What do you do when you have a week off? Today was my first day off in a while, and I spent it shovelling poo. After Toby built our compost heap from crates last year, we haven’t had to buy in any soil for the garden. But a hot-pile compost heap requires a certain amount of hard work every so often, and so we pottled along to our local stables, suffered hostile looks from a bunch of thirteen year olds in jodhs, and filled our car boot with sacks of manure.
The manure was so fresh, it was still warm, and the heat it produces as it begins to rot down will speed up the entire heap. This means we will have fresh compost ready for the spring. I have also added comfrey leaves, garden waste, a little bit of shredded cardboard and grass clippings.
The key to good garden compost is a good mix between ‘greens’ and ‘browns’. This really isn’t very difficult. Greens are fresh garden and kitchen waste. They include: weeds from the garden (don’t include the roots or seeds from any weeds, or any part of the Japanese Knotweed plant), young prunings, fruit and vegetable scraps, lawn mowings, coffee grounds, tea bags, seaweed, eggshells and horse manure (not all the greens are green, sorry). Browns are largely dead things: autumn leaves, straw, hay, shredded plant stems and branches, cardboard and pine needles.
I tend to mix 60 per cent greens with 40 per cent browns - although writing this sounds far more scientific than my usual method of dunking it all in the bin - and stir it all together. I tend to save up waste water from cooking pasta and chuck it over the heap in hot weather as this keeps everything moist and keen to rot. A moist heap is also fairly inhospitable for any rats wishing to move in.
Every fortnight, I turn the heap with a fork. This helps to introduce oxygen to the mix, which speeds the process still further. It also means you can add any particulary stinky kitchen scraps (unless you’re fond of the local vermin population dining out in your heap, don’t add meat, fish or dairy waste - best to use bokashi for this waste) into the middle of the heap. And then I cover the lot with old carpet or cardboard, and leave.
And that’s it. Compost made in a hot pile heap will rot down within six months, which means now is the perfect time to shovel poo for a bumper summer crop.
on Sep 28th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Great instructions on producing compost!
I don’t think I’m cut out for the manure though and will have to stick to my kitchen/garden waste instead
on Sep 29th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Hi Liz,
Don’t be afraid of the poo! If you get horse manure, it really doesn’t smell any worse than a pile of lawn clippings, and does wonders for your heap. Maybe I spent too many hours shovelling the stuff as a teenager when I worked at a riding stables, but I’ve always found it no more offensive than soil. and it has hundreds of brandling worms in it!
Isabel
on Oct 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am
One thing to be afraid of as far as manure is concerned is the chance that it may be contaminated with a persistent herbicide that may kill some of your plants. This problem affected our plot and many other around the country. This is a relatively new problem so don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that you have used manure from the same source for years.
Make sure of your source and read this first
http://www.glallotments.btik.com/p_Points_to_consider_when_buying_manure.ikml
on Feb 2nd, 2010 at 5:47 pm
[...] decent. It seems a shame to throw them in the bin, so cut them all up for compost. Stirred into a hot pile compost heap, these socks will rot down in no time, and come summer, I’ll be spreading the soil over my [...]