Compost

Hi everyone, very new to gardening but have set up a composter about a year ago. Just had to move it all out and dig the Dalek in a bit deeper as my old Dachshnd loves to raid it and has dislodged it. Dug some of the soil out and put back in securely. However the spoils (veg pealing, egg shells, grass cuttings, little sawdust from when we had our ducks,etc) I put in there last year are still as they were? I have neglected it a bit but have started to use it again.

My questions are, will it start to heat on it's own, without me doing anything to it and can I put the banded worms straight in the dalek or do I need a special wormery for them? Incidentaly I didn't find a lot of worms in there when I removed it all this morning.

Where am I going wrong?

 

Chuckles, I've found with my dalek that it works best in the sun and fairly full, but not compacted. It will warm up on it's own if there's enough of the right stuff, layered. Not too wet or too dry either.
I gave up with eggshells on the compost, they never disappeared. I now save them all up, lightly crush them and sprinkle around the edge of the veg patch. Works wonders to keep slugs away as they can't get over them.

 

I have 8 daleks and several large open bays.

The daleks have a mix of mainly kitchen waste (mixed with torn paper & card), weeds, fresh horse poo, pressed apple pomace and rotten windfalls (so wasps can't get at it) and when they're full I'll move onto another, then another until I get to the one that was full and find it's gone down by a third and start all over again. The problem with this is that after a couple of years or so I end up with a dalek full to the brim with compact compost and it's a devil of a job to get it out.

I've had both bumble bees (left alone) and a swarm of honey bees (collected by local beekeeper) make their home in open heaps of straw from the hen run and have also found grass snake eggs in it (carefully re-homed).

 

I found that too, they just never ever vanished, I didn't really think they would be good for slugs though, but hey that's why I'm here - to learn.

 

You'll not develop much heat in a Dalek as you need lots of green material to sustain it. Worms are the way to go though they need to be striped, tiger or brandling worms. They work their way up chomping on fresh veg material.

 

Just to say I turned out my regular sized bin into my new wheelie bin composter today.
I used a spade bit to enlarge the series of holes I'd pre drilled.

It was revolting and mucky but I got immense satisfaction afterwards.
:yess: