Compost Glorious Compost

To be frank, I'm a little obsessed with my compost pile. It is by far the most visited part of my garden each day. Due to this, the beautiful beast sits right outside my kitchen's back door like a friendly guard dog beckoning me out into the fresh air each morning.

I dearly hope you have, or can develop, such a cherished relationship with your compost too. I've seen too many bone dry compost piles for comfort, visited too many gardens without compost piles for comfort, and heard too much poor advice about compost piles for comfort. Let's try to remedy this.

First of all, I strongly recommend positioning your compost directly on your garden's soil rather than a hard surface. Looking at the photo above you are probably now thinking... Huh? This lady doesn't follow her own advice... Please bear with me. 

 

I recommend positioning your pile on bare ground because the soil your pile sits on will naturally innoculate it, without you needing to lift a finger. Microbes, fungi, and worms will all make their own way up into your compost. The only reason I get away with mine on concrete is because I have a second bin in the garden. I used active compost from that bin writhing with worms and life to innoculate my new one on the hard standing. I'll go into why I keep two in a later post. There is a very good, but unfortunately rather depressing, reason. Sigh... Another time. I promise.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. So what do I put in my compost? Now, I warn you, I refuse to go into browns and greens. What the heck? No, no, no. That is way too complicated. Keep it simple: kitchen waste and garden waste. 

 

Let's take these in turn with kitchen waste first. This one is easy. Compost bins are vegan. Exclude dairy, meat, fish, and fat to discourage rats.

 

Now to garden waste. When I say garden waste, I mean everything: pruned leaves and branches, spent potting soil, pricked out seedlings, finished annuals, finished perennials for that matter, weeds, yes all weeds, and all diseased material too. 

 

Some of you might be up in arms at this point. You can't put weeds in your compost! They will spread out of control! Diseased or blighted plants?! Are you crazy! That will contaminate everything. You've got to throw all that away. Don't let it near your compost!

 

I'm telling you, compost it all. If your tomatoes suffer from blight, compost them and learn from it. Use the compost to nourish blight resistant varieties next year. I'm telling you, try it.

Weeds, this one just baffles me. Yes, you can compost weeds. So often people say things like, you can't compost brambles because they grow back. I'm telling you, they don't. They really don't. 

 

I maintain an orchard of young fruit trees and I mulch around them with fresh bramble branches. Ones I just pruned. They have never, not even once, rerooted around the base of the trees. The bramble clippings simply dry out and slowly rot away suppressing grass around the trees as intended. 

 

If you don't believe me, I beg you, please experiment. Don't blindly take my word for it or anyone else's for that matter. Instead, always question, poke, and prod such advice from every angle. Use your own evidence to debunk any so called 'truths' that simply don't hold up. Please, promise me this.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, the final ingredients to make compost are water and time. But don't take my word for it. You can't see, but I'm winking as I write.

 

In all seriousness though, water and time. Keep your compost watered, but not drenched, the same way you water your tomatoes and sit back. Then, wait for those microbes and worms to do their work. Ah, what pleasure.

 

 

Finally, simply reap the rewards, black gold!