Can You Put Lawn Edging Sod In The Compost Bin?

I just edged our lawn for the first time this year and as always I end up with a huge pile of grass with a lot of heavy clay soil attached to it.

Banging the lumps of grass on a spade to get the soil off it is hard work and takes forever. Is there an easier way of getting the soil off the grass?

If there isn't, can I just put the grass with soil attached in the compost bin?

I fear if I do this it will become too full of soil (or just too full in any case), however it might help to mix the soil and compost, which I need to do anyhow.

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner

Would be better to layer it, or to make a separate pile & cover it, it would become turf loam in a year, good potting ingredient.

The old gardeners use a flat bit of slate to scrape the soil off the spade, called it a prolonger, as it prolonged the amount of time they could spend digging.

 

Hello and welcome

Personally I'd just chuck it in the compost bin. If there are worms in, they'll soon mix it all up for you. Plus the soil will introduce more soil organisms into the compost bin, to help with decomposition.

 

If your clay is anything like mine it will remain as solid lumps whilst everything around it rots. I keep solid clay to one side and use it to make paths around raised beds & in poly tunnels and backfilling around poly tunnel skirts, the topsoil that it replaces goes into raised beds. Excess clay gets chucked on bonfires causing it to lose it's cohesive qualities (it becomes friable rather than turning into bricks).

 

But do you have very heavy clay soil? (and if you do, I can't see how adding lumps of clay after sitting in a compost bin for 2 years will help with the texture of your soil, having gardened heavy clay soil for over 50 years).

 

Hello Tony and welcome

I am with Scrungee on this one. I have heavyish clay soil and last year I thought I'd try putting the the cut away sod pieces in the compost bin. They were not that big, but they have been in there almost a year and noticed while I was turning the compost recently that they are still in hard clumps and hardly rotted down at all, they seem like a tough claggy mat. I've had to pick them out and dispose of them as they are constantly in the way of the other rotting material and are really hard work to turn over. It seemed they just held the rotting down process back. I won't be doing that again. I did wonder if it might work if I had the luxury of letting them rot down for a few years though, but I just don't have the room/patience for that. Anyway, I'm a lazy gardener so I don't often edge my lawn area

Good luck with yours.
GG

 

Clay was formed tens of millions of years ago and it hasn't 'rotted down' yet.

 

Just a bit of an update from me after a bit more digging through the compost piles. What strikes me now, after having looked a bit more at the clumps, is that it seems that the tough fibrous mat of the grass roots is the stuff that is not disintigrating well. So maybe a mixture of the fibrous root mat and the clay soil that is making it stubborn. I've knocked most of the soil off and recycled into the grass/cuttings compost to give it a little bulkiness, but the root matting I'm having to chuck.

GG