Hello, today I'm going to move these compost bays. I'm Liz Zorab and this is Byther Farm.
So first thing I'm doing is moving all these sticks, which I had put
in with the turkeys when they still had leaves on them,. This is a corkscrew
willow. So I'm going to keep these sticks because they're really good for growing peas up.
And then all I need to do is untie the various different bits of
baling twine I've got fixing this together and where
I can't untie it and I will cut it. I use bailing twine to tie them together where
I can because it means that I can reuse it multiple times.
Now this, as I said, was
the outer wall of the poultry run and so it had this netting attached to it.
And I'm going to prise the netting off gently. It was only fixed on with a few staples,
it was more to discourage them and dissuade them from exiting through
the gaps when they were little, but not when they were bigger. So here we go.
We're very lucky in that we can buy these pallets from a local
company for, well it's a donation actually, of a pound per pallet and
they are about seven and a half feet maybe eight feet long and 3 feet high.
And they are absolutely great for using as fencing, but also to make these really
nice large compost bays with. So that's one, I'll move that over.
My thoughts had
been about how far back I put the compost heaps, because I want to keep
this hedge reasonably neat, so I don't want to go, I don't want to put it, too
far into the garden. I think about there would do. I will need to cut the hedge
back, but then it needs cutting back anyway. And it needs cutting back so that
that encourages new growth and makes it a thicker hedge. Do I want it this way around?
I think I'm going to have it so that these struts going across are on the outside.
Then I can actually use this space for creating compost as well.
And I'm choosing to have the pallets that come out, sitting against this one at the
back, so that when I put one in the middle, it's all about an even size.
But what I do need to do is go and get the baling twine as it's not going to work with the
rubber band that's in my pocket!
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So I'm literally just
trying it together with the baling twine and holding it together like that.
A couple of good knots and that will keep that secure.
And I'll do one a bit lower down as well.
I'm not going to do one at the very bottom because one of the
things I've learned over time is that if I put them at the very bottom, when stuff
grows around it and when it's full of compost, I find it really hard to get
undone again if I need to. So halfway point I think is plenty.
There's the bit of give there.
I think that will be okay, by the time it's got a piece across the
front, it should be fine. Normally when I'm making a compost heap
but I would put twiggy material or straw in the bottom of it to allow lots of air
to circulate and for the worms to come up through. I'm not going to do that today
because there's actually quite a lot of pernicious weeds on the ground here.
So I'm going to put a layer of cardboard,
it's only a single layer, but there is a particularly unpleasant thistle there,
so I'm covering that over. And on this side it's quite a lot of couch grass
which is, oh I would like to say the bane of my life, but
to be honest, there are worse things in life, but it is a nuisance. However I do
like it when this happens, this cardboard is exactly the right
width to sit in this compost bay. That really doesn't happen very often! There we go.
Look at that, I don't think that's ever happened, but it isn't quite the right length let's try it...
Now, cardboard can be quite readily obtained from a local garden center, lots
of shops will let you have it. One of the really good places to get quite
large sheets of cardboard are things like cycle shops that sell pushbikes, because
they often come in very large sheets of cardboard. But I have noticed, here, is
still a piece of sticky tape and we don't want to put the sticky tape
into the ground. That's not going to break down anytime -
well I'm not going to say anytime, but it's not gonna break down
anytime soon.
So there we go, that should if nothing else, it will slow down any
weed growth coming up through the compost and that's it's good enough for me!
So that doesn't look like couch grass
and I can't even see any stinging nettles so that's good.
Right and now I need to think about starting to fill these a little bit.
I've got some materials to bring over that are waiting to go straight in there and
I also need to bring the pallet to go along the front.
When you make your pallets, be really careful you don't end up shutting yourself inside it!
There we go. Now I'll
get some baling twine and fix this front on. When I first started making these
compost heaps from these pallets, I didn't put the front on and I would load it up, and it
would all just spill out to the front. And I've learnt now that I prefer to do
it so that I've actually created the box, load everything in using a pitchfork.
