- I'm sharing with you simple methods
to make great compost.
It's a cheap system to assemble.
Three bays and you'll see what we put in the heaps
and how we treat them ongoing,
and how quickly you get some lovely result.
I'm making compost in lots of different ways
and my garden's quite large.
It's an acre and a half now,
and I've got bigger bays behind me
where I make most of the compost.
And then I started writing a book last April
about 18 months ago.
It's coming out in this autumn, "No Dig."
And there's quite a bit about making compost in there.
And we decided to do this 'cause it speaks to many people.
So an allotment size, medium garden size,
rather than the large ones.
And then if you're a smaller garden,
you could have something like a Dalek.
And the principles are very similar
how you assemble the ingredients.
This one, it's a little bit specific,
the details of how we treat each heap,
and it's actually four bays in three.
So, for example, this bay here
never receives any fresh material.
We add to two outer heaps and turn them into the middle.
We first of all make the heaps by getting some pallets.
We actually knock the bottoms off.
I find then that's easier to get.
You've got easier access to the heap.
They're lighter to handle.
And the only way they're secured at the corners
is two bits of wire for most of them.
So eight bits a wire, four pallet frames,
you've got your heap.
There's nothing securing it to the ground in any way.
There's no posts on the corners.
They were placed in the beginning
on some pretty tenacious weeds like bindweed,
couch grass, stingy nettles.
And we didn't put any cardboard under the heap
'cause the composting material is fantastic mulch.
I did put cardboard around them
just to tame the weeds a bit.
We've still got some bindweed there but not too much.
So, you know, you haven't gotta do
elaborate site preparation.
It's really good on soil.
You don't need concrete underneath or anything.
You'll read a lot of stuff about compost making
which in my view makes it unnecessarily complicated.
It's actually really simple once you understand the process.
And then, you have a very good chance of achieving a result.
Something like this.
So that is four and a half months old.
It came out of the heap there
which was filled between March and April.
We're doing roughly two months per heap.
That's just what we do here.
You might take three or four months
to fill a heap like that, and that's fine.
All the timings and exact proportions of material
you've gotta adjust according to what you have.
Don't make it too difficult for yourself.
You know, there's no perfect list of ingredients.
There's no perfect timings or anything like that.
But I'll give you the principles.
So that's a heap turned once.
I find that turning a heap once,
which turning just means moving basically.
We undo these two wires.
You can swing open the front pallet
and then you've got access.
Basically that's like a doorway in.
And with a manure fork, which is much easier to use
than a digging fork, It's got longer prongs, they're curved,
just fork it out and shake out any lumps.
That lets in a bit more air.
And if you come across any dry pockets
give them a bit of water.
So you gotta heap then that you can leave
until you're ready to use it.
This is August and that compost is ready to use for me,
but I'm not gonna use it yet 'cause we don't need it.
So what we're gonna do next actually
is put this heap on top
so the two outer bays both go into the middle.
And you can get more of an idea here
about the amount of wood we're putting in.
It's quite a bit.
Possibly that's even a bit too much actually.
But, you know, it's all relative.
When we spread this compost, it's no dig,
and it's just gonna go on top.
So any woody bits end up
as a sort of a very thin woody mulch,
which actually is fine.
It works really well.
You just don't want it too thick.
We don't sieve this compost before using it.
It just goes on like that.
I think though I'm pretty sure
that we've got more wood on top here.
It was just the finishing layer.
If I just go down a bit there.
Yeah, there we can see.
Now I'm feeling the temperature there is slightly warm.
There's a bit of un-decomposed something,
like a brassica stork probably.
And all of this will then be turned into the middle bay
and sit on top of what's there already.
That is fine.
We find that is absolutely fine
'cause it won't be long
before this one is also pretty much ready to use.
So actually by October, November
we can empty this, put it on the beds
and we'll have a good tonne of lovely compost.
And this that I showed you there
is only two and a half months old.
So that was made in March, or May and June.
I'm doing it in two months now just.
Obviously, we can control this a bit
'cause we got a lot of material
and we'll put it in other compost bays as well.
But it just helps to clarify what you can do
and how you make it.
