And the other thing I repeat often is that diversity is the key.
Well, summer is coming up and some very hungry crops, namely sweetcorn and tomatoes will be sown/ transplanted into Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
When I created the Galaxy Garden back in June I top dressed the decomposed wood chip beds with homemade compost. That was great, but it has occurred to me multiple times that in this early phase of building soil life, I need to add compost as much as I can manage to diversify the bulk wood chip material.
I checked out the compost turning posts. The last one was six weeks ago on the 2nd August after I turned it for the fourth time. The pile was created on the 2nd July ish, so we are looking at two and a half months old.
My new compost pile is bursting at the seams and I need space to turn it, so I thought I’d revisit the maturing compost, show you what it’s like, and give some of the Galaxy Garden a boost.
My intention was just to top dress the three beds, but I had enough in the pile to give all the beds a boost, so I couldn’t resist. Again, just putting the compost on top is OK, the worms, of which there are plenty, will mix it in with the material underneath without me having to dig and disturb soil structure and roots. Where the potatoes haven’t been hilled up, I put the compost in the trench so that when I hill up the compost will be buried and mixed in with the wood chip.
Everytime I make compost I get a lovely hit of doing something positive and moving towards leaving our patch in a better condition than we found it. When nature finally reclaims Let’s Grow Shopping HQ she won’t have as much work to do…
