JERRY: Compost is something you hear a lot about
on Gardening Australia,
and it's easy to see why.
It improves the drainage, fertility,
water-holding capacity of your soil
and it stores carbon.
What's best of all is it's free and easy to make,
and that means you're not sending kitchen scraps and garden waste
to the tip.
I have three working compost bins on the go all year round.
One is my kitchen waste bin,
and right next door is my leaf mould mix,
while the third is busily decomposing my general garden waste.
Kitchen waste is often wet and nitrogen-rich
compared to general garden waste,
and that means heaps can sometimes become soggy and smelly.
Now, a way of balancing this
is to each layer of kitchen waste you add a dryer layer of material
and you build up the layers rather like making a lasagne.
And a good lasagne should be moist and not sloppy.
After each layer of kitchen scraps I add a layer of bamboo leaves.
These are dry and carbon-rich
and they help to balance out the moisture content of the compost,
helping it to break down.
Now, if a compost heap still smells,
then you need to add more dry material.
My leaf mould compost is slightly easier to manage.
This garden staple is fully decayed composted leaves.
It's as useful as peat moss.
It's traditionally made from
the fallen leaves from winter deciduous trees,
but here in Brisbane, I don't have that luxury.
Bamboo leaves are brilliant,
and lawn clippings can accelerate composting.
I use fallen evergreen leaves,
and this is what they look like after four months of composting.
Now, when it's fully mature,
I like to use leaf mould
for mulching rainforest and forest plants,
and also to use it as a top dressing
for things like gingers and begonias.
(PEACEFUL MUSIC)
The lasagne technique is also important
for my general garden waste bin.
Now, when you start a compost heap,
the first layer should be something like straw.
Now, this is important because it allows water to go through
and oxygen in,
and it stops the heap from smelling.
Now, the next layer can be just general vegetable waste -
there's a couple of tomatoes and bits of cabbage in there -
and that starts the composting process.
The following layer, I've used dry, brown, woody vines here.
Now, the vines are carbon-rich,
and that's the food that fungi crave,
and they're the other component to making really good compost.
And then you make successive layers of that
until the compost heap is full.
And it's really important just to keep it damp,
so that the composting is even.
I also use my general waste compost bin
for breaking down horse manure.
It's an important step before adding it to my garden.
Composting allows me to break down any weed seeds,
worm treatments, or persistent herbicides.
Every time I add a layer of horse manure,
I top that up with a layer of dry leaves or sugar cane mulch,
and then I dampen the heap.
Consider what's being trimmed and tidied in your garden
so you can achieve the right balance as you build your compost heap.
To help keep my compost factory ticking over,
I've commandeered some extra help.
Everybody knows that compost worms live in and help to make compost,
but I've enlisted a different species,
one I think works extremely well in every climate zone.
They're Surinam cockroaches,
and they live in all of my compost bins.
They were given to me by a local community garden.
And they work quite happily and coexist peacefully
alongside compost worms.
And they make great housemates
because they only live in leaf litter and compost.
While my kitchen compost is the fastest to decompose,
I get about four bins a year.
That's around two tonnes.
My leaf mould is the slowest.
I get around a quarter of a tonne a year.
But my general waste compost bin,
that produces another three tonnes of compost each year,
and that means I've got plenty of organic matter
to feed my hungry veggie beds.
But not everything in my garden makes good compost fodder.
Some things refuse to die in a compost heap,
and they get consigned into my sin bin.
Things like dragon fruit and cassava
will sprout if I put them into a compost heap.
And then there's a garden classic,
mother-in-law's tongue.
Every single cutting is capable of growing
in a compost heap,
so what I do is I consign them into a dark, damp space,
inside my sin bin.
Now, when this is full,
I'll put a few litres of water in and they will rot.
That may be a little bit smelly,
but in a few months' time,
I've got mulch which I can put around a fruit tree
or I can put it back into a compost bin
to go through another cycle.
Nothing escapes my sin bin.
Good compost is the cornerstone of any productive garden.
In this garden, I add compost to the soil
before I sow or plant a crop.
Now, you don't need to take my word for it.
Just look at the results!