Reviews from the trials seem very positive but flag up a couple of interesting points to consider.  Hot composting means you will have compost ready more quickly.  Inevitably making compost quickly means filling the composter more often to replace what has been removed.    In order to do this you need a steady supply of waste materials and not just any materials, the right mix.

Grass mowings are a classic surplus material and this composter can deal with them all, but not on their own.  In order to ‘soak up’ the wetter, nitrogen-rich  grass a drier, carbon -rich material is required.  Cue the ‘bulking agent’ (wood chip) supplied by the company at £12.25 for a 40 litre bag.

The hotbin costs £138 or £236 for a twin bin system – a second bin in which to put waste while you wait for the first lot of compost to be ready to harvest.  If you are drowning in waste and urgently need more compost on your land (you certainly can’t have enough) then this may be a price worth paying.

However with compost I have to disagree with Benjamin Franklin, time isn’t money.  If you are prepared to wait a while, your (chopped up) woody prunings will act as the wood chips and cost nothing plus where else would they go?  I know the grass can swamp other materials in the summer but they can be used to mulch fruit trees or even just laid on the ground if they threaten to send the compost into smelly black slime.

The guy that invented the hotbin, Tony Callaghan, was frustrated with an overflowing compost bin and he has indeed come up with a solution to the problem of more waste than he could cope with.  Indeed, in comparison to the NatureMill that I have been so keen to praise, the hotbin is both cheaper to buy and doesn’t require an external source of heat.  Both systems need the extra carbon input but hotbin triumphs in not having any mechanical parts that could malfunction.

This is one hungry little bin and unless you’re prepared to feed it it won’t thrive.  If you have surplus food for it however it will repay you by in turn feeding the soil’s insatiable appetite for organic matter.  And that is worth its weight in gold.

Read more about or buy hotbin

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

GQT maestro Pippa Greenwood would prefer to use artificial fertilizer than bone meal because she’s a vegetarian. Whilst I appreciate that vegetarians might not want to use animal products the idea of using chemical fertilizer instead sits uncomfortably with me.

The subject came up on Gardeners’ Question Time with a question about a dog unable to resist his desire to scratch in the borders for the buried bone meal intended not for him but for the flower power of the border.

After receiving advice from another panellist on how he could train his dog properly, Pippa offered the chemical solution. Dogs wouldn’t search out mineral or non-organic phosphorus because they don’t see it as food. Incidently neither do honey bees recognise refined sugar as food initially. Chemical solutions have come to the aid of man in myriad ways but their apparent miracles are like Mephistopheles, there will come a time when payment is demanded. Chemical fertilizers have been boosting our crop yields for decades now and as a result the earth’s soil is, much like the economy, in deficit. It’s like taking speed to boost performance and alertness – at some stage the adrenal reserve bank runs out and there’s no more energy available.

OK that might be a bit strong but the argument has to contend with the emotional pull of animal welfare. Pippa didn’t offer any arguments with her suggestion but might they run something like this?

• There are too many animals being bred for our meat consumption habit, often using inhumane methods.
• Invaluable rain forests are being cut down in order to grow grain.
• Feeding animals grain is an inefficient way of getting calories to us, it’s better to eat the grains directly.
• If we didn’t eat so much meat there would be more food for everyone.

These are strong arguments and coupled with the fact that the dog wouldn’t dig up the inorganic fertilizer seem like a perfect solution. However bone meal is available and where should it go? Does objecting to the meat industry mean refusing to accept any goodness the by-products can return to the soil?

What if the animals were fed on natural grassland rather than grain grown for them? Is there an ‘organic’ certification of this organic material that guarantees the animals it came from were treated humanely?

Organic fertilizer such as bone meal will release its mineral goodness slowly whereas the rapid results of artificial fertilizer come because the nutrients are released quickly. The soil can’t hold onto the excess and they leach out readily, washed away by rains and ultimately polluting waterways. Good animal husbandry and land management is about minimizing waste. Recycling nutrients whether from animal bones or kitchen waste closes the loop and a closed cycle means that little pools of misplaced matter aren’t left to cause problems elsewhere.

Is the poor gardener going to have to spend a day with Barbara Woodhouse teaching his dog to override his instincts or is there a better way? Placing bone meal into a closed compost bin should do the trick. The advantage of a closed bin (with lid and floor) is that animals can’t get in to scavenge and the nutrients will be slowly released into the composted matter. The dog might whimper and stare longingly at the inscrutable Dalek but at least the herbaceous borders will be safe. Rather more importantly, the nutrient cycle will be closed and all debts repaid.

