SFG in Amsterdam Nieuw West

Pic of sowing and planting in the SFG boxes before the fence was even set up

Including a raised box

End result

I like it . You must feel very pleased with your start-up baby .

 I was over that way in the world on Thursday 14 August .. on the way to the Hoek to catch the over night ferry back home.


 Our Sat Nav didn't have the latest road works update for the new  motorway construction .
Once the diversion signs dissapeared we we ended up doing a grand tour of parts of Amsterdam & still managed to catch the ferry .  ( Don't know how we managed that .)

It's so nice to travel around Holland and see that almost everyone has pride in their land and gardens . I don't think we saw one weed filled garden or over grown allotment garden in Holland  either on the way out  to Hamburg or on the way back to the UK .

Will you be returning back to the garden or is the pull of warmer drier weather too much of a pulling power?

Thank you, Princezoe for the extra pictures, you have left a legacy there and I bet you do the same in Italy.

Plantoid, Holland was the first country outside the UK that I ever visited (via the Hoek ferry) and I was most impressed by the cleanliness of the country. On returning to England after travelling though Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France, I sadly realized what a mess England had become.

Just found this post. I am really impressed with all you have done! 
My Grandfather came from Holland. They say that is where my love of plants came from.
You have left quite a legacy behind. Something to be very proud of.

Thanks for the replies guys.

It costs a lot of many to buy a house and especially with a garden, so if people in Holland buy that they want to make something with and on it. As i have been living in Holland for 42 years it does not look like something special, especially because all garden look the same to me. There is few variety in my opinion. Few people grow grass or veggies in their garden. Most of them make a stone terrace.

I emigrated to Italy and my girlfriend and i work as managers on a bungalowpark a few inches from the lake of Como so it is beautiful to live here. As the park has been completely filled with renters and owners of the bungalows i had no time to make some SFG Boxes. Next to the park there is a swimmig pool who got rid of some wood and i got some planks from them i have sawed. I bought peat moss and i moved some bags of vermiculite from holland to this place. Compost is hard to find, as italians use manure most of the time.

Manure is a big part of my homemade compost, probably more than recommended, but I like the results. I have kitchen scraps, cardboard cereal boxes, yard trimmings mixed with llama, sheep, horse, cow and chicken poo.  Plus  I found a source of shrimp/crab shell and sawdust compost.   It's all good.  So go with the manures.  Congratulations on thinking to bring some vermiculite with you.  

Kay

Can you make a picture of your compost pile and post it ?

I am wondering how commercial companies make their compost or how the manufacturer of Mel's compost make their compost

princezoe, my neighbors love to tell stories about visiting Lake Como and how beautiful it is. You wound up in a wonderful place!

Hope you get some nice gardens going in your new home someday.

Re commercial compost operations, I know I've seen some youtube and other videos on it. In the ones I've seen which looked to me like larger operations, they make long rows of woodchips, manure, etc., on a wide flat field, as high as a man's head or higher, then push them around with a bulldozer every so often to keep them mixed. One looked carefully managed as to temperature and moisture levels, but another video gave me the impression that they didn't really pay much attention to it except to shift it around a couple of times before bagging it up for sale.

A small-time local guy around here does something similar, but he just makes a giant pile up against a high concrete wall and shifts it with a bulldozer every so often.

Richard,  How big of a compost pile are you wanting to make?  Many of us have back yard (like me with a 3 x 3 x 3' cage) or on-site (like Camp and others) with 2 or 3 side-by-side cages.  Enter "compost" in the search box and you can see photos of different ideas.  I'm out of internet time or I would list some sites for you.

I am not sure what measurements my compost pile will get, but i am planning to start small to get experienced.
I have a lot of paper/cardboard, gras, leaves and branches on our bungalow park so that would not be a  problem
I am looking for manure and some kind of compost of the community in this village

As i can see it now, i prefer to make a hole in the ground but mixing it that way is hard to do as the pile starts growing
Maybe making 3 boxes is better...

I once considered making a buried compost pit.  From what I have read, they are great but take months to break down.  Maybe you can do both a buried long term pit and 2 side by side cages, or 3 if you have the room, for fast compost.  Here is my little 3' x 3' x 3' cage.  To turn it, I spread a heavy plastic tarp, take everything out, separating in 2 piles.  The inside material in one pile and the exterior 6" in another.  Then I build it back up putting the outside material on the inside and the inside on the outside.  With horse manure and bedding straw plus lots of rotting produce, dry leaves, coffee grounds, what ever I can find at that time of the year.  Always horse manure from now on no matter what other browns and greens I use. It only takes a few weeks to get ready compost if you use the Berkeley hot method.

