[Cavendish]

Hi all, I have just bought 6 x 130ltr Jumbo Planters to use for this growing season, they will act as raised beds in my garden, I don't have the option of growing directly into the soil. it also means I can move them around if needed.

I am intending to grow, toms, peppers, chillis, cucumbers, strawberry's & Sweetcorn in them and in additional pots etc

I am seeking advice on what mix / layers of composts would be best to use?, and also if its possible to re-use it for next year? I have a compost bin which is currently not looking too great, so there is some work needed there if I am going to be able to use the compost in it for next year

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

[Fleecewife]

Put a layer of coarse gravel on the bottom to aid drainage.  It can work to use the compost from tomato growbags - they are relatively cheap and are designed for the veg you are intending to grow.  They do though need to be bulked and enriched by some additives.  I would use a sprinkle of seaweed meal and some wood ash, plus whatever compost and well rotted manure you can lay your hands on, maybe some molehill soil if you have access to any.  If compost from your heap is not very well rotted, put it deep down, plus scraps from the kitchen, then layer the growbag contents over the top.  As the plants grow and their roots extend downwards, so the veg etc will be decomposing into useable nutrients.  If you have it, use a mulch of chopped comfrey around the plants.  If you don't have comfrey, beg, borrow or steal either some leaves or some roots.  Comfrey is really easy to grow and will do well in any scruffy corner of your garden, especially if you give it a dollop of FYM.  It provides potassium and a number of trace elements to the soil, plus the gloopy mucilage it drips from cut ends, which helps to bind the soil together.  It also breaks down quickly so can be applied fresh.

You can use the same growing medium next year provided you have had no disease in that box.  You will need to top up the nutrients with some good compost, which can be applied as a surface mulch, especially if you can introduce some earthworms.

What has gone wrong with your compost heap?  Has it not had long enough to work fully, or is the balance wrong?  Nearly every compost disaster can be remedied 

[Cavendish]

Thanks for such an informative reply Fleecewife

I have 3 bags of unopened top soil from last year, would those be ok to thrown into the mix to bulk out the planters? Do you think I could get away with keeping the soil in them and just top up each year? or would it be best to put all of the soil on the compost heap at the end of summer with all of the veggie scraps etc to rot down over the winter and re-use in spring? it seems not very cost effective to go out and buy all new compost each year, and seeds for that matter, I will be looking to keep some seeds from this years crop to grow for next year.

I have Fish Blood and Bone powder fertiliser, I presume I could use that instead of seaweed meal? or are they doing different things for the plants?

The issue with the compost bin is that it has a large amount of grass cuttings in it. I think I read somewhere that you can get an activator to help speed things up?, I am not sure what to put into it to even it up and get it going again.

We have several stables very close to us not sure if they keep the manure to rot down, but worth an ask.

[Fleecewife]

Too many grass clippings in a heap turn to slime.  You need something dry, such as cardboard, to balance it out.  Coarse leaves, kitchen veg scraps, old bean stalks and so on will let the air into the heap and dry it out.  It would be worth your while scraping all the grass out, then returning it in layers with the coarser material. The very best and free compost activator is human urine, easy enough for guys to add.  Keeping the heap covered will help to keep the rain off and to keep the warmth in.  You should find that these measures, plus the warming days, will get your heap rotting again.

For the planters, I like the idea of adding all the soil at the end of the year to compost to rot down over the winter, then use again in the spring.  You don't need to do every container, just the ones which need heavy feeding, and add well rotted compost to replenish the others - this can be in the form of a mulch ie spread in a layer on the top, or you can work it into the top few inches.  The reason you might be advised to replace all used compost is if you have added no organic matter to it, as commercial compost has chemicals added which only last a few weeks to a season, but not longer.  Maybe keep a couple of the planters with winter salads or brassicas in, so they are used year round.

The topsoil will be perfect to add into the filling mix and will replace the molehill soil if you have none. I don't use stuff like Blood Fish and Bone, although I did bury Rover my giant carp under a rose bush once  , so I don't know what it adds.  The seaweed meal is a general trace element feed, which takes the whole season to break down.

Horse manure is great stuff for the garden, as it doesn't burn plants, and rots down quickly.  The only thing to check is that the stables beds the horses on straw not wood shavings.  You can use wood shavings, but rot them for 2 - 3 years, otherwise if they still have some rotting to do after being added to the soil then they rob it of nitrogen, which you need for leafy plant growth.

[cloddopper]

I use a soil les growth medium  referred to as MM
  think of 15 buckets of stuff

Five buckets of five different composted materials,  no two to be duplicates or bags with the some of the same materials if at all possible if your buying the stuff in as pre-bagged composted matter .
 five buckets of coarse vermiculite
 five buckets of peat or reconstituted coir waste
 total number of buckets of soil less material is 15 buckets worth.

 The different materials to use... One bucket of each to make a total of five buckets of composted matter
 
composted sea weed , composted fish waste , worm casts, bat guano composted cow muck with straw , composted horse muck with bedding's soaked in urine made up of straw , pulp wood or shavings or hemp waste .  chicken muck with straw or neat , turkey muck with bedding's, goose muck ,composted or neat  Llama beans , neat rabbit muck , composted pig muck , composted vegetable matter that has no soil in it but it can have torn up newspapers & corrugated brown cardboard  , one bucket only of mushroom compost.
I didn't buy anything just used the animal dugurine 7 bedding's sourced locally and we composted them ourselves using " The Berkeley 18 day hot composting method " 

 Do not use stuff from the local amenity recycling place, it liable to have all manner of harmful stuff in it , like residual weed killers & other toxic chemicals , glass , sand , engine oil etc etc.
Only use one bucket of anything that has any form of wood product waste in it as the wood is not usually composted enough to allow it to produce nitrogen ..it steals it from the garden instead for up ti seven years or more.


 Once I'd done my home composting and made up the growth medium I filled somewhere in the region of 9 cubic metres of raised beds with it and have grown some amazing crops .. Though for the first two years the long root veg did produce lots of massive forked roots
 
Right from the start I began making my own home made compost heaps with the Berkeley method and this has been used as replenishment nutrient to the bed ..I have no need to buy fertilizers anymore,  but do use dried blood dried fish meal & dried ground up bone meal as an all in one top dressing feed for my onions.

 
 The recipe :-
Five buckets of fluffed up peat or reconstituted fluffed up coir waste or  fluffed up garden enhancer marketed in the name of VERVE from B&Q it's a mix of the two and from renewable sources apparently .
I got the compacted coir blocks of eBay in bulk with the enhancer chemicals in sachets included as I can always use them if needed in the future .

 Five buckets of coarse to medium grade vermiculite .. comes in 110 litre bags that weight about 14 pounds each
I got mine from Keyline builders merchants & got 20 bags @ £ 21  ish inc vat this time last year . ( I still have six unopened ones left for making up my potting medium to the same formula for the next few years. )

[Cavendish]

thanks to you both for replying.

I think I will use Tomorite grow bags for the main bulk of the soil, as they are cheaper then buying the general purpose compost, of which I have not read particularly good reviews of any. I have used in the past Westland, and it seemed good, but it is one of the more expensive brands.
I will top up with the top soil I have and add a layer of coarse gravel for drainage at the bottom of each planter.

I'll do as you suggest Fleecwife regarding the compost heap. The Compost bins I have are open slated wood, rather then plastic, would you advise putting a liner in them? My thinking behind this is that it will stop things like the bind weed getting in.
I have a couple of card board boxes I can tear to bits and add with a load of leaves, however we have an evasive bind weed (nice Flowers but bloody annoying to get rid of) that ended up growing through the compost bin slats and into the compost last summer, so I might need to dig that out before I start layering it back in.

The reason you might be advised to replace all used compost is if you have added no organic matter to it, as commercial compost has chemicals added which only last a few weeks to a season, but not longer.

Just so I understand your sentence, am I right in thinking that as long as I compost all of the soil at the end of the growing season, mixed with the usual things that go on the compost heap to re-invigorate it, it should be fine to re-use the following year, and perhaps add a general / trace element organic fertiliser etc when preparing my jumbo planters a the beginning of the season, would I still need to top up with liquid fertiliser during the fruiting phase?

Having read some information about fish, blood and bone, it seems to be a general powdered fertiliser, with an NPK rating of 5-5-6, its suggested to use it at the beginning of the growing season to prepare the soil.

[pgkevet]

The best thing for jumbo planters.....
.. elephant dung.

I've got some 130L planters - can get a citrus tree in them and still drag/lever them into/out of the citrus house for the winter. I've had to give in to old age and stopped growing in dustbins.. dustbin of wet soil defeats me now.

[cloddopper]

I belong to a gardening site in the USA .. there has been lots of discussion about what constitutes an effective composter.
  When I first joined most folk had made theirs like a capital letter " E " made from  five  wooden pallets...  Tthat gave them two bays and they also had in most cases additional wire hinged pallets as gates or fronts. So in the end they had used seven pallets for an open to the elements compost heap  .
 
