In article ,
says...

We recently had an ammount of cooked green veg, cabbage etc
left over from a dinner party.I wanted to put it on the compost
heap, but, swmbo said that you can not compost cooked food.

smbo is wrong. Cooked food composts just as well as when it was raw.

Some people who don't know much about rats appetites, mistakenly
think cooked food is more likely to attract rats to the compost heap,
than the same food raw.


Janet

On 15/12/2015 14:00, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/12/2015 12:37, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
On Tue, 15 Dec 2015 12:10:08 -0000, Roger Tonkin
wrote:

Strangely I never compost potato peelings, my mothers advice
some 55+ years ago. She said that potatoes would grow from
them. I'm sure it is one of those old wives tales, but such
long held habits are hard to break.

Years ago we had a huge compost heap used for any garden or kitchen
waste. Potato peelings often resulted in some potatoes growing on the
heap. The tubas they produced were perfectly edible.

Did they play a tune as well?

Potatoes would be a pernicious weed if they were not edible!
Not quite in the league of horseradish but not so far off.

Apart from volunteers on the site of former potato crops, potatoes are a
relatively infrequent casual, and in my experience tend not to persist
on any one site. So, I don't think that they would qualify as a
pernicious weed.

"Broadback" wrote ..

Broadback wrote:
Nick Maclaren wrote:

Chris Hogg wrote:

As others have said, cooked veg on the compost heap is fine, but the
recommendation is to avoid meat products, cooked or raw, as they can
attract vermin, and flies if left exposed. But even they will
eventually decompose if you're prepared to risk it.

Nah. That's one recommendation and it is largely an old wife's
tale. Composting meat products is fine, and does NOT attract
vermin any more than any heap will - unless you start putting
slabs of meat on it! Rats are attracted to the warmth and worms,
both of which are inherent aspects.

Things like club root and white rot are trickier, though I doubt
that there is any risk except from the roots or associated soil,
or when the latter has actually got the 'white rot' on it. But,
if you don't have them, you don't want them; and, if you have them,
you can't get rid of them :-(

Have read that watering the area where there is white rot with an onion
liquor in the Spring as growth starts causes the white rot to activate,
then having nothing to fee on dies. Leaving the ground free. anyone any
experience of this, did it work?
Well I had a bad infestation of onion white rot this year,so will try it
and let you know. The only thing is where is the best place to get cheap
raw onions to use?

We also have White Rot on our plot despite a 4 year rotation. We find that
spacing all onion family members at least 9 inches apart does help in that
when one gets WR it does not pass it on to it'd neighbours. This way you can
get a crop of sorts. We did, one year remember to water with onion water and
it did seem to help but then some years it's not as bad as others anyway.
Probably be better if we watered the whole plot every year so with a 4 year
rotation the soil would have 4 waterings between growing onions.
I understand there is a chemical you can put on your soil, water in, then
cover that will sterilise the soil getting rid of all pests/diseases (along
with everything else!), one of our allotment holders uses it (he has 6 full
sized plots) when he gets a soil problem. No WR on his plots, about the only
ones that don't .
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

On 15/12/15 14:41, Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

Potatoes would be a pernicious weed if they were not edible!
Not quite in the league of horseradish but not so far off.

Not in Cambridge, they wouldn't be. Few are deep enough to survive
even an average winter, and blight is ubiquitous.

I wish someone would tell mine that: some have new 9" shoots!

If I shout at them unkindly (cf Price Charles), will
they take the hint and withdraw?

In article ,
Tom Gardner wrote:

Potatoes would be a pernicious weed if they were not edible!
Not quite in the league of horseradish but not so far off.

Not in Cambridge, they wouldn't be. Few are deep enough to survive
even an average winter, and blight is ubiquitous.

I wish someone would tell mine that: some have new 9" shoots!

So far, this winter has been INCREDIBLY mild in the south - tell
me what happens to them between now and next May.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article , says...

In article ,
Tom Gardner wrote:

Potatoes would be a pernicious weed if they were not edible!
Not quite in the league of horseradish but not so far off.

Not in Cambridge, they wouldn't be. Few are deep enough to survive
even an average winter, and blight is ubiquitous.

I wish someone would tell mine that: some have new 9" shoots!

So far, this winter has been INCREDIBLY mild in the south - tell
me what happens to them between now and next May.

We just had the first frost of the winter, two nights ago; so light it
was gone by the time we finished breakfast.

Janet.

In article ,
Janet wrote:

So far, this winter has been INCREDIBLY mild in the south - tell
me what happens to them between now and next May.

We just had the first frost of the winter, two nights ago; so light it
was gone by the time we finished breakfast.

We have had one like that, perhaps two.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Roger Tonkin wrote:
We recently had an ammount of cooked green veg, cabbage etc
left over from a dinner party.I wanted to put it on the compost
heap, but, swmbo said that you can not compost cooked food. Who
is right? To my mind whilst the texture may have changed and a
few additives like salt included basically raw & cooked are the
same!

I only compost what my worms can eat, contents of teabags, raw, finely
chopped peelings and leaves, newspapers etc.
Never tried them with anything cooked as i tend to add salt to things and I
don't think they'd eat it.
They don't like onions or citrus fruits.

I get about 40 litres of top notch compost and about 4KG of worms for
fishing every year.

