Compost!

[bunn]

When I make compost, I carefully make a giant sandwich of grass cuttings, finely chopped and shredded woody stuff and soft green weeds. 

So WHY is it  when I come to take the heap apart, I find it's mostly composed of horrible ropy ivy stems, straw, enormous woody twigs and couch grass roots????

I've put all the manky stuff back into the second heap to stew.  But I do now have a heap a couple of feet tall and 3 feet square of good quality brown stuff.  Hurray!

Comments

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Every now and again I feel guiltily that I should compost our food & garden waste. Katy was asking me about it just this morning. But then I remember the disgusting festering slimy masses I had to dispose of from the garden of each of our two houses when we moved in (failed compost heaps). I know I would not be organised enough to chop everything finely in the first place, and it would all just be a horrid messy disaster.... - Neuromancer

[bunn.livejournal.com]

If you have slime, I'm guessing you didn't have enough woody stuff to green stuff. You could put your food waste into a wormery, and lawn mowings are fine as mulch put directly on the bottoms of trees, hedges and rhubarb. (I always mulch my rhubarb with fresh lawn mowings, it really works well.)

I think the secret of good garden compost is a really big heap and add some horse poo. Horse poo composts nice and hot, I grab it off the road when horses go past!