Grass Volume

Charlie Charolais

Hi all,

I am looking to build a grass bunker, an enclosed compost heap, and want to ascertain size required
If I have a 2000 m2 lawn, say a cut is 25mm high, based on maths this comes to 50 m3, so I will need a bunker 10m long x 5m wide x 1m deep, for each cutting, I know this is not correct, is there a way calculating what size bunker I need?

Thanks

magicbastarder

yes, your maths is wrong as you're calculating that you're taking a solid one inch slab of grass off with every cut.
however, if your compost heap will only contain grass, beware that it won't be a good compost heap, the grass will go slimy and won't break down in the way you want. you need a mixture of materials for a good compost heap.

Charlie Charolais

hey,
maths are a bitch! is there any rule re volume, like it's 10% soild, 90% voids etc?
what sort of materials would you mix, waste vegs etc, ?

magicbastarder

it's usually a mixture of greens and browns you want - i.e. high nitrogen, leafy material, like the grass, and high carbon fibrous material like shredded twigs, etc.

as to the exact volume required for your size lawn, i'm not going to be much help there...

Lumen

Do you really need to enclose it? From what I've read an enclosed bunker is a bad idea. You need to get as much air in as possible.

I have about that much grass, and after a year of moving around piles of slimy, rotting grass, just last week started a proper compost heap. I'm using 50/50 grass (greens) and chipped shrubbery (browns) with a bit of Garotta to kick things off. And lots of watering, as my heap is under a load of trees. I created a base of criss-crosses branches to get the air under it.

The first heap is about 1 sqm and it's already about a foot deep from one cutting.

I've a big pile of these chippings (several cubic metres) that I can mix in with every cutting. The smaller the pieces of brown, the faster the composting happens. In theory.

If this experiment fails I'll switch to using a mulching mower, but that limits the cutting to dry weather only and needs to be done twice as often.

Charlie Charolais

The lawn is recently seeded with grass tips just appearing now so this is all new to me,
I have bad memories of lawn grass being tipped over the wall & becoming a yellow smelly slime pile, so I?m kicking ideas around to avoid this
I have no place to hide so I thought a covered bunker would work
just googled Garotta, looks a good product, might mix it with nitrogen rich chemical fertiliser, it might push things along

Lumen

Charlie Charolais wrote: »

I have bad memories of lawn grass being tipped over the wall & becoming a yellow smelly slime pile, so I?m kicking ideas around to avoid this. I have no place to hide so I thought a covered bunker would work just googled Garotta, looks a good product, might mix it with nitrogen rich chemical fertiliser, it might push things along

Do a bit of googling about compost. You can add in things like straw and newspaper to help the consistency and prevent the slime.

Grass naturally dries out, but if it's rained on then it will go slimy. Maybe putting it in a well ventilated but covered container would work.

I think you need to decide whether you're going to try and make compost (in which case you'll need the right sort of woody/papery bulk, and control of the moistness) or just contain the grass until it dries out and reduces in volume and then dispose of it.

What are you going mowing it with? Would you consider mulching? I know some will say the Irish weather isn't suitable but if you run around it every 5 days you won't with a proper mulching mower you won't hav to many probems regardless of weather.

Magic ]=)

I keep it simple. This is my compost box and two years worth of grass cutting and some garden waste from half an acre site. Leafs usually end up under the trees. Whenever I cut grass I throw it into empty box to dry out. If it starts getting slimy I'd mix it to move the wet stuff on top. Once it's dried out it goes to second box. Where it's composted further.
As for food waste it's composted separately in closed box on the right to keep my dogs and birds away. Box is lined with chicken wire.
Probably not the prettiest set up but it's out of sight and it's functional.