I still hate the hotbox. At the top it is all hot (100 degrees!)and rotty and it smells nice and 2 days after you put things in, it’s covered in mould and starting to break down. But at the bottom, it’s still wet, sticky, smelly, full of smushed cardboard and fluid and sticks. How hard can it be? I took a tiny bit out – I’m not taking any more for months now and it’s still smelly mulch at best. But maybe, just maybe there are a few a bits that look like proper compost – like the sponge at the bottom of a trifle..

It still took about an hour to dig out of the bottom of the box, a week to dry and it’s on the cusp of compost/ mulch. But it is getting better…..

I’m adding this to remind myself about how it used to be…

It’s getting better. But it’s still not right. I have been following the advice from the helpful people at Hotbin – and it does smell nice at the top and is proper hot and getting through the waste. But at the bottom, it’s still compacted solid and oozy and a bit smelly.

I thought it was less smelly but my friend Jane came round while I was emptying it and said it reminded her of being in India. So maybe I am just getting accustomed to the smell. I’m still getting lots of fluid and not getting usable compost. Though I think I could use some of this as mulch.

I think this time round, I think I have added enough cardboard but not mixed it in properly. I still have a problem with bulking agent. It’s hard to add enough to stop it compacting, but still have compost (not sticks) at the end.

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But on the bright side, Pickle says at least I have a mulch-generator, and looking at the earlier pictures (below from Jan) it is getting better.

NB: those potato starch bags (“just POP them in your food recycling bin”) DON’T break down. Don’t pop them in.

I have followed the advice of the nice people at Hotbin and the top of my hotbin smells nice and wholesome; it is warming up and it feels like I am finally becoming someone who Can Compost.

I know this is my fault – but the bottom is still very smelly and full of flies and vile smelling fluid! Where does it come from? I drain it off every day at at time when I don’t think the neighbours are in their garden. I can’t face a conversation about how I have failed at composting. I know this will get better and gradually stop but at the moment…

I have a Hotbin. It smells. It’s full of stinky liquid and slimy slightly rotted vegetables and completely intact twigs. It’s cold. I can’t get it right. I know it’s me not the Hotbin – and they have sent lots of help about how to get it right but it still isn’t. And I’ve looked into Andrew’s and his is lovely and crumbly and wonderful.

I bought it just as lockdown started (so nearly a year?) (and then persuaded Andrew to buy his). I still haven’t got good compost out of it. I got some nearly good stuff a couple of months ago and put the best on the garden as a mulch and the worst back in the bin. This month, I couldn’t bear it any more so I took the smelly disgusting stuff out of the bottom. HB told me to aerate it – the smell is because it is anaerobically composting and I dried it as best I could and this is what it looks like….

I think I was too mean about putting in dry matter/ bulking agent at the start and then it all got squished together – and you keep squashing more in to try and make it work and that makes it worse.

The problem is, once you’ve seen the error of your ways, you’ve got 3 foot of smelly cold crap compost and my garden isn’t big enough to put it anywhere (plus with the smell not fair on the neighbours).

I’m posting this in the hope it’s just one in the first in a series that ends up with lovely compost.

I bought one because Alan Titchmarsh told me to. He said it would be “perfectly happy on a North-facing wall” and though it grows up to 40ft high, “it is often slow to start, so be patient. The rewards are great eventually”.

I planted it too close to the wall and it gets no sun. Every year I look at it and think it has done badly and I will dig it up and then I remember what Alan said and leave it. I have had it for 15 years now I reckon and it’s about a foot wide. This is your your year schizophragma, get on with it…

March Update!

It took notice! It has leaves….

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