So this is now going to the assemblinger heap
and I've got some buckets of materials
to illustrate a few things.
And you'll notice also
that we have cardboard around the edge.
And I know this contradicts what is commonly said
that you should have slatted sides to a compost heap
to let the air in.
I find that's not true at all.
Actually, you don't want that.
You know, imagine in the dry summer we've just had,
if you had air flowing into your compost heap,
it would just dry out and you want moisture.
So actually the cardboard keeps moisture in there
and it keeps warmth in closer to the side as well.
It's insulating as well.
And it's slowly decays,
and we'll then add it to the heap
when it's not serving this purpose anymore.
So that's one possible ingredient.
And then I put this here,
I'll just mention this since it's here.
This is an optional extra.
I'm thinking to do this next time we assemble the heap.
If you have a part of,
any kind of object in the middle,
a fence post would suffice actually,
and then you remove it after filling the heap,
you've got an air hole.
This is an optional extra.
You know, there are so many things you can do
and I love the comments to these videos.
Thank you very much for everything you contribute
because that's what I noticed with compost making.
Pretty well everybody has a slightly different way
of doing it and there are so many variations
and I learn from them as well.
And do read the comments actually
'cause you know a lot of people say that.
There's a lot of really good stuff there.
So what do you actually put in and in what proportions?
I'll mention layering first.
Layering is not a sort of gospel thing you have to do,
but because all these different ingredients
have different qualities,
some are dry and woody and some are fresh and leafy,
it's good if you're putting in a large amount
of one or other of those categories.
Say you're mowing your grass
and you've got a lot of grass mowings,
I would put a layer of maybe seven centimetres maybe
and then a thinner layer, maybe one or two centimetres
of something twiggy, woody, paper scrumpled a bit,
cardboard, anything like that, dry leaves.
So dry stuff a bit brown, fibrous, that's your brown.
That's a smaller volume
and the green stuff is bigger volume.
But in terms of dry matter,
this is where it can get confusing.
In terms of dry matter, it's probably about half and half,
but I'm going by what we see.
So what we see is more volume of leafy stuff.
So that's your main ingredient.
And then, not everything is pure leaf.
You know here's a courgette leaf
that I was cutting off the plant this morning.
This is not a vital thing to do,
but it was more that it was in the way
so it got a bit of mildew on.
Old leaf basically.
So this green leaf has some fresh green,
but it also has a fibrous stem.
And so there's a bit of brown in there as well.
And this is why it's actually impossible,
pretty much impossible to quantify what you put in.
And I can only give you guidelines
and then you can have a play
because this is a very creative thing to do.
And that's one of my favourite comments
where people express how much they love making compost.
You know, it's almost like an addictive thing
that you do for joy.
You'll see here there's a bit of grass
that I removed from a pathway earlier on.
That's fine to put in.
It might be better if it was broken up a bit.
But that's got some soil.
Soils are brown as well.
So this is green I'm putting on here.
It's also pleasingly damp
although it's been a very dry summer.
That was gathered with some dew on.
Whereas here we have some quite dry green.
And I'll mention this just because I think a lot of people
are afraid of putting stuff like this on their heaps.
That's bindweed with roots.
I was doing some removal of bindweed yesterday evening.
Quite a lot.
That is fine to put on.
Even if your heap's cold actually.
These heaps do get warm.
I will mention heat in a minute in more detail, heat.
And so I'm just spreading that around a bit.
And then here we got some seedy stuff,
like, that looks like snapdragon antirrhinum gone to seed.
There's some marigolds gone to seed.
Flower seed, here's some Phacelia mollis, seedy stuff.
If you want to put a lot of seeds on
and not have them regrowing in your garden
that's where you need the temperature.
You don't need the temperature interestingly
for things like bindweed root.
I've got rid of that.
It disappears over a winter even when the heaps are not hot.
Heat doesn't happen automatically.
Heat happens when you put insufficient green material
and more in the summer months
just 'cause you have green material.
So that's when you'll find your heat.
Don't worry if your heaps don't get hot, you know,
but you'll see this one, we've got a thermometer in there.
