Compost bins and leaf mould bins rebuild part 2

 Today we added more modules to the compost bins we put up last week - It was Compostgirl's birthday on Friday, Compostman and I then had a few days feeling very unwell and a family situation left both of us very distressed and stressed, so we didn't get back out to them until today.


I sorted out more of the planks and posts and started  putting them together whilst Compostman gathered up a couple of wheelbarrows full of leaves from the front garden.

Then he came round and helped me put more of the bins together

 The Recycle Works compost bins are easy to assemble, they just slot together!
 

We actually added a Leaf Mould module to the line of bins as well, but are rethinking where to put this so a "normal" compost bin will be going where it is at the moment.

 As always, we had chicken helpers !

it was lovely outside, cold but sunny and it felt good to be working outside after a very trying few days

Refurbishing The Recycle Works compost bins part 2

So, having done a lot of digging and barrowing and working outside in the cold on Sat, my back went on strike Sunday and it really really hurt. I decided discretion would be etc. etc. and left doing outside heavy stuff for another day. I contented myself with tidying up the dining room and study.

So on Monday we got cracking again

This is the empty space we have cleared of the old bins. Keen eyed readers of this blog might remember that the very right hand side pair of bins were actually put up in 2008  so the posts and boards from those two bins were in OK condition.

A lot of the other posts and boards from the other, 2004, bins did need replacing, however.

I was lucky enough to have received a gift of some new posts and ended and plain boards from The Recycle Works - who were interested to see what my old boards looked like and kindly offered me a contribution to the replacements. 4 posts and six of each of the boards helped with the rebuild when added to those new ones I already had in stock, so thank you Sylvia and Debbie!

A couple of the 2004 posts were a bit soft at the end where they had been in contact with the ground, but were OK when turned upside down and will be good for another few years. I shall paint them with the Chroma preservative.

As you can see the new posts/boards were used in the middle, where they get the most contact with composting material and compost.

The older boards were reused on the outside surfaces where there is less contact with the damp compost.

And also up the top of the bins, where again they are less likely to be in contact with composting material for a long time.

Four bins finished! We need to put down geotextile weed matting at the end before we put the last two bins back in place.

I have always been very impressed with The Recycle Works - these bins in particular work very well, are made from FSC timber and treated with  a non-toxic preservative ( called Chroma) which will not harm plants or worms and bugs in the Compost.


I also use this Chroma preservative on my hen houses and Guinea Pig runs and it works very well indeed.

These bins make excellent compost and I love the idea that if one component of the bin is damaged you can just buy a replacement part to fix it.

Obviously other bins like this are available from other manufacturers.

So, we now have four ( soon to be six) empty bins back in action, which is a good job as the "working bins" are full and have been shut down!


So, time to get gardening and fill up the empty space :-)





( I did not receive any payment for this post. I did receive some posts and boards from The Recycle Works after I contacted them to place an order for the boards and posts and talked about what I was planning to do - they were interested to see what the old bin components looked like and offered me some new posts and boards for this project.)

Refurbishing the compostbins part 1

As you all know we have a lot of compost bins of assorted make and style and we make a lot of compost.

 My favourite bins are the "New Zealand" style wooden, slatted bins, so easy to put together and so easy to dismantle and re errect, as needed.

Mine are all from The Recycle Works and I got the first 3 bins as part of a discount offer from my local council, back before I was even a Master Composter or anything - I think in 2003... certainly it was well before Compostgirl started pre school in 2004

And now some parts of those original compost bins have reached their use by date...and need replacing.

The ends have rotted away  from some of the planks

Some of the centre posts have broken up

 

And generally they need a bit of tender loving care and some new parts to restore them to splendidness.

 

  Now, the good thing about these compost bins is that you only have to replace the damaged bits! You can buy the individual posts and planks from The Recycle Works so it is very economical to repair them

So today we started to dismantle the compost bins, so as to see how many parts needed replacing.  This, of course, meant moving the finished compost from out of them, so we could take them to bits.  Which meant I had to find a place to put all the aforementioned finished compost...

Fortunately I had a cunning plan...I had a waiting raised bed which needed a lot of compost putting in it, to fill it up, ready for planting potatoes in the next month or so.

As we dismantled the compost bins we found some of the centre posts had rotted where they touched the ground

And some of the boards had rotted through or lost their end plates.

As always, we had company while we worked, both of the feline

and the chicken sort! The chickens were going mad to get to the worms we were exposing.

We got the bins dismantled and the area cleared, ready to sort out those planks and posts which could be re used and those which were too far gone and would need to be burnt.

