(upbeat music)
- Ways of holding your compost in a heap.
Yeah, could you make it just on the ground
without any enclosure, that's feasible,
but you won't get very good decomposition to the side,
it probably won't get so hot,
and it'll take up quite a bit of space.
Generally, having some sides of some kind
makes for a nice result.
Then it's a question of what kind of size
or what kind of enclosure to use?
We've been doing some comparisons at Homeacres this spring
of using different types of compost bay
or bin.
And this is starting with the plastic ones.
Like, there are different types of plastic enclosures
that you can buy.
This is in the slightly larger size.
You can also have the smaller round dialect ones,
which taper up to a point.
The volume they hold is quite a bit less than this
because being square right at the top
means this one holds 0.6 cubic meters
volume.
It's quite a bit of compost.
In weight terms that could be up to half a ton, maybe,
if it was quite damp.
And the issue more is, you know, how you get it out.
And also how hot will this get?
And what I discovered is that this volume of compost
is still not really enough to get really hot.
When I say really hot,
I'm talking about 55 centigrade or over that,
so maybe one 120 Fahrenheit,
which is enough to kill weed seeds.
Now you can make a nice compost below those temperatures
without hardly any warmth at all,
that will make nice compost, it just takes longer.
And you will have, any weed seeds that you put in
will still be there when you spread the compost.
It's not the end of the world.
You know, you can still use it,
and especially with no dig.
When the compost is on top,
the weed seeds that develop are very easy to pull out,
or you can run a rake through the surface
in the early spring, say when it's dry
and a breezy day,
and you can kill them when they're very small,
just for example.
So I don't want to put you off
making small amounts of compost
that might have weed seeds in.
I just wanna show the ways of getting around that
and the options that there are.
And this one, I found that the temperature
has not gone above 50 centigrade,
and it's mostly 40 centigrade or below
it's in the range 100 to 150 Fahrenheit, roughly.
So we know there's probably
gonna be some weed seeds in there,
depending how many we put in.
And another issue with these enclosed,
very enclosed spaces is
(chuckles)
humidity.
If you put in a lot of green matter,
it's going to be quite soggy probably,
but that's why,
you can see there's quite a bit of wood in here.
And although that might seem annoying
when you're spreading it,
actually, I don't mind that at all.
Wood in compost that you spread on your beds,
carries on decomposing in a fungal manner
and it's adding goodness to the soil in that way.
So we never sieve compost.
I'm not worried if it's a little bit lumpy.
And in fact, some of this we have spread already
because I wanted a bit on the new ground over there.
I wanted a bit of micros more than anything,
which I reckon this one's got plenty of.
So if we just have a look,
the first ingredients went into this heap on,
three months ago, exactly,
towards the end of April.
We're now, end of July.
April, May, June, July,
yeah, that's right, three months.
So it's not old.
And yet, you can see it has decomposed pretty well.
This is from towards the bottom.
I've scraped off the top,
which was still quite green
and put that actually in our current other heaps
to carry on decomposing.
And yeah, I mean, I'm pretty happy with that.
You know, that's usable.
It's not perfect compost,
but it is usable at that stage, if you want to,
or you've got the option to leave it longer.
And that's where the roof is good
because it keeps out the excess rain.
This normally has a roof that fell off
because what happened was,
last week I was taking,
I experimented with this door
'cause they've got the door at the bottom of these heaps
and that's, you take out the door,
and then the idea is you can scoop out, somehow,
the compost at the bottom.
I use this fork mainly.
So I put it in like that and kind of leave it out,
the compost I could get out and fill the wheelbarrow,
got a whole barrow full of compost from that.
And then I didn't have time to spread it at the time,
we were waiting to harvest potatoes actually,
before I used it.
So I left the barrow here.
I left that door open.
And when I came back the next day,
it had all fallen apart, and the top bit of plastic
had fallen off, and the side was coming out
and the top was loose.
So they're just here waiting to be reassembled
once we get this compost out,
but it highlights really the slight flimsiness
of this structure.
It's not the strongest and it's only thin plastic.
And so that's one reason
it's never gonna hold a huge amount of heat.
It's, you know, plastic,
it's not a great,
it's quite a conductor of heat actually,
from what I can see anyway.
So the heat flows out the side a bit.
Yeah. (chuckles)
Apart from that, it's still making nice compost,
but when you do use bins like this, I would say,
be careful to get enough woody material in there,
that will really help to keep the heap open
and it not to be too soggy.
And for comparison now, let's have a look at a heap
that we assembled at the same time as this one arrived.
So middle April.
And over there, we can see the results
of using that, which is made of pallets.
(bright music)
So,
by comparison.
Here, we have a nice
three-bay set up
and all
created with
12 sides
of which are old pallets.
And we actually knocked
the protruding side of each pallet off.
And
you could use whole pallets,
you know, that's fine.
And actually I've seen nice work
where people put in plants in that space
like flowers and things.
