More than one way to make great compost

Eileen explains how the wormery works to the lads in Ardagh

Every year around this time in autumn I teach people how to make their own compost. For some it's something they have tried and failed at without knowing why, for others its something they would never dream of because of the fear of "drawing rats" into the garden and eventually into the house.Irish people have a pathological fear of rats, I suppose in the absence of alligators, snakes, scorpions, deadly spiders and killer bees its the best we can do!

The most amazing part of this class for me is when I see light bulbs going on in peoples faces as they realise why things went wrong before. The simple act of balancing out all the kitchen waste and garden clippings with equal or greater amounts of carbon in the form of newspapers, cardboard or straw is the single reason why so many people get armies of flies in their faces when they open the lid to view a stinking mass of wet gloop that seems to be going nowhere. The best part of the day is when we do the practical in the afternoon and we build a compost heap from scratch, putting in our green and brown layers and occasional activators to get the whole thing going. Afterwards when we are de-booting and getting ready to go home someone always says "that was great, I learnt so much today!". And I feel incredibly satisfied, BEST CLASS EVER.

Layering on cardboard with a shovel of old compost as an activator

But there is no danger of resting on ones laurels (or ones tired arse) after a day like that. It seems to me everyone has a different idea on how to compost and there are huge variations in the ingredients you should use to get the perfect end result. I was on a N.O.T.S.(www.nots.ie)(National Organic Training Skillnet) compost training workshop a few years ago and learnt a hell of a lot about the simple act of turning the heap, when to do it and how often, the importance of fungi over bacteria and how high you should build it Vs how long-(as long as you like but only a meter high!). Then a few weeks ago I got my brain cogs flying around again when I read an amazing article in Amateur Gardening Magazine from a bloke with an award winning allotment who has been making compost for 28 years.

Stole the image from amazon.co.uk, great little book bought it for a fiver in cork

Mick gardens near Birmingham and collects 13 separate ingredients to make his perfect compost. In the AG article he explains that he gave up digging after digging up a whole allotment put him in bed for days. While he was lying down he read an old booklet on the no dig method and was hooked so he got into making compost instead. He uses bins like the ones the council sell you to make regular compost with but instead of using regular composting methods he uses worms and turns the bins into high production wormeries.The worms in turn are spread out on his beds when the compost is matured and covered over. Protected from the cold and heat the worms do the digging for Mick, taking the compost down into his veg beds.

A barrow load of comfrey leaves for the heap

He really looks after the worms making sure they don't dry out or get too cold and if they don't like something he feeds them he takes note of that too. He paints the bins white to keep the sun from heating up the worms inside too much and puts a circle of carpet under the lid to keep out the cold. He claims that they can turn leaves to compost in 3 months! (as opposed to 2 years in a regular leaf mould bag or bin.) so that's really impressive!

It's a great article and really well worth the read. If you know anyone who reads Amateur Gardening magazine it featured in the October 13 edition. I looked on line at www.amateurgardening.com but I couldn't find it on the magazines on line pages so it may only be available in the print form. The original pamphlet Mick read was sent out with Marshall's seed catalogues and dated from 1949. A very interesting gentleman called Dr A Guest wrote the pamphlet after experimenting himself in his own garden, I found this short snippet about him on a comment thread on Amazon. com;

 "Mr A Guest lived in Middlecliffe Near Barnsley Yorkshire England when he wrote his book in 1946. I too lived in this small mining village and as a small boy, I would see him preparing his Garden Parties for the many visitors who were intrigued by his 'new' worm based gardening techniques that he employed."

the slowest part is shredding the cardboard

His grandson is living in America and has had the original book republished here www.gardeningwithoutdigging.com if you are looking to find the original source of inspiration. If you subscribe to the websites newsletter you can download 6 books free. I'm not sure the worth of these books as the author as far as I can tell is an American writing for American gardeners and American geographic and climatic conditions. But I will have a read of them anyway. You always learn something ! By the way it looks like the reprint of the original pamphlet will cost you 7USD from the grandsons website but as my pay pal has expired I will have to wait to see what it actually costs with postage and shipping. On Amazon.co.uk the only copy of the book (second hand and dated from the 70s)was costing £8.50 plus almost half again in postage costs!!! 

the lads open a finished heap to retrieve finished compost

Anyway back to the basic recipe for good compost;

 Compost Ingredients

• equal amounts of brown stuff (cardboard, newspaper, straw, wood shavings) to equal amounts of green stuff ( raw kitchen waste, garden waste, spent tea bags and coffee grinds. The smaller you shred both browns and greens the more surface area you have for bacteria to work on breaking it down faster and resulting in a more finished compost.

Add a sprinkling of activators (comfrey leaves, nettle leaves, urine!, a spade from a finished compost heap)
and turn every two weeks if you can. No cooked food, cat or dog or human excrement. No china tea cups, cutlery, take away cartons, plastic containers (all of which I have found in compost heaps). Happy composting!

Catherine, Joan, Annmarie and Chrissy check out Eileen's pea seedlings sown in her finished compost