Tuesday was another lovely late August day, dry with lots of sunshine and the temperature reaching 24.0°C or 75.2°F.
The other day I saw this article on the GrowVeg web site about Hot composting. The one thing I can't make enough of is good quality compost. My compost heaps usually produce some decent material but take a good twelve months or more to do this. I know my weaknesses in compost making. I haven't got an easy way of chopping all the compost material before it gets added to the heap and I don't turn the heap often enough. I find mixing the heap hard work although I think it would be easier if the material had been chopped up in the first place. Finally I'm never sure my composting material arrives at the heap in that magical mix of materials as seen on gardening programmes or in magazines.
However, the one thing we do have on site is a good supply of wood chips. Sometimes this is very woody and is ideal for use as a path topping on the allotments but sometimes a batch is much more leafy and twiggy. I've tipped five barrow fulls of this more leafy material in a heap on the plot. I think it would benefit from some green material so I'm going to add some grass mowings and some chopped up comfrey leaves to the heap and mix it together.
I’ll keep the heap covered with a piece of weed control fabric to try to keep in a bit of extra warmth and maybe a bit of rain out. I'll need to try to give the materials a mix on our visits to the allotment. My aim is to produce some compost to improve this bed before planting some fruit bushes next spring.
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Own compost is better. We know what goes inside! ;)
ReplyDeleteI've no idea what they put in our compost these days. I added some green stuff to my new compost heap today.
DeleteI am a novice in composting I just find it hard work...
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. I think it's hard work too especially turning a large compost heap.
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