help needed placing a compost bin! New to gardening!!

H all I am a new member on this forum and also a novice gardener! This question I am about to ask might seem a bit dumb to some of you more advanced gardeners but truthfully I have no idea what Im doing!!!
anyway, I have decided to start up more gardening this year and I have brought a compost bin for the bottom of my garden. I have got rid of all brambles and raked the surface but once placing the compost bin down iv noticed it is not level. I have tryed to level it out it im still getting gaps showing in the bottom of my bin and it looks wonky. My question is, does this matter and if not how am I going to get it dead level???

Secondly I have had to remove a few thick BlackBerry bushes before I could pit the bin in place and tried my hardest to cut the roots and dig it all up but will they come back if so how do I keep them away as they seem to be a bit of a pain in my garden.

many thanks I have pictures of the bin if needed - Emily xx

 

The compost bin should be ok if it's not 100% level. The brambles could be a problem though. You could try roundup on them when they come back, as the plant needs to be active for it to work. It takes the roundup through the leaves,and takes it to the roots, killing it all.

Rusty.

 

Do you mean a 'Dialek' plastic compost bin (left hand image below), or a timber slat/steel mesh one?

 

I'd put money on it being a darlek.

 

Hi Emily...Welcome to GC

Blackberrys are a pain to get rid of but if you've got out as much as you can you could maybe lay a paver or old carpet on the top of the soil and put the bin on top

 

Dig over the surface and use the back of a rake to gently flatten the soil. Place the bin on the soil and press it down, this ought to result in the elimination of gaps.
Unless you've got rid of all the bramble roots you may find brambles trying to grow up inside the bin and one way to avoid this might be to place a barrier under the bin either by using slabs or thick polythene.

 

Wouldn't it be better to have no barrier between soil and bin? Ideally.

 

That depends: there is one argument that you should put a barrier of some kind down anyway to deter rats nesting in that lovely warm heap.
Obviously, air is a requirement, but that is easily attended to with regular turning.
Worm access? They find a way (canny little things, worms).

I would add that your compost bin should be sited/located where it will get a goodly supply of sunshine to speed up the decomposition rate.

 

Slight aside, I saw a most excellent looking composter on telly a good while ago now. It just looked like a cheap laundry basket, but one inside another. The outer one was sunk right into the ground, then the inner one slots inside. Then you just put ALL your food waste in. Because its sunk into the ground, it is kept warm and soil borne organisms have full access because its effectively a basket sunk into the soil, but the holes are too small for rats to get through.

I've not seen anything like it since, and can't find them on t'interweb, which is a shame, because I think they'd be the perfect thing for the smaller garden, as is typical among urban/suburban properties.

 

They'd just chew through it Clueless.

 

When I saw it, it was chew through proof in that the outer 'basket' was plastic coated steel.

Someone else has already done it, I just can't seem to find them again