On Tuesday, 29 May 2012 19:14:13 UTC+1, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Tue, 29 May 2012 16:04:43 +0100, "Bob Hobden"
wrote:

he's even heard a rumour of trials to make
composts out of chopped straw mixed with sewage sludge, would anyone want to
handle that?

You're too squeamish! When my BH lived in Gloucester, ~40 years ago,
she and her then husband used to get sewage sludge from the local
sewage works. There were great piles of the stuff, and the two of them
just shoveled it into bags before loading them into the car. Lovely
stuff, she said, very friable, but it always produced a crop of tomato
plants from the seeds in it that survived the passage through people's
guts!

--

Chris

Gardening in West Cornwall overlooking the sea.
Mild, but very exposed to salt gales

Also about 45 yrs ago the nursery I was working on at the time tried some sewage sludge on one of it's fields. We stopped when signs of heavy metal contamination were seen, not to mention the unmentionable objects strewn about the field embarassing the female staff. This was in a heavily industrialised urban area.
OTOH a manhole overflowed into our garden about 18 months ago dumping the sewage from our house and the 5 neighbours into one of our borders. We got a nice crop of tomatoes from amongst the roses and other border plants. Everything else looked like it was on steroids and those plant still look good now. It didn't smell too good for a while.

Rod