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

Slash and burn

Alley cropping

This film isn’t the Cheech and Chong version but documents poor Mike Hands a soil scientist from the UK who has spent his working life trying to convince others about his concept of alley cropping.  Alley cropping is a bit like the Central American equivalent of forest gardening.  An alley is cleared between rainforest trees for annual crops like maize and beans to be grown, organically.  When you consider the alternative of slash and burn which releases into the atmosphere more carbon than all car emissions and leaves the soil lacking the fertility to grow another years’ crop, you would imagine his idea would get some support.  And it has.  One Honduran farmer has used alley cropping successfully and his friends are now following suit.

Copenhagen Climate Summit

The difficulty is in transmitting news of that success to the other 250 million subsistence farmers worldwide.  It’s not that there’s a villain of the piece.  The Honduran government was about to support him going to the Copenhagen Climate Summit but the president was kidnapped.  There is no happy ending but at least Mike won an audience with the United Nations in February 2012.  For the latest in one man’s struggle to change the climate see Inga Foundation

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

Steiner’s Agriculture Course

I first happened upon biodynamics when I was surfing the internet.  I had no more than a vague idea what I was looking for, some sort of course that involved plants – maybe ecology – and somehow I wanted to understand the limits of my field, homeopathy.  A tall order perhaps but you never know what this amazing world wide web will unearth!

Biodynamic Apprenticeship

I found the biodynamic apprenticeship scheme and whereas the ecology course I fancied was hundreds of miles away there just happened to be a biodynamic farm within an hour’s drive.  So began my introduction to this mind-boggling method of farming (and gardening).

Planting by the planets

I was fortunate to be able to do the apprenticeship part time by volunteering at the farm one day a week.  The best part for me were the four residential weeks on the topics: the plant, animals, soil and astronomy.  You can begin to guess how holistic this method truly is!  We’re not just talking about planting by the moon but how the stars and planets have an effect on us and everything on planet earth.

Formative forces

Imagine something like gravitational pull acting upon a piece of soft, malleable clay.  Now imagine several different types of ‘pull’, one that draws out on the horizontal plane, another drawing upwards vertically, yet another swirling in a spiraling movement.  And in a final stretch of your imagination see if you can feel the universe as a great whole of formative forces.  This is my personal understanding of how astronomy has an influence upon earth and the myriad forms that are animals, plants and everything physical.

For more go to Biodynamic Association

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

For more on the indoor composter that is taking San Francisco by storm see  Insider Information on Small Composters For Inside Spaces

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

See article Best New Designs in Compost Bins

Go to Aerobin UK website

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

Any detailed information about composting will sooner or later talk about ‘hot’ compost  and that inevitable leads to a discussion of temperatures.  Owning a compost thermometer is fun and if you see surges in temperature you know that you’re doing something right which can be very satisfying.  Don’t get disheartened if your don’t see soaring temperatures however.  Slow and cooler composting can be just as effective.  As long as it hasn’t gone anaerobic (you can usually tell from the smell) then even though it may be happening slowly you can rest assured that your compost will happen!  So a compost thermometer isn’t really essential (unless you’re trying to get the heap hot enough to kill weed seeds and pathogens) but for the price, well worth having.

Here are a couple of Thermometers available.  I bought the Reotemp Backyard Compost Thermometer from the USA and have been thoroughly entertained by it.  The Amazon version has yet to be reviewed.

For more on getting compost hot see Why Do Some Like It Hot?

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

Compost Aerators are useful tools to ‘agitate’ your compost heap.  Agitating helps add air and mixes the new and already decomposing materials.  This is recommended for two reasons:  food mixed with earth and decomposing microfauna is much less appealing to rats and other hungry animals who might be attracted to come and eat it and potentially set up home in your heap; and mixing the microfauna with the fresher waste helps distribute them into the newly added material and break it down more rapidly.

I was given one when I bought a Green Joanna (the one by Sorby and Hutton is the most similar) and the retractable wings can get stuck and sometimes lifting the aerator out results in splashback!  Otherwise the only drawback I found was that I used to keep losing the thing!  Propping it against a round bin isn’t clever and it falls into the leafy abyss on the ground.  Now I prop in next to my rose arch which seems to work.

My guess would be the Darlac has solved the wings getting stuck problem and this certainly gets the best reviews.

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

To date none of these tumblers specifically have Amazon reviews.  However

compost mulch maker (looking similar to JUST GREEN tumbler shown above) was popular whereas

was not!     Click here to read about Compost Tumblers

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything

Brightgreenlive’s (via Amazon) small beehive composter in untreated, unpainted natural pine. Self assembly is required and they recommend treating somehow. Pine is a soft wood so this will not last for many years but the price reflects that, £49.98.  For more information about wood preservatives see Is Cuprinol safe to use?

Click here to read about Beehive Composters

Everything You Want To Know About How To Compost Everything