Tag Archives: Compost Heap. Wormery

A new episode of Location, location, location (for the worms)

Posted on by
Reply

The compost heap was looking great yesterday with handfuls of brandling worms jumping about when we looked in (most falling off the bin’s lid we reckon as I don’t think our worms have learned how to fly just yet!) It was a sight for sore eyes seeing them and also feeling the heat, for the first few weeks after we started it was stone cold and wormless.

After a good old fork over this is what the heap looked like (above), a nice old mixture! It’s good to mix alll the micro organisms, bacteria and insects up and give them a change of scenery and the air you create helps too!

Those plastic dalek bins are a bit of a pain compared to those nice old square wooden ones when it comes to turning with a garden fork as the knuckles do tend to get caught on the lip at the top of a dalek. That’s something we’ve got to put up with at the moment until we rethink the bin.

Also the wormery which originally took a while to get going looked healthy yesterday (above) when we opened it up (AKA took the bin bag with the ventilation holes in it off the top). We tend to forget about putting stuff into it sometimes which is a crime but suprisingly it’s looking great. You can see the odd bit of just added teabag and a few bits of potato peel, that’s called guilt that is! #compostinginlockdown

Book of the week

Posted on by
Reply

Bob’s Basic’s: Composting by Bob Flowerdew
(Kyle Cathie Limited) 2010

This a good little book about the art of composting from the great Bob Flowerdew, he of the Rob Da Bank ponytail and recycler of old fridges as mini-greenhouses fame. This was obtained from the local library but I reckon it’s well worth shelling out the nine pounds ninety nine for (probably cheaper as it’s a couple of years old now).

It’s easy to read and stuffed full of hints and tips with humour making it a great reference book. The main themes running throughout the book are that even the worst heap can be corrected and once you start making compost and use it, you won’t be able to get enough of it!

It covers the whole range of garden composting from the history of it, different designs of bin, what you can and can’t use, how to correct a bad heap and even covers wormeries, snaileries and chickens! There’s lots of things that I didn’t realise that you could do like using ditchwater to boost the heap and soaking weeds in dirty water for a few weeks to start them rotting down plus a great tip of always adding a thin layer of soil over the layer of new waste you put in to help it on it’s way.

And finally, my favourite quote in the book is “sadly, composting human dung currently puts you in the ‘too eccentric to be a nice neighbour’ camp”. And I thought adding urine from a bottle was considered a bit bonkers!