Elaine Fieldhouse & Barry Reeves, both local gardeners, gave a fascinating talk at April’s AHS meeting about compost.  Elaine who has  a wonderful garden backing on to an allotment in Plaistow has 22 compost bins including 4 tumblers.  She explained  that the material in each compost takes about 6 to 8 months to break down.  Elaine creates wet compost with some plants – adding water to plants to make a slurry then she adds it to her compost bin.  She told us that rhubarb leaves break down quickly; that she packages kitchen waste adding water to make it more moist and she adds cardboard to wet compost .  Dry cardboard needs to be dampened. She doesn’t add any cooked food.  The advantage of home grown compost over bought compost is that its free and you know what goes into it.  Asked about adding weeds to compost bins she explained that weeds don’t come back if they are well rotted.  Elaine uses her home grown compost to mulch her garden and allotment carried out in October/November and then February.
Barry told us about using a Hot Compost bin.  The advantage of a Hot Bin is that it will fit into a small garden.  He told us to stick to the instructions provided with the bin – a starter bottle of liquid is provided at the beginning as well as wood chips it is important to add wood chips and shredded paper and cardboard to keep the contents of the bin aerated. The bin is provided with a kind of stirrer with which one can stir the contents. The contents of the bin get very hot as the bin is covered with a sort of polystyrene to heat the contents – the temperature gauge on the lid shows the temperature of the contents. When you open the hot bin you can see the steam coming from it. You can add cooked food to a Hot Bin as well as green garden waste but better to chop it up so that it breaks down quicker.  The contents of the bin should never be solid and the heat is enough to kill weeds.  At the bottom of the bin there is a blue tap from which you can drain liquid plant food.  Barry told us that he gets about 5 buckets of compost after 2 months – the compost is of great quality and doesn’t smell.