I always knew that people love talking rubbish

Given the vast and fascinating response to my last post, I've
decided to start another one!

Whilst turning the compost, I came across a couple of large
"mats" of grass cuttings, compressed, but not rotting down - in
fact some near the edge of the heap were still dry! I always
spread sheets of newspaper between layers of cuttings (1 in
deep), but remembered that my kind neighbour (who actually
enjoys cutting grass) cut my lawns several times in the summer
when we were away, and that must be the cause of the problem.
I've chopped them up with the spade as much as I could, will
they now compost I wonder?






--
Roger T

700 ft up in Mid-Wales

In article ,
says...

I always knew that people love talking rubbish

Given the vast and fascinating response to my last post, I've
decided to start another one!

Whilst turning the compost, I came across a couple of large
"mats" of grass cuttings, compressed, but not rotting down - in
fact some near the edge of the heap were still dry! I always
spread sheets of newspaper between layers of cuttings (1 in
deep), but remembered that my kind neighbour (who actually
enjoys cutting grass) cut my lawns several times in the summer
when we were away, and that must be the cause of the problem.
I've chopped them up with the spade as much as I could, will
they now compost I wonder?

Sure to. Pee on them to make sure :-)

Janet

In article ,
Janet wrote:
In article ,
says...

I always knew that people love talking rubbish

We do, oh!, we do :-)

Whilst turning the compost, I came across a couple of large
"mats" of grass cuttings, compressed, but not rotting down - ...
I've chopped them up with the spade as much as I could, will
they now compost I wonder?

Sure to. Pee on them to make sure :-)

If they don't get air in them, they may turn into silage (which is
more-or-less what happened). No problem, just loosen them and put
them back for another go. I.e. exactly what you have done. It can
be done again, if any don't rot down this time.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 17/12/2015 09:58, Roger Tonkin wrote:
I always knew that people love talking rubbish

Given the vast and fascinating response to my last post, I've
decided to start another one!

Whilst turning the compost, I came across a couple of large
"mats" of grass cuttings, compressed, but not rotting down - in
fact some near the edge of the heap were still dry! I always

Dry stops it from going properly. I find that provided you add at least
1m^3 at a time it doesn't really much matter what it is the heap goes
hot and the stuff breaks down fairly quickly. I try to put some heavier
prunings in with the grass cuttings though since it eats them up faster.

There is a lot of obsessive US postings about N to C balance but AFAICT
it only matters for a small heap that never gets hot. I have had my heap
get so hot that it was smouldering internally after a big grasscut.

spread sheets of newspaper between layers of cuttings (1 in
deep), but remembered that my kind neighbour (who actually
enjoys cutting grass) cut my lawns several times in the summer
when we were away, and that must be the cause of the problem.
I've chopped them up with the spade as much as I could, will
they now compost I wonder?

The main thing is that it needs air in the heap to work properly
otherwise you end up with horrible anaerobic slime. If it has matted
together and dry then breaking it up and putting a fork in will help.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown