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21.08.2023 - 11:57 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
I’m a firm believer in composting. In the years in which I haven’t really had a garden, I have mourned the loss of valuable resources as I sent my compostables off in the municipal collections.
Making your own compost is a wonderful way of feeding your garden. Closing the circle, turning a waste product into something useful, and saving money into the bargain.
One of the things I have done this year, in my new garden, is set up a compost bin. It’s not in an ideal location – it’s not close to the house, so I have to make an effort to go out there. And it’s currently in the shade, although the removal of an unwanted conifer will soon sort that out.
And so I am, once again, collecting up compostables in a separate pail. Vegetable scraps, tea bags and cardboard tubes for the most part. Cardboard tubes (or scrunched up newspaper, or corrugated cardboard) are a valuable addition to the heap. Not only are they carbon-rich, balancing out an excess of nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps or grass cuttings), but their shape adds air to the heap. Composting bacteria need oxygen, just like us.
Wearing my Master Composter hat, I went to London recently to join Alys Fowler and Jane Perrone for a chat about composting. You can hear the result in the latest episode of Sow, Grow, Repeat, the Guardian gardening podcast.
Did they leave in the bit where Alys talks about composting her pants? You’ll have to listen in to find out!
I do CAT cold composting where I add a mixture of materials to my heap as and when I have them. It may take longer to rot down, but it’s a lot less effort than looking after a ‘hot’ heap
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Ben Fink Shapiro | Design: Better Homes & Gardens
Fruits are nature’s little treasures, bursting with flavors and colors that make our taste buds dance with joy. So grab your fruity enthusiasm, and let’s dive into the world of delightful Fruits That Start With D!
I started growing flowers for cutting on my allotment over 10 years ago. I was really interested in where the food we ate came from, and I had started to wonder about the provenance of the flowers at my local florist and the ones in buckets at the supermarket. The more I read the more I realised growing my own would be better for the planet – many shop-bought flowers have a significant carbon footprint because they’ve been grown abroad and there are issues around the chemicals used to grow them, the demands made on local water supplies and the working conditions of the growers and pickers. I also preferred a certain style of flower arrangement, something that looked like it had been picked from the garden, with a looser more natural feel.
When I clear the next bed it will be time to plant the overwintering onions. I choose to plant my onions in the autumn for two reasons; the first is that I like having the beds filled overwinter. It’s nicer than having a bare garden to look at. The second is that they are harvestable about a month earlier in the summer, which means their bed is available for replanting a month earlier, and that works for me.
An ideal seed compost is able to retain water, whilst at the same time letting excess water drain away to provide an environment that is damp but not waterlogged. It allows penetration of plant roots and is able to anchor plants, but has space for air. Its texture is consistent, and it is free from pests, diseases and weeds that would compete with the seedlings. As we have seen, it doesn’t need to contain many nutrients if seedlings are going to be pricked out; seedlings growing in modules will either need enough nutrients in the compost to support them through their first weeks of life, or suitable supplementary feeding.
One of the big differences between now and the time before gardeners relied so much on peat-based composts is the rise in container growing. An army of modern amateur gardeners has to put up with small gardens, and possibly with no soil at all. Growing plants in containers allows us to garden wherever we like, and even to grow plants that would not thrive in our soil. Some plants are grown in containers to keep them under control; others so that they can be moved indoors in winter to ensure their survival.
Ericaceous compost
Whenever I see demonstrations of composting on TV I’m always impressed by three things – the size of the compost heap, the endless supply of compostable materials to put on it and the enormous vigour of the gardener in charge of the heap.
When the sun shone on Saturday morning, and the rain promised to delay until midday, we hatched a plan to build two more of the raised beds in the garden. One half of the garden – 6 beds – was completed last year, leaving 6 more to go. We don’t have space for them all until we take the old shed down, but we found room for two next to Ryan’s workshop.
At the moment I’m building a new garden from scratch, and as I’m putting in hard landscaping it’s taking some time (which is frustrating) and the project has a budget. This is in complete contrast to when I started my first garden, which started small, had no plan, and no budget to speak of.
Over the last Bank Holiday weekend I got a little over-ambitious with the outdoor cooking, given that we still only have the small bucket bbq to cook on. For some reason I decided it was time to try a three-course lunch.