h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I seem to have smothered all the microbes that turn rubbish into compost. I hadn't been turning the heap often enough it seems, and part of it is now a slimey mess. I discovered this when I very efficiently actually moved the heap so that it could have a really good turn. Is it too late for the slime to become good compost, or do I need to chuck it away and start again? I think the problem is probably the grass clippings, but I don't know what else to do with them. Can you help?

I'm a bit of a novice myself and I luckily inherited a garden that had hens on so I've got a nice load of worms to chomp my compost.

I read that you need to mix in loads of paper or cardboard in with grass clippings to de-slime them. You can buy special stuff to compost grass too I think...

Paper and cardboard? Worth a try, I have a cardboard box that got wet in all the rain at the weekend, I'll try it. Thanks.

Don't forget the best compost accelerator of them all - a couple of sackfuls of good stable manure !!

Oh yes. I'll see if I can find some.

Probably well past the compost making time now, but I'd suggest you buy a pack of 'Garotta' (not a gory Spanish form of execution, btw). This will help your compost break down much more rapidly.

Also, grow tree lupins. You can add some of these into the compost and they provide loads of nitrogen which helps the stuff to break down.

FM

Probably have the ecowarriors after me for this one, but if you can't get stable manure, the odd handful of ammonium sulphate works wonders

I think grass clipping always turn into a slimy mess unless you use them sparingly with lots of other stuff. No need to throw it all away though, you can just mix it with plenty of soil and fibrous waste in the spring. It won't be active at these temperatures anyway. Frosty again this morning, but still no ice on the pond yet.

Now what should I do with this bagful of dropped sycamore leaves?

Burn them! Burn them! Sycamore in a nastily invasive tree. My mum has them in the garden at the bottom of hers, and she's forever pulling up baby trees.

I've got ice on my pond, but it's only about 70 cms across, cos it's a container pond. In a small tin bath in a hole in the lawn.

My compost heap still seems warm, but I won't touch it, because I think it's got frogs and things hibernating in it. When I turned it last in October or November they were scattering everywhere! I don't want to disturb them now.

Sycamore - tell me about it

I can't do anything about the tree, but I don't think burning the leaves will stop all the helicopters, nor the various other nuisances that fall down from it. I usually manage to pull out all the seedlings before they get too big. I wish I could remove the tree and replace it with a silver birch or rowan.

I think toads do hibernate in compost heaps, not so sure about frogs though. The amphibians in my garden are my favourite pets by the way.

The tin bath pond sounds fun. I only have a small garden but there's a deep pond with lots of plants and fish in it, which the newts also breed in, and another small container pond in the middle of a small bog garden. I started up a website about wildlife ponds based around a newsgroup but I need to develop it a bit nore soon. I first identified newt eggs in the pond as a result of that

You typed 'leaves' and I read 'helicoptors'. Silly me. That's a different thing altogether. You can leave them in a binbag, tie the top nice and tight, and poke a few holes in the bag with a garden fork. Leave it somewhere out of the way - or even in the way if you feel like it, and in a year you will have lovely leaf mould compost. Very good for the garden, but very slow.

As for amphibians, I was supposed to put down some slabs for the frogs to hibernate under, but I didn't get round to it. Maybe the frogs were just in the heap for warmth. As the baby frogs left the pond, they mainly stayed around there, or headed down towards the compost heap. I haven't seen any toads around. I have got (I hope) a newt. My brother very naughtily caught one and took it home, so my mum brought it down to me because she didn't think it right to have it. It got released into my small woodpile, which is right by my compost heap, so hopefully it's found somewhere to last out the winter.

If you look at the entry this forum is attached to, there are some links to wildlife gardening. I wrote that. I didn't cover any one thing in great detail. The idea was to give people an idea of what it was about, rather than detailed instructions. But I'd love to see your website.

We pulled up an old apple tree stump in our garden to find a colony of newts underneath it . Not that I have anything against newts (I'd have Ken Livingstone on me otherwise) but they seemed to be quite happy until we evicted them. We also have huge numbers of frogs from our next-door neighbour's ponds. I have a little kiddie so I've avoided ponds like the plague.