And again I'm going to tie this in a bow on the outside, so that when I want to take
the front off to scoop the contents out, it's more easy to access.
There we go. Now it doesn't need to be absolutely rigid and a bit like
everything here, I'm quite happy that it's a temporary structure.
I might get one more piece of baling twine and fix it at the center but I'm quite
happy with it as it is for now.
If you want some other ideas of where you can
get materials free and you can produce your own veg for free, my friend Huw
has got a new book coming out in February, the beginning of March in America,
called Grow Food For Free and it is full of really useful advice of how to access
free resources.
So growing your own food doesn't have to cost a fortune, in fact it can
cost you nothing.
Here on the other side of the Patrons' Garden, so it goes market
garden, Patrons' Garden, vegetable garden - on the boundary of the vegetable
garden I've done the same thing. I've created a whole wall out of pallets
and each one is either a compost bay or a storage area, like the water
collection behind me, or with plants - so this is a floral display, mostly of roses .
Anyway here is the compost heap that I started making the year before last. And in the
autumn I piled a whole load of stuff in on it. And what's in there from the year before
last, at the bottom, I am hoping is now really well broken down. This is fairly
cold composting, it doesn't get up to a really good heat. I haven't covered it so
it's got quite wet and therefore quite cold with the rain, but it does have the
time just to sit here. So the top layer is what I put in in the autumn, that I'm
going to move into the new compost bay, and hopefully I can then harvest, for
want of a better phrase, the oldest compost.
So I've taken the ties off the corners.
Wow! The number of worms here is absolutely incredible!
Now then worms, in you go my dears, that's it.
I will be putting this back
together to carry on using this as a compost heap when I've emptied it out, so
I'm not going to worry too much about moving the worms out of the way, because
they can go back to that compost heap shortly.
Wow, this looks great! So I'm just
going to take the top few inches off this, of the material that went on in the autumn.
And also we have a bucket in the kitchen, so all my vegetable peelings and
everything go into that to come on here.
And you can see there's some quite big sticks in here. This would compost much
quicker, much faster if I broke these down. Obviously I'll haven't, I also don't
worry about it too much. They will break down over time, it will just take longer.
But in the meantime they will allow the compost heap to have more air in it, so
the finer material doesn't just become a heavy stodge.
And the other thing I'm
going to do is I'm just making sure that I take a few of those worms across to
the new heap, so they can live in that and do their thing in that heap.
These are all the raspberry canes that I cut down in the autumn, so they're not likely
to have broken down yet. In this top layer is some chicken bedding which
is great for the compost heap and it's high in
nitrogen, but also quite high in brown materials - in carbon materials.
So here you can see, oh there's a load of worms there, this is melon that we've
had in the kitchen. Okay I'm going to get this on the on the new heap.
So the materials that were on top now become the lower layers.
So I thought I'd have a look at what's really going on in
this compost heap. It was up to about here with the bean plants and raspberry
canes I cut down during the autumn, and then there was that layer of chicken
bedding and beneath that chicken bedding and kitchen scraps is the compost
that has been created over the last year.
Still I can see it as chicken bedding,
and then below that, well, this is incredible!
It's very wet because I
didn't have this covered. If this had been covered to stop all rain getting
through, this would be a fine crumbly mixture. I'm really happy with
this as it is. I can see it's teeming with life, there are loads of worms,
insects and from that I'm going to take that there are billions of microbes in here,
microorganisms all doing their thing.
This will be paying superb on the soil. I will get some of this onto the raised beds.
I'm really pleased with it. There is that thing where I get astounded by how clever nature is.
Basically what it's done is it's taken all the the leaves and the branches and
everything that would normally fall off a tree and has created that fabulous soil
that we have in a woodland. In a woodland it's not going to be made up of melon skins
and duck bedding, chicken bedding, but it's the same principle and this, this is just lovely!