The Joy of Composting

I'm really trying to get a grip of the home compost situation this year. 

 Feeding the soil with rotted organic matter is the only game in town actually.

I watched a wonderful and important film called simply 'Dirt' which explains beautifully why.

Watch Dirt the movie

I was really happy to be able to empty one of my home compost bins which I've been filling with mainly veg peelings, grass cuttings and torn up cardboard for the last year, and found it is pretty much rotted down to deliciously rich organic compost (a bit lumpy still, but the veg won't care).  I've bagged it up ready to move to the plot and use when I plant my squashes and courgettes.

Charles Dowding (he of the no-dig bed expertise) gives great advice in his composting video, which has confirmed and explained some things for me.

Watch Charles Dowding's excellant compost video

1. It's find to put wood ash in your compost.  Hooray!
2. It's okay to put perennial weeds including couch grass in your compost.  Thank goodness for that.  It would be a nightmare job trying to separate them anyway ( I know - I used to try).
3. My garden shredder was a good investment (£20 on ebay), as all those woody bush shreddings are a great compost addition.

It's not perfect, and you end up with lots of long stringy bits, and it's hellish noisy, but I'm really glad I bought this cheap garden shredder.

This was a huge buddleia tree we cut down, til a lengthy lockdown afternoon putting it through the shredder.
 I now have a huge tub of 'brown' compost additive, so when I put a load of 'green' weeds in my compost bin, I shove in a few handfuls of the shreddings to cover it.

Inspired by all this compost conversation, together with the free online permaculture course I've been following, I thought it was time to plan some building jobs over at the plot. 

The aims of the structures are:

1.   Protect tools from some winter weather
2.   Keep pots and things from blowing all around the allotment
3.   House my compost creation at the allotment
4.   Collect rainwater using the roofs with guttering and water butts.

We have an excess of pallets currently looking like crap in my front garden, plenty of roof felt left over from reroofing our shed at home and two able sons with time on their hands.

Watch this space.... In the spirit of biodiversity, plans for a small pond are emerging too!

Seedling City

At home I have seedlings galore now, and we've eaten our first little leaves from the salad leaves I sowed in troughs earlier.  The spinach is slower though, and I'm impatient to stop buying big bags of the stuff from the supermarket and eat my own.

Turns out the peas shoots are delicious, a scrumptious tender leafy flavour of pea (surprise),  although they haven't made it to the kitchen so far, as they get harvested as snacks every time I'm pottering and watering the seedlings.

Spicy salad leaves in the left tub, and I've sown a few lettuce down the edges.  Now it's May I'm hoping they go whoosh!

I have plenty of courgettes, but because they were so slow to germinate I sowed more in the same pots.  Needless to say they all came up, but the first ones to appear had this strange sickly looking yellow marbelling to the leaves.  The next set of leaves seem to be fine.  I'm moving them and the squashes out of the shed every morning, and back in at night, just in case.  There's a possible frost forecast for next week, and I've murdered previous courgettes as late as May 12th before now, so I'll continue to be rigorous about putting them in til the last chance of frost is over.

Meanwhile over at the plot Oscar and I have created a new bed.  Most of it is a flower bed, and I've transplanted any random foxgloves and poppies from other parts of the allotment into it.  We've also planted some sunflowers, mallow seedlings,  morning glory seedlings, sown wild flower and nasturtium seeds ,thrown bee bombs and are hoping for a riot of lovely colour this summer!

I've also used one end of to sow more lettuce and some carrots.

Our new flower bed.  This area has been used as a general dumping ground for years, and was also the site of an old compost heap we cleared last year, so I'm hoping the soil will be rich and nutritious already.

The final meal of purple sprouting.... Have let the rest of it flower so I can save the seeds for next year.  This year's seedlings are already a couple of inches high and just waiting for me to prepare a bed for them.

So now it's May and everything is about to spurt into wild growth and rapid germination and we'll have our work cut out just keeping the weeds down and planting out the seedlings which are everywhere in my garden at home at the moment.  Since we are in lockdown still I'm also hoping we'll have time to make my shed and compost bins a reality, and thoughts of a pond are becoming increasingly appealing.  Frogs eat slugs and snails after all.  That would be nice.