One day while taking out the compost I realised just how far we have come in our recycling of the household organic matter over the last 7 years. I thought it would be interesting to share.
We started out with a stainless steel mini bin on the kitchen bench for food scraps, one classic black open bottom compost bin, and an almost barren garden full of grass. It took about six months to fill the bin because I used the mulcher on the mower, rather than the catcher. When I’d finally created some compost there was hardly anything there, so it got put around the few trees we had, or, if I had purchased a new tree, I made a special effort to save some for that.
After getting interested in gardening we graduated to a worm farm, and I purchased a second black cold compost bin, so that while one is full and maturing, we could fill the second. This now meant two containers on the kitchen bench. A recycled yoghurt pot for suitable worm scraps, and the trusty steel bin for the main compost bins. This resulted in more reliable free fertilizer in the form of worm wee, and I started to realise lawn is over-rated and put the catcher on the mower so that the clippings could go in the two black bins.
Following this I was experimenting with making hot compost. I learned that a great way to give a future garden bed a real boost, is to make hot compost right where the garden beds will be. My first foray into this field was getting a length of wire mesh and making a cylinder out of it. I would put the cylinder vertically in the garden bed and pile ingredients into the top of it. To turn the pile, the aim was to lift the mesh vertically up, place it immediately adjacent in the same garden bed, and turn the material back into the empty cylinder. Most of the material I had to buy, because the garden didn’t really provide much in the way of the brown component. A lot of the brown I pruned out of the garden was noxious woody weeds which we slowly burnt whilst roasting potatoes in winter! When it came to turning it, I found it extremely difficult to lift off the mesh without it tipping over and spilling all over the place, so I quickly moved on from this method.
I built a quick and dirty two bay compost system out of old pallets and corrugated iron, which served me well for about 3 years. Again, I still had to buy a lot of material in the form of bales of lucerne and cow manure, and I found a place to get horse manure for free off the side of the road.
When I really started to get the garden going, I built a three-bay compost system with bigger bays (about one metre cubed), again out of old pallets and corrugated iron. Most of my brown material was, and still is, sourced from huge Liquid Amber trees in autumn. I drive around the local streets and fill the trailer up three or four times each year. I also made special trips into the country with the trailer where chicken, turkey and sheep manure are sold on the side of the road.
Another experiment was to pile up wood chip on our old back lawn, knowing that eventually , the plot underneath it would be a garden bed. I made a huge pile about 2m tall up against a cliff wall. As I was piling it up about 12 bags of chicken manure and another 6 bags of cow manure were mixed in with it. I soaked it through and covered it with a tarp. Unfortunately for me it didn’t work as well as I’d liked. I couldn’t leave it to rot down long enough before I wanted to landscape, but the main problem was moisture – it was the year of a drought. Parts of the pile were excellent, especially the base, but the rest of it went into the paths for future mulch.
Then we got chickens. Which resulted in yet another pot on the kitchen bench, and the scraps now have priorities. Chickens get the goodies, worms next, and then everything else in the bulk compost. I now try to throw bulky, chopped up green and brown waste into the chicken run first. When there is an avalanche of free autumn leaves I throw about one and a half full trailer loads of leaves into the chickens too. This breaks down by the beginning of spring into fantastic chicken poo enriched compost. The abundant leaves also prompt me to get weeding and I make the special effort to create a proper hot compost.
One of my black cold compost bins migrated into the middle of the banana circle so they have as much food as they can handle. The other I placed in the front garden, hidden behind the lime tree, so that neighbours can put their food scraps into it. Realising that the chicken run can handle large volumes on a more continuous basis, prompted me to put a flyer into about 40 neighbours letter boxes, asking for food scraps and lawn clippings. I now have three neighbours coming over with their waste. Then I found a third black bin on the side of the road that I’m filling up in the chicken run, so that eventually the chickens can sort through it for me and get a good dose of protein from the bugs.
On top of all this, I have made a couple of liquid fertilizer dispensers. One is a device that produces concentrated comfrey juice. Comfrey is an excellent source of minerals and makes great liquid fertilizer. You can get the design and method for this from Nevin Sweeney at the website Under the Choko Tree.
My spare Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC) makes a great ‘weed tea’ liquid fertilizer brewing vessel. I use calico bags to make tea bags of worm castings, comfrey leaves, weeds and cow manure. After lowering them into the container with a rope, about 100 litres of water is added. About six weeks later I remove the tea bags and fill the IBC up to the top with water. One thousand litres of fertilizer ready to go. I just need to train the chickens to use a watering can and then I can relax.
As you can see, there have been quite a few alterations to the system! And that is one of the main take away points – all these little things we change to try and recycle, and make the world a better place, are just about making small changes to your personal habits. It is very difficult to change habits all at once, but if you approach it little by little, then big things happen over time. As Paul Kelly so rightly says “From little things, big things grow.”
