Nutshells and compost

[mrdinkle]

Might be a silly question, but I don't care.

We eat a lot of nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts and almonds mainly. Is it ok to put the shells in the compost?

Also, in the most recent Gardener's World mag there is a photo of monty doodle don tipping his waste into his compost heap. I scrutinized what I could see going in and saw lots of printed packaging material (eg card food packaging).

Is this acceptable? I was always of the impression that anything printed might be harmful......

tia

[roitelet]

Nut shelld will take a month of Sundays to break down into compost.

Printed packaging is usually Ok as the inks are water soluable and non toxic these days.

[Sue]

MrDinkle
I buy Kentish cob nuts and use the outer husks and nutshells as a mulch around shrubs to keep the weeds down, seems to work fine and they do break down my first lot from 2 years ago have all disappeared.

And printed matter, there seems to be different opions over this, some people saying the inks are no longer polluting, others say not. I usually put in printed matter if its on either ordinary paper not really thick art paper with a shiny surface and any printed cardboard as long as the printing is not on an overlaid shiny film applied to the cardboard.
Sue

[mrdinkle]

what are kentish cobs nuts?

thanks for the replies, perhaps if I crush the shells before I put them in? I will try printed stuff with no film.

[Sue]

mrdinkle
They're a bit like hazelnuts, being in Kent I can get them from local growers at the farmer's market so I can cut down on food miles and get a free mulch along with nuts to eat at the same time.
But same old story, thousands of trees grubbed up (or lost in the hurricane and not replanted) as there's no big market for them.

Cob nut trees are easy to buy, I've got one on my allotment but will be a while yet before it keeps me in nuts!

best wishes
Sue

[Eyren]

I love cob nuts! (They're basically large hazelnuts, sold fresh in their shells, so the flesh is sweet and milky.) We have a few trees growing around our estate, but the council have cut back all the shrubberies this year as they were getting too tall. I'm not complaining too much, since our garden is suddenly much sunnier and we have a nice view of the cornfields again, but it will be a while before the hazels and sloes are back in business