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Hello! I’m Lynne! New to this idea of hot composting. We got our bin early May 2023. We are a couple in our 60s, we eat quite a bit of food prepared from scratch so generate a fair bit of kitchen waste. We have a small garden with no grass, so I don’t have a mower for shredding.
On Wednesday afternoon I decided to take the panel off the bin and have a 👀
The bin has been keeping to a temperature between 40 and 50 degrees, sometimes hitting 60. When it gets down to 40, I ‘feed’ it.
I have put in some horse manure and I chuck in the odd handful of blood fish and bone
The leachate is dark brown, not smelly. I get about 500-700mls every 4or so days (less when I started)
I was really disappointed when I opened the hatch to find a wet claggy hard to remove mass!
It didn’t smell that bad, so I doubt it had turned very anaerobic.
Anyway I decided to empty the lot onto some tarpaulins and let the sunshine dry it out a bit… it was a big black sticky mess! I rescued a trug full and speed it onto a flower bed yesterday. Then I set to mixing the rest of the claggy mess with ripped up cardboard and newspaper and green clippings that I chopped up more than I have previously.
I was disappointed when I first opened the hatch but maybe I was being hard on myself and actually for a first attempt it wasn’t too bad?
sorry for long post! Grateful for any feedback and I’m looking forward to reading all tips!
Lynne
On Wednesday afternoon I decided to take the panel off the bin and have a 👀
The bin has been keeping to a temperature between 40 and 50 degrees, sometimes hitting 60. When it gets down to 40, I ‘feed’ it.
I have put in some horse manure and I chuck in the odd handful of blood fish and bone
The leachate is dark brown, not smelly. I get about 500-700mls every 4or so days (less when I started)
I was really disappointed when I opened the hatch to find a wet claggy hard to remove mass!
It didn’t smell that bad, so I doubt it had turned very anaerobic.
Anyway I decided to empty the lot onto some tarpaulins and let the sunshine dry it out a bit… it was a big black sticky mess! I rescued a trug full and speed it onto a flower bed yesterday. Then I set to mixing the rest of the claggy mess with ripped up cardboard and newspaper and green clippings that I chopped up more than I have previously.
I was disappointed when I first opened the hatch but maybe I was being hard on myself and actually for a first attempt it wasn’t too bad?
sorry for long post! Grateful for any feedback and I’m looking forward to reading all tips!
Lynne
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