Compost Consolidation

January 18th

Today I went to the allotment with a plan to be outside in the fresh air for an hour, and to make some kind of dent on the winter maintenance. I have weeding, path maintenance, tree trimming, composting and fence repair/replacement to contend with. As the site's wood chip pile is currently low the path work will have to wait, I also decided that the weeds are pretty slow growing at the moment and they can wait (not sure if that is procrastination or a good decision), so I started to tidy up compost corner.

I inherited a compost heap made of very small pallet collars. When I first took on the plot I did add to it, but it very quickly became over-full so the garden waste in there is now at it's newest almost a year old, and I expect some stuff in there has been rotting down for the best part of two years. It was time to give it a turn and see what we have got. I had partially covered this patch as it was open to the elements. This can reduce airflow, but I did not want it to get waterlogged, and it was in a position surrounded by brambles and nettles and I wanted to avoid them migrating into the heap. I think overall this strategy has been successful. The covering was achieved with some compost bags and some broken pavers.

The next job was to open the awkward little doors at the bottom of the three Daleks. One of them showed far greater decomposition than the rest. Instead of trying to get the compost out of the silly hole I lifted the whole thing off and then set to the heap with a fork. I forked everything onto the pallet collar heap, and then put the Dalek back in place.

To get the new Dalek going I took the tree trimmings from my quince and separated them into bits thiner than a pencil(ish) and chunkier things that might be used as poles, posts and climbing frames. The thin stuff was chopped up and chucked in as a base layer. This layer ensures that there are air pockets when you start filling up with other material. The next layer was the chunkier, less decomposed elements that I'd just taken out of the Dalek, and then I did a bit of a tidy up round the plot, adding sad brassica leaves, frost damage chard leaves, some grass and comfrey.

So now I have a new compost heap on the go, two Daleks that are a work in progress and a bay full of ready to use good stuff. I will do a little reading about how to make best use of the home produced compost. I don't know if it will be added to the soil in my growing beds and dug in to some extent, or if it's going to mostly be used as a mulch. I am pretty certain my Compost book, which is from the King-of-no-dig Charles Dowding will have some answers, and mulching will be recommended - I will let you know.

Mood: Chilled

Spend: Nothing (yet)