There is no such thing as waste on our site. We all have a number of composter bins and I have a corner of one plot dedicated to a large compost heap. I don’t put any weeds there but everything else that I can’t fit into my bins – courgette, tomato, cucumber and other plants after they’ve finished. My friend Dave shares this heap with me, he doesn’t have one.
Today was the day to see what was under the cover. I have got two pieces of carpet to speed the composting process and after I took them off today I was delighted. A large mound of crumbly brown soil, hardly any large pieces. In all I had two full wheelbarrows and seven large plastic sacks of this brown gold. I have started to distribute it around my fruit trees in the orchard it’ll be perfect.
After all this I started putting in more old foliage and the process will carry on. It shows that Mother Nature knows best, we just have to help it on the way. I don’t use any artificial fertilisers, just the liquid from my wormery and perhaps some organic chicken poo pellets. I have lost my horse muck source so it will be just everything we can get from our bins.
It’s so exciting revealing broken down and crumbly compost! Feeding the soil makes such a difference to health and quality of crops. I also have a composting area with other bins dotted around the plots, everything goes in other than weed roots/seed heads. I am lucky to have chickens and use their dirty bedding for composting, a good source of nitrogen.