14/1/24 - Compost obsession
There’s never enough. Compost that is. If you buy it, and I’ve bought tons in the past, it comes in plastic bags, is rarely peat-free in France and costs a fortune.
My answer to this is to try to make as much as possible. I have a worm composter in the dog’s room in the house. Sounds grim but they make happy sleeping companions and I can use the worm tea (leachate) as a cost-free form of Baby Bio plant food. Then there are three compost bins in the vegetable garden. The big dalek type thing. I lob garden waste, except weeds, in those and it all takes forever to break down because, at 71, I can’t be arsed to turn it as one should. However, if I wait a year or two the compost is excellent. On top of that I have the hotbed in the greenhouse which makes good compost within a few months and heats up the greenhouse in the depths of winter.
We also used to have a small bin in the kitchen in which we’d collect green waste and grudgingly schlep it down to the potager compost bins when flies began buzzing around. However, all that has taken backstage because I’ve bought a Moutta rotary compost maker. It’s the 245 litre version and I absolutely love it.
In theory it makes compost super fast because you can turn it with ease. I’ve installed it just outside the back door under the car port. It has two sections, one for the ongoing addition of material and the other as a maturing compartment. The lids are interchangeable and have symbols so it’s clear which one you’re adding to.
At the moment it has greenery from kitchen waste plus pony poo and chicken droppings along with some ground up coir that acts like peat and works wonders for water retention in compost. We’ll see how it goes. The conditions aren’t ideal for making compost as we have negative temperatures and heavy frosts at the moment, but it is un full sun, so I hope that will help.
These things aren’t cheap, but at the same price as 20 bags of compost it will have paid for itself within a year and it’s so sturdy I can see it lasting for at least fifteen years.