Thanks for the pics sanderson.

I private posted alanlu in april and we had some contact
Now i private posted her again last week, but i saw that she had not been logged in since a while
Do you have a mailaddress or something of her to contact her ?

Richard, She did not list an email address in her profile. Unfortunately, not all new members stay active. :-(

How are you doing in Italy? Any photos yet?

@Princezoe

Around this time of the year around the lakes such as Como there used to be a touring circus with all manner of animals.
 They were having to use the one tonne wheeled waste containers to take the animal muck away .
When we saw the circus at Nyon many people came with heavy duty plastic sack to collect the stuff.

Whilst we were there we also noticed a couple of riding stable in the locality so all may not be lost on theh manures front.

Hello all,

i had some private message contact with alanlu and that went well.

I am doing very well in Italy and i am working on 3 projects
The first one is making my own compost
The second one is making 5 or 6 SFG Boxes
The third one is a project that i am going to announce in february i hope

I will write my experiences in making compost in this thread

I started making a compost bin last week 
I got a couple of pallets from my neighbour who has a company
I used chicken wire for the inside of the pallets and used a couple of nails to attach everything

As i am working on a bungalowpark of 40.000 square meters it is quite easy for me to collect grass and leaves, cut the hedge
Also, i collected some egg shells and coffee.
I made quite a big pile of it, as i thought it was
Then i went over it with my lawn mower and I was very disappointed with the result
The pile was minimised in my opinion
That was a good lesson for me

 

As I can mow the grass at the end of may and i am cutting the hegde in april i donot have easy possibilities to collect grass, leaves, branches for the Berkely method

I decided to call a manege and there was a good decision
I picked up about a cube meter of fresh horse manure along with hay/straw and put a bit more than half of it in my compost pile and mixed it
They also had a pile of old horse manure (with much less hay/straw) that was lying on a side terrain, but i decided to take the fresh manure
What do you think of it ?

I mixed it with the pile i already had, it started to rain while mixing so i did not have to water the pile
This is the result 
The first small pile has been lying in my compost bin for 4 days and i turned it one time

So, can i consider today as day 1 of the Berkely method ?

Good to see you back posting.
 Yes it is quite amazing how a green pile shrinks in the first few days .. when it's in the green grass state you can add the palm of your hand sized bits of torn up plain corrugated cardboard boxes to the green matter & turn it in .

 It helps tremendously if you wet the cardboard first ....such as by collapsing the box and slipping it in a big plastic bag then putting in a litre or so of water in with it & closing it up , within three days it's usually so soft it's like tearing tissues apart .


I've just read your horse manure post.

 If you Googke " Berkeley 18 day hot composting  method " and take the link to the university they give the method to use, but more importantly as you read through the subject matter you'll find links to all manner of useful things .
 One of the most useful to me was to follow a link that gave me ideas of what I could compost ..suddenly the shortage of grass , hedge clippings etc  became less of a problem overnight because of what I read that they say you can sucessfully use for a balance compost .

 The animal manures do add high levels of N,P & K  to the compost you make , so don't over use  them .

Hi Richard, Welcome back, we missed you. Yes, today is the birth of your new pile, Day 1. I think it is new manure for the compost pile; old manure that has composted for the Mix or as top dressing in the garden. Just not fresh manure to the garden! I found I wasn't really wetting the pile enough as I built it. When I did finally get enough moisture, the temperatures took off.

Please keep us updated

Glad to see you back, Princezoe!  Great photos...! 

Can't wait to hear how everything is doing over there.

Day 3 Berkeley method
turned it for the first time. I donot count day 1 with building the pile as a turn
I must say it is hard work and i can imagine that elderly are not into turning a pile of almost 3 by 3 by 3 feet.
It is very annoying that the pile falls forward all the times so you need to clean shove it a few times.
But hey, that is a nice exercise in the sun

The pile was quite warm, not hot. It is freezing at night and during the day the sun shines with 10 to 15 degrees C.
I will turn the pile tomorrow again and on wednesday morning because on wednesday i will fly to Holland and stay in Holland for 6 days
Let us see what happens with the pile during those days

Unfortunately, during my 1 week holiday in the Netherlands the roof of the pile was blown away by the wind
When i came back the pile was cold and wet.
That was 11 days ago.
The past 11 days i turned the pile 4 times and i could manage the pile dry but it is still cold, about 15 degrees celsius/59 degrees Fahrenheit
What can i do now ?

As a reminder i started the pile 20 days ago