Compost

Compost is the best place to start your Organic Gardening adventure.

Spread liberally onto or dug into your Garden soil will improve the structure of the worst of soils.

It sounds a contradiction but sandy soils will bind together better and heavy clay soils will open up, either way, the result is always positive. Buying large quantities from the Garden Centre can be an expensive exercise if you have a large area of Garden to treat.

Making your own is a cheap and easy process with all the ingredients probably in your backyard already.

All you need is a Lawn Mower a Lawn and some shrubs that need a prune and you are well on the way to your very own Compost heap.

The recipe is approx 30% green wet material as in lush grass, and 70% dryer more denser ingredient such as pruning from your shrubs.

The whole lot is processed through your Lawn Mower, when you prune your shrubs lay the trimmings on the Lawn and run the Mower over them slowly, make sure it is broken down to a fine texture.

Collect the Lawn clippings as usual and make a heap to mix together with the Shrub prunings later.

I only have a small Lawn so I collect and stockpile all my ingredients until I have enough to make a new heap (approx a square metre)

When you want to build a Brew mix all the different age and type of material together so it is all blended well.

Then build the heap layer by layer, a layer will be around 250 to 300mm deep, each one of these levels will have a good dose of Animal Manure and a hand full of Lime sprinkled on it.

Water well to mix the Manure and Lime through the heap. Chicken Manure is best as it contains useful amounts of Nitrogen which hastens the Composting process.

However, Cow and Sheep Manure are just as good but you need a bit more to make up for its lower Nutrient content compared to Chicken Manure.

The Animal Manure is the fuel that breaks down the green material and turns it into rich dark Compost.

The Heap needs to be well watered initially to ignite the process and never let to dry out.

Turn the Heap every two weeks, the centre of the Heap will get to about 65 degs C which is necessary to kill any Weed seed and nasty pathogens that might be present, give it a good water at the time if it drying out.

Turning the Heap regularly means the whole of the mix gets a turn in the centre rather than the outside of the pile never quite Composting.

When finished the Pile will be about half of its original size but will be rich, healthy and alive with soil building Microbes.

Spread liberally on your Garden breath life into your Garden.

Be Happy,

Barry

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