Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Saturday 8 March 2008

Why shred??



Some of you may have noticed that whenever we fell a tree or prune one we chip the stuff we cannot keep as firewood. And I got asked why we did this?? So I thought I would put up a post explaining why we DO chip so much stuff.





We have several compost bins dedicated to chipped tree shreddings...

and I can take out what I want to add to the compost bins or to mulch around the garden, as and when I want. AND I can put some in the hens' run for them to scratch around in!!



We DO burn stuff on bonfires which is infected or a pernicious weed or which is too much like hard work to shred BUT often, if it is too small to have as firewood, we do tend to chip it .
And if we DO burn twigs etc the ash goes on the compost bins!!!



We have a trusty Bosch shredder/chipper which is great!! It runs off of our ( 100% renewable Good Energy) electricity and we get to make lots of shreddings for the cost of the electricity only. This saves buying in bark chippings for mulch!!

and a bonus is we know the chippings are uncontaminated by any pesticides or herbicides, as they have come from our own trees...which are, of course, unsprayed.


Also shreddings are really useful to add to the compost heap and also make compost ( rather slowly) in their own right...

so we use the chippings to mulch, add to compost and we are planning on getting a new woodburner soon which will burn chippings...so it all helps reduce our Carbon Dioxide footprint and be more self sufficient.
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