a. "You must have a large fertile garden!"
Fertile yes, but not large enough for my liking.
The soil began as heavy clay.
"Lots of backache but none of the heartache".
The house was built by Barratt, and I bought it new.
During the build in 1980, the workmen threw all of their rubbish out of the windows into the garden.
Paint cans, plasterboard, plywood, wood, bricks, roof-tile, etc.
They dug one huge hole in the front garden and another in the back, and dumped all of their spare concrete [from erecting fences] into those holes.
Then covered it all up using a too thin layer of nice topsoil.
Once in, I began digging knee-deep trenches to re-grade/level the surface, and mix the nice topsoil into the underlying clay.
They were making the roads at the time, and when I exposed the huge concrete block in the front garden, the guy with the road-drill obliged me by breaking up the block, and I disposed of the parts in a nearby skip.
I had to break up the concrete in the back garden with a sledge-hammer.
I eventually added [to my front garden] a TON of "sharp concrete sand" and 1.5 [part of 2 costing £60] huge loads of farmers manure.
That didn't make nearly as much of an improvement as I'd hoped.
So last October [after the final lawn cut] I spiked the lawn, put ["lawn sand" = moss killer, and] horticultural sand down the holes, put 1/2 inch of horse manure on the surface and raked off all the lumps leaving only fine stuff.
The grass is now growing a rich deep green, with little to zero weeds [I pluck these new/tiny weed seedlings with finger and thumb during the winter].
They tend to die during the winter if they have no greenery.
b. "What do you do with Out house leftovers from vegetables? Do you have a separate compost bin?"
Edible leftovers go in a small [nice looking, black] bin on the Out house worktop, then transferred to another [green] 3 times that size outside the Out house door.
The council collects all such as that every week.
Not sure what they do with it.
@greengeek
c. "Be aware of the high risk of contracting Tetanus from horse faeces."
I was unaware of that.
I use horse manure because it is available, and the supplier brings it and dumps it in my bin.
I wish the council would deliver their manure in this manner.
I phoned them, but they only sell it by the lorry-load.
I once bought a HUGE lorry-load of horse manure, and it was TOO MUCH.
d. "Never use waste processed by a sewer reticulation plant. It's full of prions, heavy metals, paint, oils, drugs, hormones, etc etc."
That was/is my belief.
e. "be selective what goes into compost. No onion skins, citrus peel, garlic, meat, etc"
That's what goes in my black->green bins.
f. "Some of the egg shells we dry out and grind to a fine dust for inclusion in the dog stew."
Egg shells are said to be good in compost also, because they contribute lime.
