Someone mentioned to me the idea of sifting compost to get rid of the big bits that might be left/are taking a long time to decompose. Does anyone do this, and what do you use? It looks like there are sieves (or riddles as I've seen them called) specially made for garden use, but I can only find them on UK websites.
My compost is doing pretty well, but there's a fair few big bits of things left that are going to take ages to decompose... but in the mean time, I'd like to start using the good stuff!
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Hi Sonya, I only have a small backyard and therefore can't create the best composts so l do sift mine. l use an old gate that has galvanised wire mesh on it and by chance it just happens to fit nicely over the wheelbarrow. lf l don't want to use it all at the time l bag it for future use and this has proved really useful. Also as l put everything into the compost except bad weeds, which l make into liquid fertiliser, l have large bones that take forever to break down. However, l am now going to burn the large bones on the fire which l heard about the other day.
I sift compost when I am spreading it over the top of the garden. However I usually dig trenches and put barrow loads of compost in and cover up with a light layer of the original soil. This puts the compost where it is most needed and the bigger bits carry on decomposing as well as encouraging the worms to carry on doing their work. It does need to be fairly well composted though.
I think I will go ahead with sifting it... Funny, that's one thing that nobody ever talks about in the discussions about making your own! The Instructables site was very useful - I don't think I'll make anything as complicated as those first two examples, but I might give the one with wire stretched across a square frame a go... that'll be easy enough for me to do with a little help from the visiting handyman Dad in a couple of weeks!
Hi Sonya - I would recommend sifting your compost - a few of my seeds struggled to get past some of the bigger pieces that I hadn't sifted out - depending on how much compost you have you could try building your own - example 1 - example 2 - where I used to live we had access to one that was made by a local communtiy garden
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I think I will go ahead with sifting it... Funny, that's one thing that nobody ever talks about in the discussions about making your own! The Instructables site was very useful - I don't think I'll make anything as complicated as those first two examples, but I might give the one with wire stretched across a square frame a go... that'll be easy enough for me to do with a little help from the visiting handyman Dad in a couple of weeks!