On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:02:01 +0100, fimonkey
wrote:


Hi All,

This is my first post. I am a veery novice gardener and have just
moved to a new flat that had a long, shady overgrown garden. I've
cleared a lot of the garden and cut back a lot of bushes, and cleared
the moss from the path. Rather than take this all to the tip I've
decided to try to compst it.

I have cut it all down and piled in in a 2m square block held together
by chicken wire in a sheltered place (Under a very large
camelia/rhodedendron?? tree) where it will get some evening sun.

My questions a

Should I add horse manure (I have a horse) to help it decompose?

Also, I'd like to add food scraps to it. How much food to garden waste
ratio should I aim for?

And finally, there are a lot of slugs and snails in my shady garden.
Are they any help to the compost heap?

Many thanks in advance for you hekp

If the sides are chicken wire then you've what's called a cold heap.
Takes longer to break down and the edges hardly at all. Compost from
cold eaps normally have more nutrients left. I'd cover the top to stop
rain leaching the goodness out. A number of councils have schemes to
buy an enclosed compost bin (dalek) at reduced prices. Those run as
hot heaps and produce compost quicker. Both types benefit from the
occasional shovel full of garden soil to get the right microbes in.
It's worth having both as everything doesn't compost at the same rate,
so you need to have somewhere to put the 'needs more time' stuff while
you dig down to the usable now. The twigs from bushes are likely to
still be there next spring. Shredding stuff speeds things greatly,
running a lawnmower over them works almost as well

Horse manure needs composting, really in a hot heap to kill the weed
seeds that horse manure is known for. Also make sure that the grass
your horse was on has not been treated with an herbicide eg
aminopyralid which as become a recent issue in this forum.

Meat scraps are also likely to smell. For the amount of bio mass it's
not worth adding to your compost the small amount of dodgier items.
I personally don't add potato peelings as they often sprout.

Slugs and snails will be happy in there, and will aid the
decomposition. It's an alternative to killing them. One of my heaps
has a frog in it as a result. The slugs etc will of course not always
stay there.

If your garden is shady, you might want to consider deep raised beds
in order to get towards the light. Google for 'lasagna gardening' as a
way of using kitchen waste, garden stuff and manure. Burying
compostable materials in the soil is really a more efficent way of
using them if the plan is to improve the soil. One old use of manure
was in 'hot beds'. That's (ideally in a greenhouse) where a deep layer
of fresh manure is put in the bottom of a trench, then 12" of soil put
on top. The heat from the manure breaking down warms the soil and
helps grow plants very early in the spring. The plant above ground
will need at least a clear plastic protection as well eg a cloche.
Raised beds, say 2 foot high might seem like a lot of work, but they
can be made of almost anything, any size or shape. They are also
compost heaps topped wth soil that never need to be emptied or hidden
away. Could be used as a way of splitting up the long look of the
garden into areas if that suits.

Btw when you come to use the compost in the spring, you might be
disappointed that such a large amount has broken down to so little.
Don't be. Compost made above ground has little main plant food left.
That why you still need a bit of fertiliser. What is does contain
essential trace elements and masses of microbe and insect life. It
feeds worms and they allow air into the soil. The compost holds water
as well. It's the plant version of our '5 a day'. If there's not
enough forspreding over the size of garden, use it by a couple of
trowel loads in the hole when planting new plants. That works really
well.