Brown is the new green : comments [A Bug's Life]

Actually, grass clippings would be the worst thing to add - they make it go slimy and ick. Compost shouldn't smell bad at all if it is working properly.

The best way to compost compactly is a working worm bin. Unfortunately, I've found our worm bin to be tricky to work, so I won't recommend that.

Anything which recently used to be a plant and doesn't have toxic additions, can be composted. So, no animal products (except baked egg shells), and no heavy metal inks.

The secret to good composting is to get the right balance of water, air, nitrogen and carbon. Grass and vegetables supply water and nigrogen. Paper, card and wood supply carbon. The Centre for Alternative Technology have done fair bit of research on making it work at home (http://www.cat.org.uk/information/catinfo.tmpl?command=search&db=catinfo.db&eqSKUdatarq=19990606120000&eqCURRENTdatarq=0).

I reckon you could thinly spread good home-made compost on the parts of the lawn you weren't using in winter. Your back garden's a bit like the far end of ours - mostly brick rubble, and desparately in need of as much compost as it can get :-)

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Oi, Tigron, NO! You're showing excessive conversionary zeal again. My comment above was intended to communicate "We regularly look at it for our situation and have made an informed decision that it is not for us at present", not "please persuade me to do it". As soon as we want to, we know lots of people to ask for advice. And books; we have a lot of them, too.

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That wasn't me being evangelical - that was only me explaining why I disagree with some of your conclusions :-)

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It is nice, sometimes, to have one's decisions respected regardless of whether you agree with them. Especially when one has gone to the trouble of giving the matter serious and sensible thought before making the decision.

This feels like it is pressing the same buttons as confrontation with someone trying to get you to change utility supplier. "No, we have considered the options and believe that changing would be more trouble than it's worth." "But don't you want to save money?"

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Hang on ... where did I say that I didn't respect your decisions? You made some points about composting, and I responded to those points. I know your situation, I was mostly talking generally - most of what I said applies to municipal composting.

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Of course you didn't say that. You're a nice person who respects people!

The easiest reading of your initial responses is that you're seeing my points and suggesting ways in which they could be overcome - thus encouraging me to change my mind right now (which I don't want to do right now). I see now that it can also be read in a more generally helpful way.

Arg. I'm sorry, I want to explain more but I really don't have time to continue this conversation. Big deadline tomorrow.

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Indexing job finished, Bridget suddenly feeling much less stressed, sorry for snapping. :-(((((

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Re-reading what I said, I can see where you were coming from - sorry! Very glad to hear that you are feeling better! :-)

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I chuck everything in, grass cuttings, weeds, kitchen waste, left-over food, shredded woody stuff, etc. It seems to make pretty okay compost. I tip it on the flower beds and things grow fine.

I've never bothered about proportions, just tip everything in and try not to have too much of one thing at once.

I know what you mean about brick rubble. We've slowly removed ours over the years, built a small wall out of the bricks...

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A Bug's Life

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September