My auntie Audrey, many years ago, had a pond in her back garden which she hadn't cleared out for years. When I was about eight or nine I used to sit by the pond and look into it at the amazing creatures which had taken up residence. It was like watching the Blue Planet, in miniature.

The pond is a big draw for my son. I waited until he was nearly 7 before I put one in, because of safety. I'd love to have a bigger one, so I'm hoping next spring I can get to work on it.

J loves the pond, the frogs, and it has even helped him get over his fear of flying insects. He watched with great interest when we had some flies (poecilobothrus nobilitalus - no common name) visiting the pond over a period of about a month to mate on the lily leaves. He spent a lot of time there during the summer, so if I make a bigger pond, I'll be sure to put in a viewing platform, so he can sit there without falling in. Maybe I'll be able to leave it for years withouth clearing it out.

I'd heard that leaves take longer than that to compost - at least 2 years. So at any one time, there would be about six bags of leaves in the way :o

Did you know that some frogs hibernate at the bottom of the pond if it's a deep enough one? I didn't believe it but we discussed it in the free.uk newsgroup for nature.ponds and enough winesses insisted it's true to convince me. They don't drown because they can absorb a certain amount of oxygen through the skin and the metabolism is slowed right down anyway.

If you have newts in the surround area they will find your pond sooner or later, likewise toads but you can speed it up by borrowing some toadspawn next spring. I'll have some in about March.

There are some great ideas in your entry. Making houses for hoverflies ! I think adding a pond is by far the best improvement, and a large native tree is probably the next. When I moved here there were less than 7 species of birds that visited, now there are several more and it just gets better every year. last summer was fantastic for damselflies and dragonflies, probably something to do with the very wet winter we had.

I put a link to my pond site at the top of my h2g2 space now, but that's mostly just pictures, the information is still on the newsgroup until I get time to gather it together. You might be able to access that with Google Groups.

I think it'a shame when parents avoid or fill in ponds just because of a few well publicised accidents. They probably still drive their kids around in cars and stuff which is much more dangerous.

If you remember your Auntie's pond like that then I'm sure you'll start digging as soon as your little one is old enough to be sensible. That's about 3-4 yrs imho.

Can I have my piano back please?

I'd not heard leaves take that long. Everything I've heard or read says a year. But my garden isn't really suitable for bags of leaves lying around for long lengths of time either.

I'lll be nagging you in March, or Frankie for some toadspawn then. I had some frog spawn from a friend's pond last year. It'll be nice for my son to learn about toads too.

I'll have a look at your site when I get a chance, I'm not sure how to use newsgroups with google, I only use one atm, and that comes in through outlook express.

Fine. Toads are great because they hang around the garden all year round eating up the slugs and things, when the most of the frogs wander off.

If you have Outlook Express configured to read newsgroups then it's just a question of searching the list of available groups and subscribing to interesting ones.

Google also allows you to read all the archived newsgroup messages but through a web interface, a bit like reading h2g2. It's in a seperate section called Google Groups, or rather groups.google . They took it over from dejanews.

I just put a link to the ponds newsgroup via google on my home space.

Thanks. I have some time now, so I'll go and have a browse.

Wilfrid's Patent Leaf-mould Maker

1. Firmly erect a wooden post in the ground to height of about 4 feet (or select a handy existing fencepost)
2. Obtain 4 metres of green or brown plastic coated chicken mesh.
3. Snip off 1 metre square from one end for future use
4. Form remaining 3 metres into an upright cylinder with 2-3" overlap and secure to post with galvanised staples.
5. Secure base to ground with whatever comes to hand (couple of old tent pegs, stout sticks etc).
6. Fill container with autumn leaves and compress.
7. Shape/snip square offcut to form circular top with overlap and secure with garden twine.
8. According to site, beside it plant woody-stemmed, not too vigorous climber (ivy is good, favorite is ornamental quince: Chaenomeles spp) and train in and out of mesh.
9. After 12 months, prune and check contents. If it's all broken down nicely (eg oak leaves) then bag up leaf mould and refill with fresh leaves. If it needs another year (eg horse chestnut) decide your living bin is so pretty, it needs a friend, and build another