We did that at the No Dig Garden
at Hampton Court Palace, actually.
So that's an option, but it does take up more space.
And particularly, if you've got a side between bins
that you got that extra space taken up,
which is something and nothing.
Anyway, so these are the tops of pallets
and they're simply wired together at the corners,
that is all.
There's no post in the ground.
They're not anchored to the ground in anyway at all.
Underneath is simply soil and weeds.
When we made
these three-bays,
which was just three months ago,
this was still very weedy.
I mean it still is, there's bindweed here,
the roots are still here.
There's some brambles, they're still trying to grow a bit.
There's thistles and nettles and bits of grass, couch grass,
you know, everything you don't want in a garden.
But actually the compost heap
and its materials on top of that
is enough to kill pretty much whatever weeds you have.
So there's nothing under here.
There's no cardboard under the heap,
there's no concrete, it's just on the soil.
And this is just loose frames held together with a wire,
top and bottom at each corner.
It's as simple as that.
So this is the current heap,
which we've already filled this year.
And last week we turned it into the middle heap here.
We'll look at that in a minute.
And then the heap that we filled
second to this one is that one there,
finished just a week ago.
And this one, when that one finished,
we started this one again, having emptied it into there.
So current heap,
second, third.
And then when that one finishes,
we'll turn that one into the middle as well.
So just have a quick look at the current heap.
I'll just mention, one or two things like,
see what we're putting in here.
That's roots of bindweed, fine to compost.
They all disappear.
They're not invincible.
And it's not only about having heap.
These heaps do get hotter though than the plastic bin,
but we were putting a lot of bindweed in there actually,
and it's disappeared
and that's without going above 50 centigrade
and mostly below 40.
So just think about that for a minute
and how that probably contradicts
everything you've been told about what you can compost.
There's a lot of myths and misunderstandings
about how you make compost
and what you can add to a compost,
and how it needs to be.
Another one is the slatted sides.
'Cause it's often said that air needs to flow in the sides.
It doesn't really, you know,
it's pretty static.
And what I find is good, we've got cardboard,
it's fallen down a bit with the wind,
but basically that's,
I keep these sides lined with cardboard
and that keeps in the moisture in dry weather,
keeps in the warmth right to the edge
or as much as possible to the edge.
So you get a more even decomposition
when you insulate, if you like,
the side with some cardboard,
big pieces of cardboard,
really useful for this job.
And then
looking at the next one.
Oh, the temperature in there,
I forgot to mention that's 40 degrees at the moment.
So this heap has been going only a week
and it's just already building up some momentum.
One thing I do when I first fill these heaps
is I actually get in them and walk on the materials
after about a week or so,
a week or two, to firm them down.
Once you get higher up, they settle
and the heat is going in
and you don't need to do that, but you still need
to tamp it down a bit.
It doesn't want to be firm down and the pieces not too big
that you're putting in.
This one its reading, the thermometer,
which is over a foot long,
in the middle its reading 50 centigrade.
That's
nearly 115 Fahrenheit.
And it's been over 60 for most of the time
that we filled this heap, which took about seven weeks.
And that was a lot of material.
These heaps are 1.1 meter cube volume.
So that's nearly twice the volume
of that plastic bin that we saw first.
So there's quite a bit of compost here
and to fill heaps like this,
this was up to the top when we finished it,
you need a lot of material,
just don't underestimate that if you're new
to compost making.
And even on a full-sized British allotment,
which is 1/16 of an acre.
I reckon to run a three-bay system like this ongoing
you'd need to be bringing in material from outside,
like coffee grounds from restaurants
or other people's weeds, whatever.
Don't be afraid of weeds.
You know, they're all good.
It's all good to compost.
So this heap is then gonna turn into that
in about a month's time on top of what you see here.
We undid these wires before starting,
oh, almost undid them.
And so I can take this out and show you what is here.
So you can see the cardboard lining
is conveniently holding it in place.
We've put cardboard on top as well,
just to hold in a bit more warmth.
It doesn't stop the rain going in.
If it comes to winter, if this was still compost,
I would put some kind of corrugated steel roof over,
or at least a sheet of polythene over the top
to keep the winter rain off,
that's when it can get soggy.
At the moment in summer, it's not,
I would say, not a problem,
but also it's not a problem because we've been putting in
a decent amount of wood as you saw in the previous heap.
So this has had similar ingredients, materials to before
and the temperature is still,
even though it's getting older now,
three months old in places,
temperature is still 40 centigrade.
So showing how it's still working,
and this is what we've got.
You can see it's pretty nice compost.
Oh and look, there's a bindweed.
(chuckles)
That's the root of bindweed that has survived.
That can go back in the current heap.
That would have been just one or two,
probably one that was actually growing from the ground
into the compost bin.
But you know, I'm not fazed by that.
It's not the problem that is sometimes made out
because when you're no dig, putting compost on top,
you see those roots, like I did there.
