Today started off very cold and swiftly turned wet – not the most appealing weather for a day in the garden.
On an ideal day I would have carried on cutting back dead and dying herbaceous material and tidying borders – but the most unappealing days mean only one thing to me – composting!
You may well read a fair amount about composting on this blog in the future. I am #slightlyobsessed.
Ankle deep in the compost heap is the only place to be on a horrible day. Feet stay toasty from the heat that the composting (breaking down of microbes) action generates, plus the activity of manually turning the compost heap keeps muscles warm.
The physicality of turning a compost heap certainly earns you your next meal (plus a pudding) and mentally it is calming and positively optimistic. Keeping a well tended compost heap is saying “The future will be good; the future is in the garden and the garden will be well nourished.” I will add several happy emoticons to reinforce how passionately I feel about composting….😀😍😄😎👍👏🌸🌻🌱☀️(not entirely successful then)…..why is there no composting emoticon? A shiny little spade sticking out of a pile of steaming brown stuff…..oh, maybe not.
You can read up on composting to your heart’s content – I am by no means the only compost obsessive out there. My own composting guru is Monty Don; he is evangelical on the subject.
The science of composting can be a little technical: optimum temperatures, moisture content, key ingredients, do’s and don’t’s – the main thing is, just do it!
I built a 3-bay compost heap with a baby strapped to my back using only seven palettes and a bag of cable ties. It is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to improve your garden (and your life).
Here are my top composting tips:
⭐️ Try not to put too much mown grass in the mix.
⭐️ Add plenty of annual weeds (no nasty perennial weeds e.g. stingy nettles, dandelions, bindweed – especially the roots.
⭐️ Add plenty of spent herbaceous material. 👇
⭐️ Add plenty of raw kitchen waste (vegetable peelings, overripe fruit – no cooked kitchen waste unless you want to share your heap with rats – shudder…)
⭐️ Turn the heap every few weeks to aid the breakdown of the raw material (get a pitch fork and work your way down the heap by making a new one alongside – this is where having more than one bay for compost comes in handy).
And before the season is out you will have started to make your own compost.
Your very own, homemade, fluffy, rich, crumbley, scrumptious compost (see? #slightlyobsessed !) can be used in a number of ways.
Today I used it as a mulch in the vegetable garden. This serves two purposes:
1: Over the winter the cold winds can erode the soil leaving it thinner and more sparse. A later of mulch will protect the topsoil.
2: You are adding extra nutrients and worms to help improve the soil ready for the next growing season, which will be with us before we know it……what a jolly good excuse to have another look at the seed catalogues.