It's reading actually in a really good place.
It's between 55 and 70 is an ideal temperature
because that will kill weed season.
But it's not too hot.
I think actually this is one reason these heaps
make a slightly better compost in my experience
compared to my slightly larger heaps which get a bit hotter
and they're often at 65, 70.
You don't really want to go more than that.
And if you do, try adding a bit of water
and a bit more brown, a bit less green.
And here we have quite a lot deadheading.
Dahlias, marigolds, more marigolds stems.
So I was pruning the back of it.
Something like that is half green, half brown.
You know, if you had a whole bin full of that, a whole bay,
that would probably make nice compost.
So it's a question of balancing these as you go.
Coffee grounds, people ask a lot about.
That's great to compost.
I would much rather put coffee grounds
in the compost than on the ground
where they go full of fungus. and they are a green.
They're slightly odd because they look brown,
but they're a green.
Another green is fresh manure.
Fresh horse manure, in particular,
and that gets hot as well.
So that's a way of having hot compost in the winter
if you got a horse.
And size, I do wanna mention this
because a bit of a shame, but we're so dry here
I'm actually cutting out one
or two sunflowers I planted in May
because they're very greedy for moisture
and I've still got plenty.
But this one I felt was one too many.
So what I'm doing here is trimming it
because I'm doing this just to make this point.
It would not work to put that on like that
because that, especially if you put two
or three of those on,
that's creating a lattice effect of structure
which will hold too much air.
Much as we like air, you do not want too much air.
And so, cut your woody fibrous pieces into small lengths.
It doesn't have to be as small as that.
In fact, if you have a shredder, I do have a shredder.
Do check out some of my earlier videos on this.
I show you using a shredder
and a lawnmower as well actually.
A really good mobile shredder
for things like broad bean stalks.
And you could do this as well.
And, in fact, any kind of breaking of the fibre
is good like that because that lets in.
What we're doing here is helping it to bed down
and letting in bacteria and fungi into the stem.
And one last thing actually is easier to show with that one,
you can cut really woody stems more easily lengthwise.
This has got so woody now it's very difficult to cut across,
but lengthwise that's opened it up very nicely.
And then just make sure, I find always when I'm adding,
I'm nearly always pushing things to the side
because if you not careful, you end up with a dome.
So concentrate your addition always to the side
that way you'll keep a nice level there.
And water.
I've never said much about this before
'cause this is the first time
we've really had such a prolonged dry spell
where watering a compost heap is worthwhile.
Because if you're adding green leaves
which are full of moisture,
then that's your water as simple as that.
Particularly things like grass mowings
when the grass is damp.
But now these green leaves,
they're actually feeling quite dry already
and they're not holding as much moisture
as they normally do.
So how do you know how much water to add?
Well, it's a bit of a guess actually, an educated guess.
But what you could do is have a look a bit later on.
You know, put a fork in there
and lift it up and see what's going on
and have a look at the ingredients in the middle.
That'll give you an idea.
So a lot of compost making being successful is about that.
It's being involved with your heaps.
You know, becomes like a pet almost.
It needs looking after.
And then as you go forwards
just keep an eye on what they're doing.
But just in simple outline, this method,
two months to fill the first one,
two months to fill the third one,
then you turn the first one into there,
turn the second one into there and you've got,
within six months doing it like I've described,
as long as you have enough material
to fill these in two months, that's another if,
then you can have lovely compost.
And I've just remembered one more thing actually
that people often ask.
How do you know when the heap is full or finished?
And, well, that's a moving goalpost situation
'cause it's up to you, you know,
but if you stopped at this point,
if I stopped at this point, this is gonna sink quite a bit
and you'll end up with actually not very much.
I aim to keep going.
In our two months we can get to the top.
It quite quickly goes down, but we're near the top
for quite a while and then it's sinking and sinking,
then we fill it again and sinking.
Then it's pretty much near the top.
And then you can see the level of that one over there.
It's about three quarters full now.
And by the time
it's gone through its final stage of composing,
it'll be about half what it was at the beginning.
So have fun making compost using these principles.
It really is a joy.
(soft music)