I hope this is an appropriate ng, if not apologies and could somebody point
me to an appopriate one?

I've moved in to a new flat recently with a garden but frankly don't know
much about gardening at all really. Many of my family have gardens, but the
only time I've myself previously had one was for a couple of years, and the
ex knew all about it so she did the intelligent stuff and I just did the
heavy work as instructed, usually involving a spade and a bad back IIRC.

The garden isn't in bad shape but had got rather weedy as the previous
resident had died and thus neglected his gardening duties. Having been
concentrating on decorating and moving and stuff, I'd sort of left nature
alone a bit in the garden but was finally spurred into action as a phalanx
of fierce looking couch grass was marching down the garden and I began to
fear that one night it would march into the house and strangle me in an
unnervingly sticky way. So I started weeding and ended up with lots of
weeds. I initially bagged them up to go to the tip, but I don't drive so
have to rely on the kindness of others, and press-ganging family members
into transporting bags of rotten weeds can get tiresome. Also I thought it
makes more sense to use my waste myself rather than needlessly(?) take it
somewhere else, so I decided to get with the groove and become a composter.

So I've bought a compost bin, which is an impressive square self-assembly
black plastic thing with doors in the sides and a lid, and started it off,
and looked on the internets for advice; but although there is an elegant
sufficiency of advice available it's a bit confusing for a berk like me. I'm
particularly concerned about this brown/green ratio and what counts as
brown. Some sites say the brown/green ratio should be about equal. Others
seem to say that the required ratio is 30:1, which doesn't sound right as in
my bin that would be basically filling it with twigs then putting about a
quarter of a lettuce in the middle. I'm also not sure what counts as brown.
Some sites say, "leaves", while others tell me to put my leaves in plastic
bags with holes poked in and compost them seperately. Also, a lot of sites
say not to put weeds in it, but if that's the case it kind of destroys the
point as I'd be hefting big bags of weeds off to the tip and my impressive
bin would have 3 tea bags and a carrot top in it. Also, there's no lawn so I
can't put lawn clippings in it either, which might be a good thing as
apparently too many of them turn it to green slime.

I constructed my bin yesterday evening and put it in a corner of the garden
which is a bit shady, which is apparently wrong also, but that's the only
reasonable place it can go. I started off with a layer of brown leaves that
happened to be conveniently lying around, which are mostly berberis from the
forbidding anti-miscreant hedge at the bottom of the garden. I moistenened
them, then flung in some of my weeds, which are apparently all things that
aren't supposed to go in for fear they'll live a zombie existence in the
bin; couch grass, dandelion, some creeping thing that sort of tangles around
everything, a few nettles including some from the untended thicket that
borders my garden since I read they're very nitrogenous and quite a lot of
what I thought were weeds but my sister thinks are poppies, so I've stopped
pulling any more of them up; also some bits of cardboard, a few twigs which
various sites say shouldn't go in either because they take years to break
down, and several tea bags. And some more brown leaves and so on, then mixed
it around a bit. This latter seemed to be against the principle of layering,
but I don't quite understand that either as the advice seems to be to make
layers, then keep mixing it all up, so I don't quite see the point of the
layering; is this two different approaches or am I missing something?

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.

Other than while I was asleep I've been looking in the bin far more often
than I need to but nothing much seems to be happening yet, though at least
it hasn't produced any nasty smells so far. Perhaps my bin is faulty

I'm really looking for some people who are composting in small gardens (mine
is about 27 foot square in the old money); what they put in their bins in
what order and amounts and so on. Or am I on a hiding to nowhere and should
I just take the whole lot to the tip?

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

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