Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Compost aplenty

In order to improve the structure and texture of the soil in the
suburban veg plot, the contents of the compost heap have been spread
liberally on the still vacant beds. The suburban veg plot compost heap
is housed in a self-built structure of 3 wooden pallets with a sliding
panel front. It is also divided down the centre to form 2 separate
sections.
The compost heap is fed liberally with our vegetable waste, flower and plant material, lawn mowings in the summer, cardboard (especially egg boxes) and copious amounts of shredded paper (taking advantage of the fact that bank details will be pretty illegible by the time they've passed through a worm or two).
We fill only one side of the heap at a time to give the other side
time to really rot down, stirring it occasionally. Then every 12
months or so, the rotted side is emptied out over the raised beds or
added to the potato sacks and the other side is forked over the
partition and left alone. This leaves us with an empty side to start
filling again. Brilliantly simple!

3 comments:

  1. I still find it amazing what our waste changes in to. I've got a dalek compost bin in the garden and two wooden pallets at the allotment.

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  2. Hi Jo - the compost is doing the world of good to my very dank clay soil, but have you any tips on all the weeds it generates?? The raised bed I'm growing parsnips in is inundated! I fear the answer is simply keep hoeing...

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  3. It would appear that the composting is not killing off all the weed seeds. This would be due to the compost not heating up sufficiently. I'm no expert, but it could be that you are putting in too much green waste and not enough brown, or that you're not turning the heap. If you google composting, it should turn up some answers. Hope this helps.

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