April Composting
Making the most of natural resources is essential to get the full potential from your garden. One of the most important things a gardener can do is to improve the soil in which their plants are grown. Healthy soil supports strong vigorous plants and provides them with the right growing conditions to perform well. By composting your garden and kitchen waste you create copious amounts of free soil conditioner for the garden; but it also is a great way to recycle.
Nature composts all of the time. The natural process of degradation goes on around us in the countryside; it’s simply a matter of recreating the right conditions for it to occur in the garden.
Composting is very easy to do, even in a small garden, and yet it is often regarded as one of the common mysteries of gardening. For the best results, simply follow the golden rules and once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s like riding a bike, you’ll never think about it again.
Many gardeners pile up the garden and kitchen waste in a big heap in the corner of the garden. This can work very well, especially in a large garden but it does tend to spread and encroach on the rest of the garden. A compost heap tends to build up slowly and will rarely heat up to create a fast composting process. It is a very good system to use in a wildlife garden and can support the lifecycle of a number of beneficial creatures such as toads, newts and even hedgehogs.
A compost heap may be more difficult to manage as the material at the bottom will mature beneath the new material being added and it is not always convenient to dig it out. A compost heap tends to be open to the soil at the base and this allows soil organisms such as worms and beneficial microbes to move through the developing compost easily.
Most urban and suburban gardeners use a special bin for composting. This can be made from a range of materials including timber, plastic or resin. Some gardeners make their own compost bin. To get the best results a compost bin needs to be quite large. The bin and its contents need to be big enough for the composting material to fuel a large amount of microbes, otherwise it will take too long to work. An area around the size of a traditional dustbin is about right. A larger contained area is also suitable. This sort of system needs to be generously filled, frequently, for the best results. Some gardeners advocate using a three-bin system where there is one bin being actively filled, one bin is already full and composting, and the third bin is full of composted waste ready to use on the garden. In a medium or large garden this can be a very effective system.
Worms play a vital role in garden composting systems. A wormery compost system harnesses the power of worms to deal with small amounts of kitchen and garden waste in a specially prepared environment conducive to worm activity. It won’t work with masses of waste as you will simply swamp your worms. A worm bin is a brilliant way to get children involved in composting and gardening and it is also ideal for small gardens. There’s nothing to stop you having more than one system on the go. Consider using a worm bin near the kitchen and a compost bin further down the garden.
Made in Japan
Bokashi: this is a Japanese system that can be used to compost some things that you wouldn’t normally compost, such as food and even meat. It works using a healthy population of beneficial microbes that saturate the waste and practically pickle it in small bins. This waste is then buried in the garden, or added to a closed composting system. It’s relatively new in the UK and is starting to become very popular. For more information visit www.effectivemicro-organisms.co.uk
Golden Rules
Place the bin onto open soil. Good drainage is essential for the very best results, so the bin needs to be able to drain. This also allows beneficial organisms to move in and out of the compost and also lets excess fluid drain away.
Get the mix right. Balance the amount of dry, woody material that you add, with an equivalent amount of green material.
Take a bucketful of compost from a successful composting system and mix it into the contents of a new compost bin. It will contain all the microbes and beneficial organisms necessary for good composting.
If you want to speed things up, feed the workers! Use a compost accelerator. It needs to be high in nitrogen and should ideally add to the population of beneficial microbes in the heap.
Insulate the heap with an old carpet or a proper compost duvet to help to retain the heat.
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