One of my drives at home (and in many things) is becoming self-sufficient. So getting a composter has been on my Gardening checklist for some time.
Well… I have now taken the plunge. I bought a Hotbin (https://www.hotbincomposting.com) Mini. So far I am happy with what I got. But the proof is in the proverbial pudding.
I am hopefully able to get it going and warming up over the next few weeks. I have a small household of two and a modest garden (not small but not big either) and the requirements of the hotbin are c. 2.5kgs a week (roughly a 5l caddy). I’m glad i went for the mini, as I think I can just about reach that when I have cooked in there too.
I think I got it at the beginning of June 2020. It took a while to be delivered as I think there was, like with fitness gear, a flurry of furlough orders.
The New Toy
This is a pic of it being opened for the first time and checking that all the parts are where they should be
It is now a couple of weeks in place, I am in the process of filling the ‘base layer’, so it is currently cold.
What does this mean?
Well it means that, at the moment I can only put in cold uncooked food waste to ensure I don’t attract vermin to it. Trying to follow this but I am worried something I add may attract them… Fingers crossed.
Reading on their website (above) about what you can put in the cold bin did scare me a little, as I have a bit of a rodent phobia. So after a small bit of research, I have moved my mint plants down to surround the bin in a hope that it scares off the rodents. We’ll see.
Feeding the beast (the hotbin not the rats!)
To feed my hotbin, I have needed to change the way I do things a little bit. In short, it needs regular feed of (The right type of) food waste, shredded paper (The right type of this too) and bulking agent (small decomposed wood chip)
To combat my current gaps to satisfying this need, I bought a cheap shredder; I have never seen the need before, as I have not really had the funds to warrant the privacy/security gains in getting one before. But you need to add paper to every addition of food waste. So rather than cutting and tearing I opted for the faster (cheat‘s) method.
I have also now segregated my food waste caddy (with two food waste bags) in order to separate hot / cold’able food waste. I suspect whilst this will be a temporary segregation the need for segregation longer term will continue, as I suspect I will most likely need to separate out wetter food waste (yoghurt for example) to regular hotbin ‘acceptable’ waste.
I have to say the Hotbin Website has all the questions answered so far. So no complaints there.
Early days at the moment – but I will update this as things change.
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