beccabunga wrote:
Ian B;790373 Wrote:

Does all this sound right? I've got more green in there than brown,
if green
is weeds and brown is leaves, but I haven't got any more brown to
offer,
unlike the government, sadly, but like them I've still got more weeds
to go.
Since the garden is overlooked by huge lime trees that my neighbour
tells me
will cover us later in an deep autumnal carpet (he shifted 30 bags of
leaves
from his garden last year) I'll presumably have heaps of brown then
but I
can't do much about that now. My bin is about 3 foot square and
currently
filled something approaching 3 foot deep.

I'd also like some beginners' advice on how to tell weeds from real
plants
before I fling a potentially beautiful summer display in my
disfunctional
bin. Is there an online poppy foliage indentifier site? Also what to
do with
heaps of twigs and small branches from the trees. Tip?

Also I have several peonies which are quite big (about 3 foot round
and
something over 2 foot high) which are budding like mad; do I need to
do
anything special for them? I have no idea what variety they are,
sadly.

Many thanks for any replies,


Ian

--



First comment - do not under any circumstances put the roots of either
couch grass or nettles into your compost bin. It will not get hot
enough to rot them down. The tops of nettles are great. Avoid putting
dandelions in as well - they will continue to develop and seed and you
will end up with a garden filled with them.

Oops. There are dandelions in there. Fortunately OTOH I had my weeds mixed
up and it's goose grass (cleavers) not couch grass. Thank you, internet!

Second comment - shred any cardboard/paper that you put in. If you
don't, you will end up with lumps of gunge.

I've done that. Torn it up into little bits, anyway.

Soft twigs [this year's growth]will rot down. Woody twigs are best
burned or taken to the tip. If you have a local tip that takes garden
waste for composting, even better as they can deal with woody stuff.

Okay.

"Layering" means don't fill your bin with just green stuff. In a small
bin like yours, stirring each means that the decomposing materials are
mixed into the new ones, so getting the process going faster.

Okay. Stirring I will do

Re poppies; see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppy

The problem is I haven't got any flowers and most pictures on the internets
are flowers. All I have are these rosettes of leaves whch, to one as
ignorant as I, could be anything frankly. They might be non-weeds that have
seeded themselves, or just weeds. They look a bit too kosher for weeds, so
I'm leaving most of them for now.

RE Peonies: these sound like the cottagey herbaceous ones. They need
very little attention, apart from some good compost/manure in spring,
and removing their dead leaves in late summer.
http://tinyurl.com/4czbz9

Thanks, that actually looks about the right colour for one type. There are
two types; those ones are more "bushy" while the other type has more
vertical stems, but not tree peony type. I guess I'll just wait and see what
the flowers look like

Many thanks,


Ian