Using green waste compost

[Andrew PearmanMember]

I’m preparing a site for a polytunnel which will go up in the next week or two. The area was pasture which has been covered in black plastic to kill most of the grasses. I’ve only just spread manure and its still quite lumpy. I have lots of winter salad plants in modules ready to plant and am thinking about getting a load of council green waste compost to spread over the manure to give a finer surface to plant into. My question is about using this compost. I’ve read a bit about contamination from the weedkiller Clopyralid which is in some lawn weedkillers and wondered if anyone has had any problems using green waste compost.
Thanks, Andy.

[ladbrokesMember]

ive used a large amount of the council green waste when starting my plot. ive had no issue with it at all.love the stuff

[charlesModerator]

 Yes there is very little contaminated compost, thank goodness, but I do not understand why clopyralid has not been banned, as it does persist so lethally in compost. All these issues arose ten years ago in thUSA! Composting operations are aware of its possible presence and are encouraged to be vigilant and ask questions but that cannot be enough to give 100% clean compost.

Sorry not to be more enouraging and I agree with Ladbrokes that it is great to use, especially when starting up. You could obtain a sample and sow lettuce, tomatoes in warmth to see if they are healthy after about a month; if there was contamination, leaves curl upwards.

[Andrew PearmanMember]

Thanks for your comments Charles and ladbrokes. I feel more confident about using green waste now, but will get a little first for a few trial sowings inside.

[ashleighParticipant]

round here the council compost includes autumn road sweepings, so it’s full of plastic – harvesting my garlic there was a toffee crisp wrapper wrapped around the roots, metal ring pulls, plastic bottle top etc. these bits of litter kind of work their way to the surface over time so you can remove them but it’s quite disgusting. i think it is also cooked/sterilised in some way so it’s weirdly dead and wormless though it does fill up with life quickly once it’s spread.

it’s been ok for my own single raised bed but now we’re making a whole market garden. if we run out of the lovely hay and manure that we’re using to mulch i feel very torn about whether to get some council compost – the plastic bits would continually break down and leave nasty stuff in the soil, i’m sure, and cancel out our organic approach!

[Pete BuddParticipant]

In the past I`ve supplemented my allotment compost with farmyard manure, horse muck and green waste from home. However I have become increasingly concerned about importing unwanted pests, diseases and chemical residues. Now I only compost material from my allotment. I grow green manures, (mainly alfalfa, rye, comfrey and phacelia). The methods I use minimise the amount of space required by utilising areas that would otherwise have been bare soil, as much as possible. There is some extra work involved, but this is lessened by cultivating the green manures in rows and composting instead of digging in. The extra work is far, far less than that involved with winter digging and my results are encouraging.

Pete

[Andrew PearmanMember]

That’s interesting Pete. I would like to use green manures more but have been put off by a trial of rye I grew this year. It was planned as a windbreak and also a soil improver. I sowed it autumn 2011 and cut it late summer 2012. It was an excellent windbreak but there were two main problems. Firstly it harboured lots of slugs. Onions grown alongside were almost devastated by slugs whereas some grown in a more open area grew very well. Also weeds thrived in amongst the rye. There were so many established weeds (mainly grasses) that I have recovered the area with some manure and black plastic as if I was starting from scratch! How do you manage to keep your green manures clear of weeds. Maybe winter killed manures sown in late summer are more successful.
Andy

[Pete BuddParticipant]

Hi Andrew; you are quite right about slugs/competition between green manures and other crops. 2012 was a particularly bad year and not a typical example of what you can expect. I do tend to keep my green manure fairly well segregated, (2.4m beds .5m path in between), and as mentioned before, I sow in rows so that the manure crops can be tended and kept clean. With attention to weeds at an early stage and on going routine weeding, you will find that weeds and slugs become less of a problem. My grazing rye is always out by June apart from a bit for seed saving (which is quite easy by the way). I have found from experience that a vegetable plot should have an open aspect as even a small amount of shade will increase problems associated with competition and slugs.

Cheers

Pete:-)

[Anonymous]

I used to compost any types of weeds, but then it smelled so bad and was actually harmful to the plants, that I used it on. Then I found out that some things are actually not good for your compost… Now I have a problem, I need to get rid of all waste that I CAN’Tcompost. Any good suggestion?
P.S. I cant just burn it, right?

[Don FoleyParticipant]

Hi Arabella,

The most usual cause of a smelly compost heap is too much wet greens. Perhaps you have a lot of grass clippings in your heap? This is easily rectified by adding more brown materials, i.e., Cardboard, Newspaper, Egg cartons, leaves, etc.
Turn the heap from time to time, you don’t need to do this every week or indeed every month but by doing this you get air into the heap and the more often you do it the faster you will generate compost.
As for weeds, I usually don’t put them in my heap as you need to be sure the heap gets up to a high temperature to be sure to kill off any seeds.

Stuff you cant compost has to go into your refuse bin I’m afraid

[charlesModerator]

Well I compost everything and agree with Don, that you have too much moisture Arabella, in your heaps.
Add plenty of card, paper, some twigs and old leaves. See this video for more info on composting.

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