Thursday 3 March 2011

Home-made Compost

Today I finally got round to a task that I usually do during the Christmas holidays - distributing my compost. This year the severe weather at Christmas-time meant that it wasn't really practical to do the job at that point, and somehow it slipped further than it should have done down the list of Things To Do.

One of my compost bins is close to the back door, and into this one go all the vegetable scraps from the kitchen, as well as leaves, trimmings, weeds, etc from the garden. The bin fills up only slowly, because the worms do such a good job of digesting the material and converting it into useable compost, but about once a year I "harvest" the good stuff at the bottom of the bin. This is not easy, but this is how I do it:



I remove the plastic bin, lifting it off vertically, and fork the top 50% or so of the pile  - which is only partially decomposed - onto an old Army groundsheet laid out nearby. I then shovel the bottom 50% or so (in instalments) into my trusty Trug-Tub and distribute it around the garden, mostly onto the raised beds where I grow my veg. When all the good material is gone, I replace the bin and put back into it the other not-yet-decomposed stuff.

You can see in the picture above that this time there was about a two-foot depth of good crumbly compost.
It was enough for a layer about 2 inches thick on four of my six raised beds, but I was also able to fill my new cucumber-bin.




Actually I put quite a lot of the partially-decomposed material into the cucumber bin too, to act as food for the fifty million or so worms that went in there! Even the bottom layer of compost was heavily populated with worms, and the top layer was absolutely HEAVING with them. In this picture you can see lots of little wriggly white baby worms.


The compost in this bin will now have plenty of opportunity to settle, because I won't be planting out any cucumbers for about two months yet.

I have another compost bin on the go too, which will probably be ready for use in a couple of months, so I plan to put the compost from that one into the raised bed where I will grow my climbing beans. At present this bed is occupied by the Sprouting Broccoli. As soon as the broccoli is finished (probably about the end of April), I will remove the plants and quickly whack in a good dose of  "bulky organic matter" before planting the beans (which I will grow initially in small pots, under cover). With such a small plot at my disposal I have to think very carefully about what goes where, and when. My raised bed system allows me to run a reasonably efficient 5-year crop-rotation regime, but all the beds need a boost of good compost when they can get it, to keep their energy levels up. [One of the six beds is devoted to Asparagus now, so is excluded from the rotation plan.]

19 comments:

  1. How many raised beds do you have and how many of each type of vegetable do you grow?
    As I have started out on this way of gardening recently

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  2. Looking good there! Reminds me that I should do the same with my compost soon.

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  3. That looks fantastic! When I had my own garden I was inordinately proud of my compost.

    Thick question now: why would asparagus need to be excluded from the rotation scheme?

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  4. Jackie; the asparagus is excluded from the rotation because it is a perennial and stays in the same place (hopefully for up to 20 years!), whereas all the others are annuals whose life-span is less than a year.

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  5. Yummy yummy yummy...your compost looks good enough to eat! when I die, I don't want to be buried or cremated...compost me. ..pleeeeeze and feed me to the veggies.

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  6. I just adore that shovel on the left of that first photo, is that the one your lovely wife won?

    Hmm compost hey. My idea of compost is throwing scraps to the chickens and then not really doing anything about soil collection in their coop. I will have to work out some sort of system one of these days. Yours looks quite spectacular I must say, and I cannot wait to see the results of the much anticipated cucumbers.

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  7. Gorgeous! I asked this before and not sure you answered. Do you 'Seed the worms" or do they find themselves drawn to all that organic goodness?

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  8. David; all the worms are volunteers. I have never bought any worms. They just seem to appear from nowhere.

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  9. Thank you for the information and I was worrying I did not think I had enough room this is very encouraging

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  10. Another tasty recipe from your blog, Mark!
    Oh the cute wee baby worms...

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  11. Yummy looking compost Mark, and a familiar tale re the jobs list and "getting round to it". I have a seemingly ever extending one myself. You sounds impressively organised on your veg planting, I look forward to learning lots from you this year.

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  12. I need to start some proper composting myself. I have bagged up loads of leaf mould for the last two years, but haven't yet progressed onto compost. You are inspiring me again Mark!!

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  13. Cathy; no matter how small the space you have available, I reckon you can still grow something worthwhile, even if it is just a pot of parsley! I'm looking forward to seeing what you can achieve. How big is the space you have?

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  14. Simon; Have you actually used any of the leaf mould yet? If so, what do you use it for - a mulch? a soil-conditioner, or what?

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  15. Hi Mark, I'm really inspired by your garden and wonder if you mind me linking to your "My plot" page in one of my post? (I haven't done it yet.. wanted to be sure you are okay first..)

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  16. Terrific! Do You ever get vermin in your compost as it's open on the bottom? I've got mine in tumblers but they take ages and are hard to harvest from.

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  17. Hi Mrs Bok; I never seem to be bothered with vermin (apart from the foxes of course) - probably because there are plenty of cats in our neighbourhood. I find that the little flap at the bottom of the compost bin - allegedly for taking out the finished compost - is totally useless, so I tend to remove the whole bin in order to get at the compost.

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  18. Hi Mark, ar... I have another question. With all those little worms, is it still safe to still use the compost in your soil.. I wonder if the worms will also eat up the plants..

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  19. Re worms: I have no qualms about using the compost as a soil-improver. The worms don't eat growing plants or infest them, whereas they do aerate the soil and improve its texture by digesting the organic matter. As far as I can see they are 100% beneficial. What does anyone else think?

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