Starting with Compost

Last week my daughter asked me (it was Halloween) why the witches and magic happened on that night only? I found myself explaining that it is because it’s the end of one year and the beginning of the next. As time bends around the two ends of the year don’t quite meet up, allowing the past years to pop through the hole, bringing with it the witches and ghosts. She looked at me blankly and then went about her own witching and off we went trick or treating.
A pagan friend once explained this to me some years ago and I have often reflected how this story fits perfectly with the growing or agricultural year (I suppose the pagans were earth based). As an organic fruit grower my growing year is coming to an end, the apple harvest is in store, all 4 tonnes of them, I am pulling out the last of the summer crops, digging over the soil and “putting it to bed” with straw or black plastic. I am planting crops for next spring, in the glasshouse; Rocket, Mizuna, Pak choi, Namenia, Spinach, Corn salad, and Purslane. These will be welcome salad in February and March. Outside I am planting bulbs; Tulips, Daffodils, Anemones and Fritillaries for spring flowering and soon the broad beans and garlic will go in for spring cropping.

The garden is in it autumnal shagginess, which I love. Full of rosehips and spiders webs, red and yellow leaves, and piles of rotting fruit and weeds and leaves that need to be built into compost heaps.

Which brings me to my point; composting is, in my mind at least, the beginning of the gardening or farming year. It is making fertility for the next growing year, it is bending around the end of last years waste, to provide fertility for next years growth. The rotting process is the beginning of the cycle of sustainability and fertility as well as the end. It is a cyclical process not a linear one. This is the core difference between conventional and organic or sustainable farming.
Even if you are not a grower or farmer, 35% of waste from a household can be composted. So composting it on site saves on landfill space, and provides fertility for even a small garden.
If you want a go here is how its done.

Quick recipe for a Windrow compost heap;

Many people won’t be able to make one of these unless they have an allotment or large garden, this type of heap will break down in time for use in spring, and will heat up killing the weed seed and pest and diseases. High Carbon layers are stalky vegetable waste, straw, paper. High Nitrogen layers are grass cuttings, fresh manure, rotting fruit.

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  Alternate layers 1 m wider, and about 1.5 m high and as long as you like. Cover over to keep the rain off and nutrients in.
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  The heap will heat up and then cool down, at the cooling stage turn the heap over and it should heat up again.
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  Ready when brown and crumbly
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  Apply liberally to the soil
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  Hopefully a few witches will turn up to help me build the compost heaps as its really hard work!

Quick recipe for small garden composting;

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  Make or buy small container to go in the corner of the garden
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  Put in household and garden waste (not cooked food)
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  Leave to rot down on its own, will take 12 months, and will not kill the weeds seeds.
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  Apply liberally to the soil
  

You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk