Compost – turn 4
Better late than never. Turning every four days turned into one turn a week, but that is the joy of compost – a very forgiving process. Just over four weeks since the pile was created, still some steam, but the air is pretty cold so anything with any warmth is steaming!
The volume of the pile is now fairly consistent. Around the top of the doors, so about two thirds of the original amount.
There are white speckles all over the top, during the week we processed the used eggshells (baked for 30 mins in the oven at 160 degrees and then crushed), gave some to the chickens and then I sprinkled the rest over the compost. A great long-term source of calcium for the soil. Tomatoes love it. When I lifted the cover to put the eggshells on a rat scurried away to the back and hid. Lovely warm spot out of the drizzle.
There are a lot more worms and slaters in the pile, rather than just around the edges. All the material is nice a spongey damp and there is plenty of air. Not much of the green material is recognisable at all. Only small fragments of cardboard are visible.
Now I just need to leave it alone for as long as it takes. From the garden plan I created (watch this space) I will be needing compost in November. I’ll try and let it stew until then and hopefully remember to post.
I did a bit of research into Charles Dowding’s methods because when he spreads compost on the garden it looks like it came out of a bag from the store. Lovely and loose and fine textured. Mine is generally a bit on the gluggy side and even if I wanted to sieve it, that would be difficult. Takeaway points:
- He has oodles of space (acreage) and all sorts of compost bins. Variety is the spice of life. Hot & cold compost and a big worm farm.
- Charles’ main 6 x three metre cubed (!!) compost bays are completely undercover – they have a roof built over them. He doesn’t want the rain to get into it at all and can control the water content. In the UK rain is obviously a more frequent visitor than here….
- He builds a pile as quickly as he can from garden clippings and stocks of brown material – such as leaves and rotting wood chip. Quickly might mean over the course of a month. He generally doesn’t have all the materials to hand to build one instantly.
- Whatever green he has to hand goes on the pile and then sprinkles brown material in with it at the ratio of 5 parts green to one part brown (the green has stalks and all sorts of slightly woody material in with it).
- Everything goes in his compost – weeds, diseased leaves, everything. Weeds are biomass that creates more compost – the problem is the solution. Our job is to tap into that and roll with the punches rather than stress aiming for the impossibility of eradicating weeds.
- He only turns once just to get air into the pile and to make sure things are working.
- The critical factor for him is that he has enough room to leave it alone for a year before putting it on the garden.
From all that, the difference with my methods is that I turn to speed up the process, but I don’t keep it bone dry after the pile is created. I’m going to work on that. Also, building a pile over time with veggie clippings means the rats will be all through it. Charles doesn’t mind the rats (??!!). He says they aerate the pile. I need to amend my habits to empty my rat free, cold compost bin into the hot compost pile on a semi regular basis as the pile is created, covering with brown material to try and keep the rats out.
And with the weeding, I’m going to keep on top of it! How many times have I said that?
