Adventure Rocket Ship

I'll go and find the Bristol City Council Compost Club (No, really) webshite in a minute, but you're allowed to tip a bucket of water in the thing if it's too dry.

Aha! (http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Environment-Planning/Rubbish-waste-and-recycling/recycling-information-and-advice/composting.en;jsessionid=454AF0CF35CA4A926BAD709337DA55C3.tcwwwaplaws3)

I'm given to understand that a bucket of piss is jolly good, too. (I've not tried widdling in ours because it's at the end of the garden and handy for a blackthorn bush. Which I would fall into.

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cybermule.livejournal.com

You can grow spuds fine in big bags. I did it last year.

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mimmimmim.livejournal.com

U haz bukkit? potatoes grow quite well in those.

Are you any good at fixing Lomo fisheye cameras (I know you have one and are a bit techie) or do you know anyone who is? Pete's has a dodgy flash and I'm trying to find someone to fix it.

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Pee on it.

"Compost activator" is dried nitrate salts, which is much the same thing.

This time of year, good compost ought to still be warm inside the bin. If it's kitchen waste, big enough, and active enough, then it can still self-warm enough to keep going. If your bin is rectangular, an inch of polystyrene sheet inside helps a lot.

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I do indeed haz.

However, I'm thinking in larger quantities + other veg.

My Lomo-fixing extends to walloping it with the heel of my hand and shouting 'Work, you bastard!'

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Excellent! It'll give me something to do with the output of the composter.

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I'm glad that "dawn of agriculture" seemingly means picnicing by tractor.

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valkyriekaren.livejournal.com

...and they'd never believe you at A&E that it was a 'gardening accident'.

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Our local "garden waste collection" bags are green cubes, like a 1/2 scale model of a builder's one-tonner, in green flat woven polypropylene canvas.

Best of all they're a (subsidised?) quid, from local shops. Turn them inside out and they don't even say "Monmouth" any more.

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cybermule.livejournal.com

Yup. Spuds will break it down even further. I was using 40 litre multipurpose compost bags last year, filling them about half way, then rolling them up and topping them up as the spuds needed earthing up.

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cybermule.livejournal.com

Fantastic. I'm going to buy half a dozen next time I cross the Welsh Sea.

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Aha! Scalable pod-gardening.

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No idea - ours did just turn magically into compost. The fact that it mainly consists of coffee grounds and tea may or may not be relevant.

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Hardware shop in Caldicot

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[FX: Google]

Yes, they do seem to be well subsidised: http://www.smartliftbulkbags.co.uk/

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sallypointzero.livejournal.com

...more people tending soil etc ....mutter.... i will have a grande mal in the style of a pictish crofter's hen-woman if i don't get an otter and a remote cottage -or equivalent -like that man with the funny eyes...

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jarkman.livejournal.com

You should fit it with a urinal, Duchamp-style.

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For the past two or three summers, I've had a weekly wee into my compost bins and I can confirm they remain moist and full of worms. It's not necessary during the wetter months; just the summer (which is good, because I'd imagine that weeing outside in the cold does nothing for one's masculinity).

If you're male and sufficiently tall (or, and I can sadly only imagine, sufficiently, erm, long) and there is no, ahem, "defensive planting" nearby, there is no need for a bucket.

I think I need brain-soap to remove my own image from my own brain, now.

I'm moving to the urban metropolis of Tewkesbury on Friday, so it will be interesting to see how they react. I may have to switch to nocturnal, er, "waterings".

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[/Royston Vasey]

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Okay, in an attempt to turn the conversation away from the lavatorial...

Is your bin placed on good soil? A lot of the magic comes from allowing micro and not-so-micro organisms to crawl and burrow up from existing soil below.

Placing it on patio slabs is therefore a no-no. If your topsoil is pretty thin or poor in nutrients anyway (many post-war houses used building rubble to backfill gardens; suitable for lawn and little else) you might wish to go gathering worms (ask your local fishing tackle shop), and add them in together with some shop-bought compost.

You could also try adding squishy but less acidic fruit such as rotten apples or pears, in an attempt to stimulate micro-organism growth.

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Oooh, spuds in sacks. I was going to leave all our compost in the compost bins when I move house on Friday, but now you've said that... I've got some small rubble sacks, I might dig out one of the bins and fill up a couple of them, in the hope that the relocation of said full sacks would conveniently fall to the removal men.

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Am I the only one who feels rather conned when I have to *buy* garden bags, as opposed to childhood memories of half-inching them from the edges of fields and playing chemical-additive-roulette with my health? If it's not blue, sledge-grade thickness and with at least 6 hazmat symbols, it's just not the same gardening experience.

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Of course, what the ladies need is something along the lines of a commode seat. Once the reaction started going it'd probably be reasonably warm to the bum. Definitely not one for the overlooked urban estate, I'd suppose.

Let me know if I'm over-thinking this.

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You're off into composting bog (http://www.sustainablebuild.co.uk/CompostToilets.html) territory there.

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Our slat-sided (i.e. made of old pallets) compost heap regularly gets a dose of nitrogen courtesy of the other half.
Perhaps you could have a 'boys watering can' in the garage/geekroom. Or just do a James, as it were.

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I remember seeing them on the pavements on the way back from your place, and they did look most tempting.

Last year my spuds and a handful of leeks, grew in "Iron Mountain" confidential waste bags. They're excellent growbags.

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Not organic, but quite likely to add extra *omph* to your crop.

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Oh lord. The smell of warm Nitram sacks.

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I always thought coffee was a bad idea here?

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I get mine S/H from the

cursingchemist.

They're far thicker than mere fertiliser sacks. They probably needed to be.

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My (limited) understanding is that whilst weeing on compost is a good idea, having meat-eaters poo on it is a bad idea. Going the whole hog with a composting bog, IIRC, requires either conversion to vegetarianism (which in itself is no bad thing) or a lot of effort/work/additives.

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Nitram, that was the stuff. There ought to be a Dulux colour named "Nitram Blue". It was like they sat down with a colour wheel and thought "What colour would be the exact opposite of the countryside? What colour should we manufacture our bags so that feral six-year-olds are hypnotically drawn towards them?"

There is no better material for the construction of a sledge; thick and protective like kevlar, flexible as a fettishist. It was like someone recycled Disaster Area's frictionless stunt ship with added Dylon. A blue so blue it fluoresced without need for fluorescence.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anataman/1362134776/

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Google is your friend in this case.

I think a composting bog runs hotter. The one I encountered didn't have a sign reading 'carnivores can sod off and crap in their hats', so, um, Pontrilas.

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Stuffed with straw, bailer twine handle, sorted!

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It breaks down quickly, and everything we've planted in it has grown nicely, so I guess I can provide evidence to the contrary.

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Ours is on the patio because I'm too lazy to take compost to the back of our garden. I thought I'd have to gather up some worms and add some soil from the back garden to get it started, but within a week of setting the thing up, I had a magical ecosystem going, and if anything, we have too many worms at times.

My 1860s-built house has a garden full of building rubble. A co-worker who has a similar problem in a similar area once hypothesized that when the extension was built they were too cheap to take away the old wall and it got ground up and put in the back garden; it's the best explanation I've heard yet.

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Result!

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Science! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080707171641.htm

It may be that hoofing in the used coffee saves being arrested for indecent exposure in your garden.

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Contrary to popular belief, coffee grounds are not acidic. After brewing, the grounds are close to pH neutral, between 6.5 and 6.8. The acid in the beans is mostly water-soluble, so it leaches into the coffee we drink.

So that's alright then...

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