[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Hello Mateo

Most municipal compost (from my understanding and experience) , which is from household garden waste collected by the council, here in Stafford in brown wheelie bins, is then received by private companies and turned into usable compost.

You can buy different grades, i.e. 10mm or 20mm, which goes through a grader. You also receive them at varying states at decomposition. My first load was well composted, low in temperature and full of banding worms. My latest load was very hot, more twigs and covered in tiny flies.

The biggest draw back in my mind, is you do get tiny stones, dependent on the grade you buy and I find that annoying from a visual perspective, and I guess even at 19mm stone could fork a carrot?

I found my local supplier when I took up my allotment, as I was asking for compost sources. A company called Mill Farm just outside of Stafford. I bought 8 tonnes (20mm) at £12 per tonne, delivered to my plot by tractor and tipping trailer, straight on to my plot (lucky I am I know).

In between my two loads, a contractor who works for me, talked about another supplier he uses. This was not delivered, but was free. I collected it with a very small trailer (due to not having a big towing licence), and was loaded by one of the machines. However, this was a lot of hassle, petrol, time, 16 mile round trip, scraping compost out of trailer, and would have taken 8 trips for same tractor and trailer load, no hassle.

In the process on trying to find a contact for my second supplier, I did stumble upon a composting spreadsheet, but I can find the source now. Hopefully it opens okay on this site.

All the best
Gary

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Thanks Charles

You have confirmed my suspicions.

I have to confess, I have already, somewhat, started spreading onto existing beds, in a response to smoother weeds that I have allowed to get away in the last few weeks.

Therefore, once these beds get a good soaking of overdue rain, I will cover them over with tarps to speed up decomposition.

My new beds, on the adjacent plot I have recently taken over, don’t need to be ready till May/June, so I will wait till April to build them.

So back to the very large pile of municipal compost, would it help to cover that in a tarp as well?

Thanks again Charles

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Hope it is going well beth. From experience, I would worn against letting your chickens near your beds, they are a nightmare. They eat crops and also dig them out of the ground. Mine are now in a large (5m x 5m) chicken run.

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Thanks for all your input. I have decided to buy some from Containerwise Bought a selection of the 4 sizes available. Though expensive, the recycled element plus long life sold me.

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

To plant out possibly. Yes, they were shop bought last year from Wilko, so I will plant some. I have purchase a small sample of other varieties, so it will be interesting to see how they fair against each other.

Thanks for your feedback.

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Still struggling with search function. There seems to be two, one on right hand side, which seems to search the whole website, and the other search box in the centre of page, doesn’t work for me, stating “lease type in your search terms. Use descriptive words since this search is intelligent.”

Any ideas.

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Thanks, I have planted one plant into my slightly raised beds (no sides), with one bag of ericaceous compost, I will buy another plant soon and do the same. Just noticed that this plant is not self fertile, so will need another plant. Does this definitely need to be a different variety?

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

I have bought a Blueberry bush without doing my homework. Now realise I need to grow it in a pot with ericaceous compost, which I don’t want to do. Has anyone dug a big, wide hole, filled it with ericaceous compost managed to successfully grow blueberries?

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Thanks for your speedy response. Okay, will keep them in the house. I have re-read the section in your book, and it does seem that spaghetti squash are in the summer squash section, but the pumpkins are in winter section, so thought they would last a while? If not will have to try some different varieties next year.

Thanks

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Thanks Bluebell, should I do it now or wait a while?

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Very impressive Phil, something to aspire to, thou I am unaware of awards in our borough.

So far I have seemed to haven’t got on well, 2 months in now. 4 beds, 1.2m wide, totaling about 40 metres in length. Imported municipal compost, 9 tonnes at £100, of which i have shared half (keeping people on side). All paths are woodchipped, all beds planted with potatoes, squashes, sweetcorn and celeriac.

Everyone has been very welcoming. Giving me free seed, plants, strawberries, broad beans and other bits (plus digging wisdom). The committee said that in this first year they wanted to see some weeding and digging to see that I am serious. In my head I laughed at this concept, and proceed to sort it in the first month. Well, they seem impressed, as the former chairman has offered me another piece of her plot that she can’t keep on top off.

My current challenge is trying to rid couch grass. I wish at the beginning I gave it more respect, and dug out more of its roots. I hoped that large amounts of compost would deal with this (and skipped cardboard in the rush). I am currently spending 10 minutes a day pulling couch (and other weeds) out, but it mostly snaps 95% of the time. I am hoping this will tire the root system in time.

My next challenge will be how I finish of the beds. I had a lot of municipal compost, so felt like using as much as possible. The result is beds that are very domed to say the least. It means that the edges are unstable and easily fall away, making them unplantable, so only 60% of bed width usable. I did want to go sideless, but realising this may now not be an option. Based upon cost and access to materials, I have three options. One, tree trunks, maybe 4-6 inch, staked in place, but eats into my fire wood efforts. Two, using pallet materials, produce standard wooden edge beds, but time consuming. Three, large pebbles, the size of dinosaur eggs, thou it will take me ages to forge this many pebbles.

All options will enable me to level compost to a sensible domed level, enable all of the bed width to be utilised properly. Works can happen as crops finish, in Autumn/Winter, so no rush currently.

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

JayJay, I had the same situation, runner beans overwintered. I dug mine up because they weren’t where I wanted them, and root was huge and woody.

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Charles, I agree with Rhys, the book is slightly vague on the sowing technique for sweetcorn. However, I made the assumption that it would be indoor sown, as it seems only carrots and parsnip cannot be raised indoors in modules.

I raised sweetcorn this year in 2 inch (5cm) modules on 17th April, they are now averaging 6 inch (15cm) in height, at what stage would these be planted out? Additionally, is there still time to sow more indoors in modules or direct?

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Thanks for your comments. I live in Stafford, and we have a brown wheely bin where all garden wastes goes. I was given a contact by a fellow allotmenteer of a farmer who buys this garden waste and turns it into a lovelly weed free, very dark brown compost. He delivers it for £12+vat per tonne, minimum order of 7 tonnes by tractor and trailor. My delivery was nearly 9 tonnes, mostly due to the recent rain, and only asked of £100.

I have got 4 long beds (9,10,11,12 metres long) by 1.2m. I have started spreading 9 tonnes of compost very thickly, possibly 6-8inches in the middle. I haven’t seen anyone since, tongues will start wagging, I look forward to it.

[Gary.J.KelseyParticipant]

Thanks for your response. I do pack the soil down very firmly (I have read your book extensively), however, filling module trays is possibly the most annoying garden chore, any tips on making this easier. Back to the soil, I wonder whether being window raised they are not getting quite enough light to grow dense roots, possibly should grow them on more. Think next year I will look at by the West Riding soil your talk of.

Thanks

[Author]

Posts