ian tracey

Or could it be something more "nice" ?

From my Usenet searches I know this is a common problem with about as many
views as you could ask for. The one answer I have not found is how do you
know if it is a rat or if it is some other "less nasty" animal ?

Background:
Compost heap is at the bottom of the garden, plastic job, but the lid is ill
fitting as it filled up, cause the base was not as flat as I thought it was.
Someting is burrying in from the bottom and doing a great job of turning it
over. The garden on the other side of fence is about 1/2 a football pitch
in size and overgrown for about 10 years.Never put meat / cooked food etc -
just peelings, tea bags, coffee grinds and garden waste.

So do the jury think it is a rat, or could it be something nice ?

thanks

ian

( ian dot tracey at
btinternet dot com)

nambucca

slabs or concrete then burying undernesth is exactly what happens

However the do not like being disturbed so best bet is to tip whole lot
over and fork it into another bin
Personally I think those plastic Darlek things are a waste of time
Better to gather a bunch of pallets .......pull them apart and reassemble
into a solid sided bin using the 2 by 4 timbers for corner posts
...........line with heavy duty polythene bags (from Shop compost etc ) site
on concrete and add a solid lid ////////////add buckets of urine to the mix
of goodies inside and turn over every 3 months ...then add a shovel of wormy
soil .....in a year you will have good compost in 2 yrs you will have fine
potting soil

ian tracey

Originally I was going to put it onto concrete pad I have at the bottom of
the garden. After I set it up, GF read the instructions that came with it.
In the instructions it stressed the need for it to be on soil and that
putting it on concrete was " a bad thing", so I moved it - now I have
perfect 20/20 hindsight.

I think I agree with you, and at the same time move it back to the original
place I put it.


Well my council (Barnet / London) supplies them at a subsidied price to
reduce the landfill, so I took them up on the offer. We could have had a
wormorry (SP ??) or a compost bin that spins around. Was going to get the
spinning thing, which would be rat proof, but I knew I would give up
spinning it every day. I was told that if no cooked food goes in I wont
have a problem ;-)


site


Not that I am a rodent freak - but wont they eat wood / plastic ?


Bottom half of the mix looks like that at the mo, Looking forward to
deciding where to put the stuff, once we have decided what we want the
garden to look like...

thanks for the info

cheers

ian

nambucca

I have 8 compost bins all made from pallets and all sitting on concrete
/paving slabs/bricks

A layer of plastic and a square of old carpet on the top under the lid is
also helpful

I thoroughly creosote the outsides and providing the lids are solid and
there are no gaps even 1/2 inch have had no problem with rodents
............i put anything and everything including cardboard boxes into my
bins along with buckets of urine ..........latest bin contents are so
incredibly hot you could fry eggs !!!