him.
As you can see by the pictures there's a fair bit of work to do! I reckon if it wasn't winter and that lot was in full leaf you'd be wondering if there was a sleeping Princess trapped in a castle somewhere amongst it!
So I'm currently reading up on my previously not even glanced at books on allotments and vegetable gardening trying desperately not to think about the brambles under my finger nails and back breaking digging that's required to get the plot something like.
I know I'll love it once I get started though :)
Only 363 days left until Christmas!
I hope everybody out there had a great Christmas and are enjoying whatever they got whether they wanted them or not.
We had a nightmare/great Christmas; Christopher couldn't sleep Christmas eve, to the point he was crying at midnight because he was trying too hard to drift off. Of course that meant Father Christmas couldn't land so was stuck in a holding pattern over the house and, between you and me, Tamsyn and I were getting sick with tiredness. So at midnight we went to bed, setting the alarm for 2:00am when, thankfully, we found Christopher snoring fitfully and Zoe wide awake crying because Father Christmas hadn't been, even though she had been a good girl and gone to sleep like we told her. Long explanations ensued about how Santa (Father Christmas turns into Santa Claus as soon as he leaves British shores and heads towards the US) couldn't wait any longer or he would be too far behind schedule for all the American brats. Luckily he had left the presents boxed up downstairs, so we got Zoe off to sleep so (Super) Mummy and Daddy could sort it out.
Once finished we struggled to get back to sleep ourselves so at 4am we gave in and drank a nice cup of tea (I practically inhaled mine) while the children opened their stockings (pillow cases). We then all went back to sleep and woke up at 8:30am, the kids full of Christmas excitement and us feeling like we'd been out on the piss for four days solid.
Except for a feeling of complete weariness (itchy eyes, headache and extreme difficulty getting out of a chair if you make the mistake of sitting down) the rest of the day was lovely and went very smoothly - I had dropped the turkey off at Mums Saturday and they arrived at noon with it cooked and wrapped in towels. I had prepared the vegetables etc so we were able to sit down at 12:30 for the meal, before spending the afternoon seeing if we could cover every square inch of carpet with wrapping paper. Everybody was on their best behaviour (we were too tired to care though to be honest) so it was a nice relaxing day. They left at 5pm because they had horses to feed so we got the rest of the day to ourselves.
I promptly fell asleep and missed Doctor Who but, as I had expected something like that might happen, I had recorded it so I don't miss Kylie (who Tamsyn says was OK but not great).
I didn't realise quite how tired we had been until I woke up on Boxing Day feeling happy to be alive and with some energy. I thought I would take it easy all the same so we had a day of doing nowt i.e. watching 'family films' (children's DVDs) together and eating left over turkey...
All done. Or are we?
Today was supposed to be the final day of having workmen invade the place. The new carpet and laminate floor have been completed and, as you can see, the place looks a whole lot better:
However, in true Sherlock fashion not everything is how it seems so as everybody who knows me thinks I'm a bit of a moaning git anyway I don't see why I should disappoint now :)
Not only did we have to prepare everything by removing and disposing of the old carpet, underlay and grips before Kingsley Carpets would start work (strange but sort of understandable with the new laws for business using Council tips) but we suddenly have to pay for a carpenter to shave some of the kitchen door off. Surely if they lay a floor and a door doesn't shut they should do the "2 minute job to sort it" rather us have to pay call out and labour IF we can get hold of somebody in the first place?
And then there's the finish. The carpet is great but if I had done the following Tamsyn would be telling everybody how bad I am at DIY! (I am of course useless at DIY which is why we saved up for professionals in the first place):
I'd be interested in what people think of the final three pictures and what we should do about it, as Tamsyn says I shouldn't complain all the time...
The end is nigh, and about bloody time.
At last we have nearly completed the 2007 phase of improving our house. What started as the central heating and replacement of knackered old conservatory has turned into a marathon of DIY as one job knackered something, that required more work, that knackered something else, which required more work. And so on, and so on.
Here's some pictures of the hallway and stair case after having been re-plastered, painted and now awaiting new floor for downstairs and new carpet for the stairs and landing.
Once the floor/carpet is installed (tomorrow hopefully) we intend to rest, recover from our colds and tend to the dog (who had a stroke on Sunday and now walks - but not often - like she's pissed) in the hope that we all (dog included) recover in time for Christmas.
