The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: katog on November 02, 2012, 04:35:55 pm
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What do you think of an "Organic" Potting compost which has Melamine board in it's composition? I think that must have formaldehyde in it which is poisonous and if so would it transmit poison to veggies growing in it?.
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Never heard of it,do you have a link? I don't believe I would use it,there again,I make my own!
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i would report it under the trades descriptions act as being unfit for purpose!
what a cheek.
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I've found all sorts of contamination in compost. It's very difficult to keep everything out in a commercial compost plant...
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I sometimes have similar worries about topsoil. I need to buy some for raised beds and the other bits that Im doing in the garden and yet how can you know what sort of nasties might be in.
If only there was a bulk supplier of spent mushroom compost nearby that's what I'd be buying.
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you can make your own topsoil by stacking turves upside down.
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Think I need about 20 tonnes.... and no Im not digging that much turf up before you suggest it ;)
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try your local turf supplier to see if he has any left overs. i got about a ton for free that way a few years back
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Think I need about 20 tonnes.... and no Im not digging that much turf up before you suggest it ;)
You'd need to dig up a field to get that much. :roflanim:
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Its actually amazing how little an amount 20 tonnes would be (if you dont have to dig it yourself). I made the builders we had fill my raised bed with all the soil dug out from the foundations for our extension. I reckon my 4 large raised beds (made up of 6 railway sleepers each in a rectangular formation probably have 10 tonnes of earth in each.
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we have supplied and installed raised beds all over the place, often for schools etc, the standard bed we supply if 8ft x4ft x 16 inches high, it takes about 1.25 tons to fill it and after a year you will need to top it up with up to another .25 tons!!!
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i started my beds of with 10 tonnes in total, i had 5 ton of well rotted donkey manure delivered, the rest i made from compost or from digging up the leafmould from the horse churned paths through the wood. i aim to make 2 ton of compost a year, ive yet to hit that target but ive had over a ton this year.
i got quite a bit back from laying out the chooks run with a thick layer of straw, let them dig it in and decompose it, add more, do the process again , then let it mature a bit and shovel it up, mixed in with compost its great.
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We have found all sorts of things in compost this year, we normally buy UK compost however our this year demand outstripped supply some weeks and so we purchased some from Lidls about 150bags of it, and we found chopped up crisp packets, lumps of painted wood and chrysalis of insects and eggs of spiders and snails, bit of yoghurt pots etc, we contacted Lidls and were told that it came from a UK supplier and was bagged in the UK. It turns out that this if from council collections of supposed compostable materials. Does this mean that we have to be wary of compost in-future as we must pot up a few thousand plants a year.
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for the amounts you need surely bulk buying direct from a manufacturer would be better and help assure quality.
for my work i buy various blends for different projects from pure soil to pure compost to mixes with sand in, getting the supplier to mix to my spec and supply in bulk bags or loose makes life much easier, the only contaminants i have found in recent times are the odd rock and the often found bailing twine (lots of the compost id horse manure based from stables etc)
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the majority of superrmarket/cheap suppliers are now using council made compost. its awful.
buy from a reputed supplier, . especially in bulk quantities,ive yet to have a bad bag of j arthur bowers
i remember bringing this issue up in the spring.
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I make all my own compost. the main ingredient is horse poo on straw/hay. But its still amazing what you find in it a year later when you spread it on the beds.
I was sure I collected ALL the bailer twine.
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You are right, melamine & MDF both have formaldehyde in them to act as a preservative to the wood (its what they use in hospitals to store medical mishaps to coin a phrase in). It is both toxic by ingestion and potentially carcinogenic by inhalation which is why I have never had MDF worktops in my kitchen/s.
My advice would be to not use it in your compost, whilst the levels allowed in the mixing of the pulp to form the "wood" are controlled there is (like many things) no research to prove one way or the other that it is a problem. MDF in kitchens has been measured and shown to give off formaldehyde vapour but not to a level needing any form of personal protective equipment etc.
Me, fill yer compost bin with natural stuff as that is what your plants would want :thumbsup:
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The best pumpkins I ever grew were planted in compost bins which were full mainly of half rotted goat manure/straw.