Homeacres
composting, it's
key to,
key to growing great vegetables.
It's not only vital for no-dig. It's just
vital for growing wonderful healthy plants giving lots of growth and
a high efficiency of output per time invested.
So it's worth spending time making some decent compost because it has a multiplier effect all the way along
down the line. And,
for me, because they're the focus of the garden,
I actually put them in the middle.
We've got vegetables and everything going on there.
So it's very convenient when you got your heaps
reasonably central, because then it's less time needed for
bringing stuff to them, which is the main input of time.
It's quicker to- when you wheel it out because the volume's gone down so much.
So, I start in Bay number 2
in February.
And we then turn that to the right
sometime in May.
And then the second heap starts in Bay 3, and it's turned into Bay 2.
And the third heap is in Bay 4 goes into Bay 3 and so on.
So this is now our fifth heap of the year
Which is going to be turned when it comes ready, which will be actually only in December now,
into that Bay there. We'll move the stuff out from there.
So it's just turned once
into an empty bay next to it. And turning is just about
introducing some more air, and
that's what the roof is about, keeping out too much rain
which otherwise displaces air.
Air is so much a key ingredient, as in oxygen to feed
bacteria, which are doing a lot of the breakdown here. But I
don't want only bacteria.
There's also fungi in here doing breakdown.
And
if you can stop it getting too hot, you keep a decent amount of fungi. The hotter you go, the more bacteria you tend
to have and that's why I keep an eye on the temperature. And I've got a thermometer here, actually, which is currently reading
55- 56 centigrade and
that's actually pretty good - pat on the back!
It's about keeping the balance of brown and green
fairly correct. If you fill it with too much green you get a lot of heat and it also goes a bit soggy.
So I've got a little tool here which I - you can push down and pull it up and it gives an idea -
if I can get it on the current heap -
this one actually doesn't work quite so well because there's so many fibrous in here and I'm lifting a
huge amount of material to get this out and you can see it steaming as well. So it just gives an idea
of what's going on in this heap.
I'll just shake that off. These tools, by the way, if you have a
not very big heap and you don't want to turn that's a useful tool because as it pushes down
in that, these blades close and then when you pull up they open again.
So if we now move on, that's the current heap which has been going for
about a month and
When I say green and brown, it's got green is like fresh leaves, anything fresh really
including actually fresh manure and coffee grounds are green because they're quite high nitrogen, and
brown is all any old woody stuff, which includes paper, cardboard, twigs,
wood chips if you have some but not too many and
preferably a bit decomposed, and soil is also a brown. So balancing all of those
gives us something like
this we hope. So this heap
I've got all the dates written up here. So it's always a useful reminder
started third of August finished 20 September
We're now the 23rd of October and this was turned on the 11th of October. So that's just 12 days ago and
This heap on average since the median of these two dates is around the 20th of August. So this heap is only two months old
compost
And look at this the difference compared to what I just showed you before
So you can see it's still steaming. It's still warm
It was warm when we turned it around 45 50
centigrade that's
115 120 25 Fahrenheit and
That's starting to break down nicely and then if we go on one here
So this compost is now older this was made middle of June to late July
Turned in here on the 7th of September. So this is safe three and a half four months old compost its, really
Starting. Well, it's basically that's usable compost now
that's
I'd be very happy to
Put this on the ground, even though if you look at the top you can see bits of wood, you know
This is from the woody bits. We deliberately put in because
Fibrous bits like that of woody stuff ligneous stuff
Keep the structure of the heap and stop it getting too airless. That thing about oxygen
always in here and that relates actually to moisture so much and
The roof has really helped I feel but this year, we've had quite a lot of rain recently in this would definitely be getting soggy
This heap now was made between May 1st and middle of June
So this is five or six months old and you know, it's actually almost starting to look a bit
Soil like partly because of the soil we put in
Which I've got a big heap in reserve and that really helps actually since I've been putting a bit more soil in
That the texture has got more
friable and
This is the oldest heap of all here quite hard to get the water
But I just can get enough to show you what's going on. I mean, you know any gardener would be very happy with that
I certainly am and
I'll put it on without any sieving just on the ground because there are still some lumps
Especially where it's a bit dry on top
but I would say the moisture levels looking good actually and
This compost is only seven months old. If you can manage to make compost like this you'll be so happy, but
In a small garden do bear in mind. It won't be quite so easy actually here
Obviously, there's more material needed to fill these bays
This area is serving a garden of 3/4 of an acre or 3,000 square meters. So that's quite a big chunk of ground to feed
Well, actually not a huge amount this we can make in a year about six tons of compost which includes material I bring in
Including spent hops from a brewery brought down by a friend the coffee grounds
Last week we even went to mow the neighbor's lawn, you know, it's like hey
She was happy and I just wanted more ingredients for the heap
So I'm bringing you some stuff but I reckon about 3/4 probably is coming from the garden here
So if you've got a smaller garden
you'd want a much smaller heat and that's where they like the plastic containers and
That you can actually just lift off when they're full are very good
and if you allied one of those to a tool like that and
Just turn it every so often to keep the air in there and keep it mixed because those plastic containers do get rather
Watertight and hold in the moisture and can't go soggy if you're not careful
And if you get soggy compost a really good remedy is put in some scrambled paper of any kind
Just crumple it up loosely put it in and then mix it up a bit with your soggy
Ingredients say with something like that will really help and it it's only towards the end that you will find any worms
Oh, I haven't actually noticed any in doing this
Now, but last time I was in here I was seeing worms and I find that they do come in
Towards the end, you know
Most of the first three heaps are still too warm for them and then as it cools down you start to get worms
But that's another story because worm compost does not work like this. It's just degraded or decomposed by worms
This is about more than anything about bacterial decomposition
And the one other type is fungal decomposition, which would be like leaf mold. For example
Because that's just woody stuff breaking down very slowly and you could make lovely compost from woodchips, but it takes about two years
So this this is compost making taking about six to eight months and almost everything you can see here will be on
homeacres beds by Christmas