Kitchen Garden Forum

Have been composting for a couple of years now and have two decent sized bins. Most of what comes out looks pretty good to me, dark and crumbly. I tend to use it when creating an extra raised bed but now I've got enough of them I thought about using it for seeds/potting on. Have read that it should be mixed with garden soil before use. Can you use it straight from the heap ? Whats' best mix for seeds/potting on/general use ?

ive never got enough to use on the beds so use bought stuff for seeds and potting , at least its allready seived and sterile(in theory anyway).

I thought it was better to buy compost as there could be seeds, spores etc in your own that you might not want. I'm happy to stand corrected, though.
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Granny

Hi Toffeeman,
I stick to using Peat for sowing seeds having tried non-peat on several disastrous occasions.
IMHO home made compost has far too many nasties present for seed sowing.
JB.

Hi Toffeeman,
there are very real risks, as others have stated, but I did this for the first time this year as an experiment, using 2 year old compost from black bin "daleks" on all my seed sowings so far. These are sowings only, so I have no crops to report yet, but.....I removed the obvious chunks of wood, sticks and things which hadn't fully rotted down, and crumbled up the compost as light as possible. It does still seem slightly coarser than most commercial stuff.

I've had no real abject failures from all my stuff; either in the unheated greenhouse or outside; except for one sowing of Cos lettuce using 4 year old seed, which never germinated, I suspect the seed may be too old, again, an experiment. Some of the young greenhouse plants have now been transplanted into the outside world, and are doing fine, the rest are strong little plants, bursting at the pot seams, raring to get out there. Growth seems just as previous years; a more scientific approach would have been to try half+half of the same crop, in different composts, but I'm not growing in big enough numbers to bother with that.

The smaller/lighter seeds such as the brassicas seem to cope just as well as the heavier,larger broad-bean and squash-type seeds. Cut and come again lettuce has sprouted fine in troughs of compost mixed with topsoil, and is coming on nicely, as are early spuds in old compost bags.

As others have mentioned though, I am aware of the possibility of disease, which may not strike my plants down 'til later...We shall see. Also, there were signs of other unknown seeds also sprouting in the modules together with the expected ones. No problem, I just waited until there were obviously lots of the same type of seedling in the trays, and then picked out everything else which didn't look like that. I would say in each module tray of say 20 modules, I had to pull maybe 3-5 tiny seedlings of other types, and none have re-occurred. Microscopic fungal nasties - well, who knows?

This is all very unscientific, and if I lose anything that's OK, but that's the story so far.....

Dare I mention Berryfields?
Thet claim to do it all the time but a couple of weeks ago you could see critters moving in it while he was sowing.

My own experience of using non sterilised compost to grow seeds has been a diasaster: lots of weeds .. plus slug eggs which grew to slugs!

(we have a LOT of slugs as the local field is quite marshy about 20 metres away).

And we had loads of stray seeds: mainly birch and buddleia : so loads of weeds.

I have given up and buy compost for seed planting (still use my own for potting on.. but mixed with multi purpose compost.)