The compost is superior to anything you can buy - if used neat, it
outperforms miracle-gro compost by a mile, but i usually mix it 50/50 with
cheap no-name compost

In article ,
Phil L wrote:

I only compost what my worms can eat, contents of teabags, raw, finely
chopped peelings and leaves, newspapers etc.

That's a difference between a worm bin and a traditional heap, which
I use. I can and do chuck pretty well everything on and, while it
takes longer to break down, almost everything does. I may give up
on the oyster shells, which have lasted the best part of a decade,
though :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 15/12/2015 7:41 PM, Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
Chris Hogg wrote:

As others have said, cooked veg on the compost heap is fine, but the
recommendation is to avoid meat products, cooked or raw, as they can
attract vermin, and flies if left exposed. But even they will
eventually decompose if you're prepared to risk it.

Nah. That's one recommendation and it is largely an old wife's
tale. Composting meat products is fine, and does NOT attract
vermin any more than any heap will - unless you start putting
slabs of meat on it! Rats are attracted to the warmth and worms,
both of which are inherent aspects.

I was talking to a Member of our Parliament about composting and he told
me that his brother (who ran an eatery of some sorts) used to put the
contents of his grease trap into his (the brother's) compost bin.
Having cleaned out our grease trap out a few times, this horrified me as
the stuff looks like it's just pure solid fatty nastiness IMO. When I
made a comment about how doing so was supposedly a no,no, The MP said
that although it didn't compost as such, the worms in the compost bins
loved the greasetrap offerings and very quickly sought out the fat and
seemed to thrive on it.

I'm not going to make comments about how MPs are all liars because I've
found that old wive's tales that are supposedly gospel truth in how to
operate in the garden are a load of rubbish.

For just one example, I use fresh manure and have yet to kill anything
because it's 'hot' or 'burns'. A modicum of commons sense has to be
used. I wouldn't use fresh chook poo rorm under the perches on
seedlings, but I have used it under bushes and hte bushes have not died
or doen anytng other than to look happier.

I've also always put orange and lemon shells into my wormery and my
worms seem to scoff into them as happily as they scoff into anything.

On 15/12/2015 20:21, Phil L wrote:
Roger Tonkin wrote:
We recently had an ammount of cooked green veg, cabbage etc
left over from a dinner party.I wanted to put it on the compost
heap, but, swmbo said that you can not compost cooked food. Who
is right? To my mind whilst the texture may have changed and a
few additives like salt included basically raw & cooked are the
same!

I only compost what my worms can eat, contents of teabags, raw, finely
chopped peelings and leaves, newspapers etc.
Never tried them with anything cooked as i tend to add salt to things and I
don't think they'd eat it.
They don't like onions or citrus fruits.

I get about 40 litres of top notch compost and about 4KG of worms for
fishing every year.

The compost is superior to anything you can buy - if used neat, it
outperforms miracle-gro compost by a mile, but i usually mix it 50/50 with
cheap no-name compost


Ah!
But do the worms catch fish?

Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
Phil L wrote:

I only compost what my worms can eat, contents of teabags, raw,
finely chopped peelings and leaves, newspapers etc.

That's a difference between a worm bin and a traditional heap, which
I use. I can and do chuck pretty well everything on and, while it
takes longer to break down, almost everything does. I may give up
on the oyster shells, which have lasted the best part of a decade,
though :-)


I fed mine some cooked meat once, lost almost half of them so they've never
had it since....they all seemed to go a horrid whitish colour and were quite
sickly.
They love rabbit dung though, which is handy as my neice over the road has
three large rabs and I get their currants for recycling

A bloke i know has a few wormeries and he feeds his everything including
meat but I've a feeling his worms are a different strain to mine, mine are
almost exclusively earthworms, his are smaller, thinner and a slightly
different colour. And they breed like wildfire

David Hill wrote:
On 15/12/2015 20:21, Phil L wrote:
Roger Tonkin wrote:
We recently had an ammount of cooked green veg, cabbage etc
left over from a dinner party.I wanted to put it on the compost
heap, but, swmbo said that you can not compost cooked food. Who
is right? To my mind whilst the texture may have changed and a
few additives like salt included basically raw & cooked are the
same!

I only compost what my worms can eat, contents of teabags, raw,
finely chopped peelings and leaves, newspapers etc.
Never tried them with anything cooked as i tend to add salt to
things and I don't think they'd eat it.
They don't like onions or citrus fruits.

I get about 40 litres of top notch compost and about 4KG of worms for
fishing every year.

The compost is superior to anything you can buy - if used neat, it
outperforms miracle-gro compost by a mile, but i usually mix it
50/50 with cheap no-name compost


Ah!
But do the worms catch fish?

I catch the fish, the worms just help :-) - I take them to France twice a
year and bring back what i don't drown, I've landed several 30lb+ carp on
them. Worms in France are about 50p each (pot of ten for six Euros) which
is why mine are so well travelled.

On 15/12/15 21:08, Nick Maclaren wrote:
I may give up
on the oyster shells, which have lasted the best part of a decade,
though :-)

What did (past tense, presumably) you think would
be the breakdown process? I known chickens work
well

Martin wrote:


There are piles of oyster shells left behind by the Romans at Silchester. Being
patient doesn't help/

Are you in a hurry, then?