The wood is not treated, apart from a paint on water based, animal, insect and bird friendly stain, so I think to survive being buried deep in compost for around 10 years before finally rotting a bit  is impressive indeed.


Today was cold but gloriously sunny and we really enjoyed being able to get outside and do something

More tomorrow  as we put the new planks and centres together and re fill the bins - fingers crossed the weather holds out.

The Recycle Works have two special offers on this weekend - 

Two Very Special Brief Offers

This week our Brief Offer is all about protection! 

Offer One: Buy a Big Square Compost Duvet for only £13.99 instead of the normal price of £18.99 saving you £5 on each one you purchase.

All you need to do is enter the code BIGSQUAREDUVET in to the discount code box when ordering and your savings will be automatically applied.

Offer Two: Buy our Frost Protection Fleece at a special price. Buy one for £6.60 or buy two for £12.99.

To take advantage of this offer you just need to give us a call on 01254 820088 and we'll sort our your order for you!

 

Love Your Environment! Love Your Protection!

*Terms & Conditions Apply. New orders only. No other discount code can be applied with this offer. Free Delivery applies to Mainland UK* orders over £50. 

Brief Offers Available Until Midnight on Sunday 3rd February

Hungry Bin trial after 4 weeks - harvesting the vermicompost for the first time!

 The Hungry Bin has been quietly eating our kitchen waste for a number of weeks, now.
So I decided it was time to risk taking off the bottom tray to look at the vermicompost.

I undid the catches on each side, and carefully lowered the bottom tray - half expecting the entire contents to fall out of the bottom - but no! it all worked exactly as the Hungry Bin web site said it would!

The compost you can see on the ground fell out of the bottom tray when I removed it - none has fallen out from the Hungry Bin itself.

Most of the compost in the bottom tray is from the original material I added when I set up the Hungry Bin more than four weeks ago, but there are some worm casts in there as well.The bottom tray fits neatly into the liquid collection tray, normally seen on the ground under the Hungry Bin

I could only find one worm, who was returned to the Hungry Bin to join the rest of the many thousands in there, busily munching away at our waste.

I added the compost to some pots of veg in the polytunnel, as well as giving the plants a feed of diluted worm tea from the Hungry Bin collection tray. I then put the collection tray back underneath the Hungry Bin - two catches which did up really easily.

My Hungry Bin is now absorbing my daily kitchen waste -about a kilo of it every day, plus whatever else I find to throw in to the worms.

I am SO impressed with this wormery!

Hot Bin trial after 4 weeks - first sight behind the compost hatch!

Ok, so I have had the HotBin for just over four weeks. I took these photos on Day 30, first thing in the morning.

So far, I have been very impressed. The HotBin has "eaten"  many refills of material (more than 3 of them a week since the start) of mainly green waste (weeds, potato haulms, grass etc) since I got it.
 

Each time the level dropped down to a settled minimum and the internal temperature settled back down to around 40 C,   I refilled the HotBin to the top.  Obviously as time passed there was more material left in the bottom of the HotBin, so I could put less and less inside as there was less room. But I estimate I have put more than 800 l (ish) of waste, by volume, into the HotBin, which then worked to reduce this material down to coarse mulch consistency at the bottom of the HotBin. In four weeks.


By comparison, the Dalek bin has been refilled once during this period - so has taken roughly 500 l of material ( initial 330 l plus a refill of another 150 ish l)

I have had a bit of a problem with the external thermometer, but as I am getting the internal temperatures and as the material is disappearing at a rate of knots I guess I must be doing it correctly so I am not worried. HotBin are talking to me about this issue and I am getting a replacement soon.

Whenever I open the lid, there is steam and heat! As long as there is a fresh charge of waste to work on the HotBin has kept at a steady 55 - 65 C  inside - it usually takes 3 days for the temperature to drop to around 40 C - by which time the HotBin needs (and gets)  a refill.

But after four weeks the partially composted material was building up inside the HotBin, so I decided to open up the hatch and take a look, with a view to possibly removing any material which had composted enough.

I undid the two ratchet straps which help to hold the front hatch in place

having first put an old, split compost bag down to catch any material which I took out.

hatch open for the first time in 30 days!

I must admit I was surprised to see how well the material had already composted down.

Slugs on the inside of the hatch - they get everywhere!

As always my henny "helpers" appeared to see what was going on

See how much mulch grade compost has been produced! In a month! I removed 3 buckets full of material, it was rather wet and a bit coarse to use as compost just yet, but perfectly acceptable as a mulch and if put in another bin, would make good compost within another few weeks. Which is what I am going to do with it.