It's just bright, white and shiny,
and it's not gonna suddenly fill your garden
with bindweed.
So what we've got is all the goodness
from those bindweed roots in this heap.
Fantastic.
I'm really pleased with what I'm seeing there.
There's another bit of bindweed.
That one is, looks like it's on the way out there.
'Cause it is pretty warm in here.
In the middle, it's probably 45 centigrade.
So, there we have it, the three-bay approach.
So it's keeping this middle one empty at the beginning.
This was empty until last week
when we turned that one into it.
And then in a month's time,
we'll turn this bay ingredients on top of that,
take out this cardboard first,
so we'll have a really full amount of compost,
well, over a ton, I would say,
for using later in the autumn.
And meanwhile, we can fill that one and finish it
and fill that one and finish it.
And then once we've spread the ingredients of this one,
we can turn that one into there, and so it goes on.
So this is one way of managing a three-bay system.
And I'm just a bit nervous of this,
no that's okay.
Right.
I will come back soon though and put this in,
but first I want to show you
the current, my normal composting system,
which is larger scale again.
(bright music)
So we had to take a slight pause there,
there was a torrential shower
just as we were finishing that section, luckily,
and before starting this one.
So here we are at my main composting area
for Homeacres Garden, which is now over an acre of ground
4,000 square meters.
So there's a lot of material going into these heaps,
including grass mowings and all the vegetable wastes
and tree prunings.
I have a shredder as well.
And so I'm always looking to get
quite a bit of woody waste in there, as well as the green.
And these
bays are each 1.5 by 1.8 meters,
that's five by six feet.
And by the time we've filled them up,
that's close to three meter cube volume,
and that's three times what we can fit
in one of those pallet bays to give you an idea.
It's just quite small increases in
size,
massively ramps up the volume.
And that means the heat,
once we get a bit of warmth in here,
which takes a few days after the first fill,
it tends to hold it and then compost very quickly,
everything else that we had,
in the summer, particularly not so much in the winter,
'cause there's less green matter going on.
And in fact, the thermometer here,
I put in just before, is reading 70 centigrade,
that's
155 Fahrenheit.
It's a little bit warmer than,
well, that's as warm as I like to go, really.
Above 70 centigrade you could be losing
some fungal quality in your compost.
And that means you need to add more brown.
And it's a bit the same down there.
You see at the bottom of the heap,
actually it's reading around 60 centigrade,
that's 140 Fahrenheit, that's okay.
But the roof on here, it's about keeping the compost,
not dry, but avoiding it getting soggy,
and in our climate, it's just started to run again now,
that can be the problem, that moisture displaces air.
And so if it gets too wet,
you'll make smelly compost basically,
which is saveable by spreading it on ground
and leaving it exposed to air.
But it won't ever be quite such good quality
as if you can keep it moist, but not too wet.
And if I just lift up a bit of compost here,
just give you, well, it's not compost,
what we've added over the last,
well, actually only very recently,
most of this went on, quirky,
just in the last day.
I don't know if you can see the steam coming out there now.
Already, that is warm.
Just taking off this top layer of what,
I mean, literally that's one days additions at the moment.
So that's tops of onions,
'cause we're harvesting a lot of onions,
having the roof means we've got a nice area
for keeping them dry,
bits a cardboard for brown, this
I wanna get some more wood in here this afternoon.
So it's a good old mixture.
And
the way this works here is that we fill these bays
over a period of time,
however long it takes according to the time of year,
that one took five weeks,
finished just over two weeks ago.
And then that, we shall turn that into the bay next to it.
And probably in about six weeks time, there's no rush.
And once it's cooled down a bit,
and then that will be usable sometime in the autumn.
This one, we only started,
I keep the dates up here,
which is always useful actually,
as a reminder, 12th of July, today's 28th.
So 16 days to fill that, that's the fastest time of year,
we will get to the top here.
You know, literally,
we'll probably be up to there before it sinks a bit
in about two weeks, I should think.
This will be about five week fill
and then we'll move on to the next one.
And then each one in turn, gets turned once.
One turn, that's quite enough.
And in fact, just yesterday,
Edward, who's filming,
was turning, having a workout,
instead of going go to the gym,
the heap that was made this last spring, this spring,
and after about six weeks or so,
that settled and cooled down,
and we just lift out the sides,
these are, it's all temporary here though,
just one screw at the most, holding it in
and lift out the side
and then he turned that into the bay next door.
And you can see that compost there
is on average, three months old,
and it is looking really pretty nice.
You know, you could use compost like that.
On the whole though, I prefer to leave it a bit longer,
but you've got a big window of opportunity.
If you live it too long,
it condenses into much less obviously.
I like to use it
when there's still some visible organic matter.
We never sieve it.
And I hope you've enjoyed
having a look at some of these structures
and giving you ideas for how you can make
lovely compost as well.
(bright music)