Compost

Successful composting is one of the most valuable skills I am going to have to learn. If we wish to get anything out of the soil we are going to have to know how to put things back. After reading an article about compost trenches I decided to try this. This was also prompted by the failure of the rotary composter to have made any great dent on the woody material we had fed it 18 months ago.

As the second raised bed is empty at present and needed some attention it became the recipient of this attention. Steady rain made the work heavy, but after an hour we hopefully have a nourished and turned vegetable bed. Hopefully this lower layer of compost may act like Hügelkultur and warm the bed slightly over the months.

The plan this year will be to try the rotary composter again. However, this time we will have a more carefully controlled mix. We will aim for all the kitchen scraps a to leave via this route and augment it with the chicken dropping and bedding. Once we have the compost we will be able to use this handy calculator which I found on Skippy's Vegetable Garden Blog. The rotary composter should give a hybrid result between hot and cold heap composting but we will try for a better mix of green and brown items. Most sites list the following groups :-

Green Items (These are high in Nitrogen)

• Urine
• Nettles
• Grass cuttings
• Tea bags and coffee
• Vegetable peelings

Brown Items (These are high in Carbon)

• Paper and cardboard
• Wood and twigs
• Bedding from animals

The brown items take much longer to compost, as we found to our cost last year.

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