25 January, 2009

Compost problems

I encouraged my neighbours to start composting and feel a bit responsible as they've been having problems with things not rotting down as they should. So a couple of days ago, I spent an hour or so emptying out one bin and turning it over.

What I found when I got the bin off was this.



A very dense bottom layer and lots of dry matter on the top which mostly came from the chicken house.



I took the top layer off and then dug through the bottom layer which it turned out had lots of sludgey green lawn cuttings.

They were thick and gloopy and stank. The good news was that the bin had lots of worms and that most of the matter had rotted down to some extent but the grass cuttings were clearly a problem.

Now I've put everything back in, in alternate broken up layers of wet rotted stuff and dry brown matter. Hopefully this will sort it out. It's certainly shown me that you can't stuff your bin full of grass and expect good compost.

1 comment:

mountainear said...

Lawn clippings are the devil's spawn and I try to avoid putting them in the compost bins - which means we have a large stinking heap elsewhere which at this time of year has become slimy and yuck. Sometimes I do a bit of layering but we get them in such quantities it's hard, hard work.

The person that devises a use for them deserves to be very,very rich.