new to composting...advice needed please

Hi all,
New to gardening
My gardening this year has all been in containers whether flowers or fruit (tomatoes spuds courgettes beans peas etc)
I used about 40 all purpose grow bags from b&q
I have just purchased a 330 blackwall composter + base from evengreener.com
My question is....do I put some of the old grow bags into the composter or leave it all separate and mix the compost I make over winter to the old grow bag content in the spring.
I don't want to buy another 40 bags next year.
thanks for looking
John

 

Hi John,

Thats not an easy one to answer.

Firstly, theres not a lot of nutrient in a growbag so they usually need a liquid feed every few weeks.

Secondly, there is dealing with crop rotation to avoid the build up of pests & diseases.

Normally once a grow bag has been used, we'd dig it into a flower bed as a soil conditioner, but that sounds like its not an option for you.

Probably, the best thing might be to keep the compost in the bags and add fresh to them. If you could mark the bags so you are not growing the same things in them next year, that would be good.

No advantage to adding the spent growbags to the compost heap as they would hinder the composting process.

Does the base on your composter allow worms to come up through it ?

 

Thanks for the reply Ziggy... at the moment i was going to base the composter in a shingle planter but i guess the worms wont get through the base too easily so a different location might be in order
many thanks John