Compost newspaper

It was probably me Dendi.
Pete - I discovered it when doing research into vermiculture on the www.

 

well sis i'm proud of you ill give him plenty of manure plenty of farms around me

 

Apparently you can use newspaper in a wormery.

 

Well, Peter - If you could find someone with a horse (preferably a horse with a dust allergy), and you could shred the paper, some people use that instead of straw. Then, once it was all mixed with, ahem, "manure", you could have it back and it'd probably turn into lovely compost - supposing you could transport it somehow of course...
This may not on reflection be one of my brighter ideas...

 

What I have finally done is shred it all by manually tearing into strips, I have even done this whilst watching television. The strips are a bit coarse but that was much faster than putting it through a small domestic shredder which took forever. Thank goodness for bin bags - I stored the shredded paper into a large number of them. I am even doing this now on a continuous basis with the new papers. It seems a shame for the council to recycle my organic material, when my garden needs it.

I don't cut down my perennials in autumn, but leave the growth to give them a bit of extra protection over winter. However I have started tidying them up now, and am mixing the paper and cut foliage in bin bags to make compost. I am happy that this should work because the paper is no longer solid but shredded.

Claire, I have a sister in Devon who has a 20 ton pile of manure, and I have been ferrying some back in the car whenever I visit, but its a long way.

Many thanks to all of you for the ideas and comments.