Most of the guys and gals didn't have a lot of joy with their composts because the outside edges dry out quickly and the heaps dry out a lot so the internal temperatures never reach th stage of sterilizing the weeds and seeds in the heap . When they " turned the heap " to oxygenate it to grow beneficial  bacteria 7 moulds  there was still a lot if live seeds and viable bit of roots .
 I chose a different route , over there years I purchased seven of the lidded plastic Dalek type composters from the local authority , these composters do not dry out easily  , so long as you turn the contents about every four days for 21 days the air supplied feeds the decaying materials with oxygen that helps grow  the bacteria & moulds needed to decay the materials and release the nutrientslocked up in them  in to the fiberous mater left behind.
 The moisture is about ideal , if it seems too dry on some of the turnings use a hose pipe with  spray hear to dampen down as you rebuild the heap in layers .
 
So long as you  put the outer edges of the compost your taking down back into the middle  you are rebuilding the  generated will kill nearly all weed seeds & viable roots

 The center of a well turned heap will reach about 140 oF in the middle on the first tow turnings ,,, after that so long as you do not add more new materials other than a sprinkle of water if needed , it will slowly tail off to be just above the ambient air temperature  a the final turning . 
 I have a cheapish digital thermometer off eBay ( £4 ish )   that has a 1 mtr long probe wire .
I have flattened the end of an 800 mm length of clean 15 mm copper tube , then  push the tube into  the center of the heap & then slide the temp probe down the probe for 20 seconds or so to make sure my heap is running to the right temperatures

You can store this " Finshed  Quality Compost  " in old feed sacks but do make sure that they are covered to stop rain getting in them and making them really heavy .
 If you leavee it in teh bin for a month or so  muck worms will find ther way into it and slide under the edges fo drink 7 eat teh rotting matter . these worms are worth ther weight in gold .
 I have about six sacks left of my FQC that is four years or more years old .  The muck worms have gone through it time and time again ,so that what I have in these sacks is nigh on pure worm casts .. AKA " Light crumbly Black Gold "  for my beds.

[pgkevet]

When i first came here i planned out compost heaps that i would turn with the tractor loader.. but the ground is always too Welsh for all the forwards/reversing needed for that unless it was on a concrete apron - so i fixed the ruts and abandoned the heaps.

now I stick with plan B which is that everything gets chucked on the fallow veggie patch along with wod chippings, chicken house cleanings, begged dung top dressings (local farmer does my patch while doing one of his fields).. and then it all gets ploughed in and let it break down in situ. It;s not ideal from the disease control/temperature viewpoint but works with my long rotations and is nicely lazy.

[Fleecewife]

We found just the same thing with the three new compost heaps we built a few years ago now, specially designed to fit a front loader.  The first few times I turned the heaps myself, and they were very promising.  Then we used the Siromer and front loader and the ground was chewed up to MUD, although the heaps were well turned.  After that, having lost our strength to turn by hand, we just left those heaps.  Rampant nettles took over and although we could still dig out the middle, gradually we abandoned those heaps and built two new ones, much smaller.  No tractor access even had we wanted to try that again, and nettles encroached quite quickly this time.
So now we've chosen our spot for another set of heaps, to have no nettles in sight and we're going to go the whole hog and surround them with concrete.  I hate concrete in the garden, but if I'm to get decent compost then this is the only way to have a chance.  The concrete will stop nettles getting in and give us foot access all around the heap, but they won't actually be built on the concrete, to let worms and bugs get in to do their job.  Mr F has his strength back, although I don't, so he will be able to turn by hand.  They will be not nearly so big as the ones designed to turn by tractor, so hopefully we can keep on top of the turning this time. I think that covering the heaps so they don't get sodden will help, both with the quality of the compost and with the ease of turning.  It will mean that the henhouse scrapings and any other manure has to be in a traditional muck heap, but I like to keep my compost separate from my manure anyway, as I use it in slightly different ways.
So here's to my latest version of compost heaps 

Oops sorry Cavendish, I've just highjacked your thread 

[Cavendish]

Hijack by all means, it makes for very interesting reading 

I have decided to start one of my compost bins from scratch again, I turned them both over and moved all of the broken down material from one to the other.
I have a load of card board which I am slowly cutting into little pieces as well as some veggie scraps and some leaves. not much at the moment but hopefully in a few weeks I will have enough for it all to start rotting down and building in temp. However I do think I need to put a lid on my compost bins. Time to find a skip with some free wood in it!.

[pgkevet]

My town house (before we came here) had three bays made from blocks.. about a cubic metre each and open at the front.. easy to shovel the pile from one to an empy one as a way of turning but the cost of building one big enough for tractor usefullness on a decent base doesn't justify it.
Im happy wth the 'plough it in and let it rot where it's needed' .. saves all that labour.