We’ve had an email from Kate/Glitter Pixie:

Hi, I wonder if the Recycle This community can help. My husband and I have finally moved into a house with outdoor space and want to seize the opportunity to begin composting. However, our yard is completely concreted over so a normal compost bin won’t work. I’ve done a bit of research and think a wormery might be the ticket but they are so expensive! I just want to make a haven for the little wriggly guys we buy, so does anyone have any neat ideas about how to build a wormery and what to use? (obviously reusing general household junk where possible). Thanks so much you guys, absolutely love the site, you are awesome!

(She’s right – you guys in the Recycle This community are awesome!)

Normal compost bins would work on concrete – we just had a piece of wood underneath our open-bottomed one at our old house to facilitate air circulation and moving it around (although we have yet to move it to our new house – that’s going to be quite a effort!) – but wormeries are great too, working a bit quicker so don’t need to be as big – plus who doesn’t want 1000 new wriggly pets? ;)

I’m tempted to build a wormery too for dealing with dog & cat poo (the output can’t be used on veg, which limits our use of it here but better than it going to landfill) so any suggestions?

A lot of the commercial ones I’ve seen have been tray-based to allow easy rotation/access to the new vermicompost. The trays have mesh bottoms to allow the worms to move constantly upwards in search of food – when they reach the top, whip the bottom tray out to the top and start filling that one instead. The trays should fit together snugly – the bottoms touching if it wasn’t for the waste matter – rather than stacked to allow the worms to travel about. They also tend to have a drip tray at the bottom for collecting liquid run-off (which is a great fertiliser).

There are also ones more like purpose bought compost heaps – with an access hatch at the bottom. Possibly easier to make but apparently harder to keep healthy when you’re new to wormerying.

Also any suggestions for where to get the worms? Any types of worms to look out for/avoid?

So how is your garden/allotment/window box doing this summer?

Due to a combination of a underestimation of seed germination rates, disorganisation/ignoring plans and demon slugs, my growing hasn’t gone quite as I thought it might but we’re doing ok and I’ve learned a lot about growing here.

One thing definitely on my list for next year – well, technically later this year – is to give my beds a good old fashioned manure boost in late autumn. The soil here is very poor but since I reclaimed the beds from the weeds in early spring, I couldn’t do a manure feed this year and I think our output has suffered as a result. I’ve been feeding the seedlings/growing plants since then but I think better soil to start with would have helped overall. Ah well, live and learn.

Anyway, homemade plant/vegetable fertilisers. I’m sure everyone reading this has a bulging compost heap for general compost goodness (if not, start one today!) but I thought it might be interesting to hear what kitchen scraps/plants/garden waste/household waste people use for specific fertilising/feeding plants at this time of year.

I’ve been making/using a lot of liquid fertiliser from nettles this year because we have so many in the field next door to our house. Coffee grinds are also popular as a mid-season fertiliser, as are potash and bonemeal.

What are your favourite produced-at-home fertilizers? Do you have any tips for particular plants?

After reading last week’s barbecue themed posts, Ali got in touch to ask about repairing a rusted up bbq:

The grill is rusty pretty much all over and there is a rust hole in the base too. My husband wants to throw it out and get another but I’d like to try fixing it first. Please give me some hope that the effort with a wire scrubber will be worth it!

A lot of barbecues at the cheaper end of the market have chrome-plated steel grills and once the chrome gets scratched or otherwise damaged, the exposed steel rusts really quickly. You might get all the rust off now but I’m not sure you’ll be able to keep it off in the future – anyone know any heat/food friendly way to protect it again? If it’s a cast iron grill – most expensive but not uncommon – then you should be able to de-rust it and protect it again like any cast iron pan/appliance.

As for the base, it depends on the size/location of the hole – a small one low down could be turned into a fat trap. Assuming it’s a kettle/barrel type bbq, you could strip it right back to metal (possibly worth doing all over in one go) and repaint it with a heat-proof metal paint (like stove paint) to reduce further rusting. However as someone who has spent far too long stripping metal recently, let me warn you, it’s not exactly a fun pastime.

If you don’t think it’s worth the effort to save this one, learn from this one’s untimely demise when you buy/care for your next one — look for one with a better grill or if it’s already a good one, protect it better in the first place, and don’t leave bbqs outside and uncovered in wet/moist weather.

Any further advice/suggestions?

Finishing up our impromptu barbecue themed week, I thought I’d run a post that is sure to get some people screaming “DON’T USE THEM AT ALL! USE REAL, REUSABLE PLATES!!” – and those people have a very good point. The first part of the 3Rs is Reduce and disposable paper plates are really unnecessary in most situations – and also usually really frustrating to eat off.

However, they’re still useful in some situations – for example, extraordinarily big outdoor parties, especially for clumsy kids or festivals etc – so it’s probably worth thinking about ways to reuse or recycle them for those times when they’re almost unavoidable.

Between food waste and the often synthetic wax/plastic coating used to make them moisture resistant, you don’t really want them near your compost heap. You can get paper plates designed to be composted afterwards though – some made from thick paper, some from palm fronds, others from a light bamboo – just scrape off any large amount of food waste that might cause a problem for your heap. On our post about waxed cups, someone said you can recycle them at tetrapak recycling facilities – I would if this is true of waxed paper plates too…

Any other suggestions/advice? Or ideas for alternatives?

Inspired by thinking about barbeque-related food packaging on Monday, we’re having a bit of an impromptu bbq themed week here on Recycle This. This is a less a “reuse or recycle” and more a “how do you use it up?” question…

There always seems to be a few burgers or sausages leftover at barbecues – left on the grill or the keep-warm grill even though no one wants them and they go dry or turn to indiscernible black lumps.

Of course this situation could be avoided all together but only cooking the correct meat (hard to judge) and obviously it’s better to take them off before they reach that point when they’re still edible and have them as leftovers at some point but does anyone have any recipes for dried out meat? Our fussy-when-she-wants-to-be dog turned her nose up at dry-but-still-edible burger the other week but I suspect the cats would have gone for it if we’d been at home.

And what about when they’ve gone beyond that and are, essentially, greasy charcoal? Can they be crushed/ground up and used as a soil fertiliser like other charcoal?

(Photo by DeusXFlorida