I did find it a little difficult to remove the material from the bottom of the bin for two reasons. I found it physically hard to get the stuff out because of the other material above it. I also was concerned about cutting into the bin itself with my spade.

The Hotbin, three quarters empty again, waiting for a refill.

Which it got, of all sorts of stuff including bindweed ( I love watching the bindweed cook and go black inside the HotBin!)

By comparison my (larger!) Dalek compost bin , filled at the same time, under the same conditions and with a mixture of the same material, had produced a very small quantity of mulch quality standard compost. But the rest of the material in the bin was not decomposed very much at all. I removed less than a quarter of a bucket of usable mulch compost in the bottom of the Dalek bin.

Now do not get me wrong, that is very good going for a Dalek compost bin, in high summer I expect to get usable mulch from one of these in around fourteen weeks - but not in four.

So - the HotBin is yet again really impressive. I put the material I removed from the bottom of the HotBin into the Dalek bin, and personally I think that is what I am most likely to use the HotBin for, as a very rapid means to process huge volumes of compostable material and convert it into a much smaller volume of mulch grade compost. This can then be either used or put into a Dalek or other compost bin to complete the process - if you want finer, more mature compost.

And by the end of my afternoon outside, the Hotbin had already reached 55 C internally. And by the next afternoon it was up to 68 C.

Truly a "Hot Bin"

Hungry Bin update after 3 weeks

Here at Compost Mansion we generate a kitchen caddy full of waste every couple of days from our kitchen - tea bags, coffee filters and grounds, veg peelings and assorted bits of cardboard all go in there. The caddy lives in the corner by the sink, next to the sink. Typically, we empty about 5 kg of compostables out of it every few days.

I have been re filling the Hungry Bin with assorted kitchen and garden waste every day, a little and often is the best way and I have been adding a couple of inches of food stuff for the worms everyday, as suggested by the  Hungry Bin parent company in New Zealand

This was the view inside the lid of the Hungry Bin on Day 20 of the trial.I added some more assorted  kitchen and garden waste from the kitchen caddy and some of the packaging hay I recieved in my order from Rocket Gardens.

I have now owned a Hungry Bin for 3 weeks and am still delighted with it, despite the warmer weather recently it does not smell and it can handle a lot of kitchen waste.  I have also been using the "worm tea" from the tray at the bottom - diluted 10:1 with water  ( until it is the colour of weak tea, no milk, no sugar) the plants in the polytunnel love it

Next time I will hopefully be reporting on opening up the tray at the bottom to harvest some vermicompost ;-)

A busy day in the garden

A very busy and hot day in the garden - the composting area needed a lot of work doing as I have managed to mow the lawn , but not fill up the compost bins.

So Compostman and I got to work after breakfast and morning routine chores, while it was still relatively cool outside.

I had several bins needing the compost digging out and storing before I could refill the bins.

As always, we had henny helpers!

Compostgirl helped a lot, but then sat down in the shade,  to read for a bit.

Several of the wooden bins need replacements planks and uprights - a job for another day as I will have to remove 4 bins worth of compostable materials to get to the rotten ones and it was far too hot to do that today! Still, an advantage of the Recycle Works wooden modular bins is that you can just replace the individual boards and uprights as needed, and these are at least 7 years old so have lasted very well, considering that they have been buried in decomposing compostables!

Much tidier! And a bag full of finished compost to add to the collection.

While moving assorted mats, buckets etc around in one of the leaf mold bins I came across a pair of Wood mice.

One ran away down onto the ground...

While the other ran up the side of the compost bin

on to the top... and away. I felt sad I had disturbed them, but there were no young in the nest so hopefully no harm was done.

We also identified our mystery visitor to the bird table, a Nuthatch. Well a pair, actually but only the one came to the feeder today.

It took nuts away, so I don't know if there are still chicks in the nest somewhere in the wood. We have been hearing the call of a Nuthatch in the wood for a few weeks, so maybe there is a late nest somewhere? I hope so.

I finally went into Hell's Sauna (aka the Polytunnel) to water the ground in an attempt to cool it down in there - NOT a pleasant experience - I was wringing wet with sweat afterwards and had to have a cool shower to recover - far too hot to do anything in there after about 10 am! I am watering in the evening just before it gets too dark to do so. Harvest is good from inside it, though - loads of lovely tomatoes now and the peppers and cucumbers are looking very good.

Thanks for dropping by :-)