My composting methods
I have been asked to write a few words about my favourite method for making compost. This is complicated. For a start, I do not advise counsels of perfection. If I give a method, then I will give the impression that I always follow it, and that it always works.
This would be less than honest. I, too must admit to presiding over the occasional inert pile of dry leaves, or pool of stinking mush. In gardening and compost, I am an enthusiast rather than an expert.
The other problem with giving “my” method is that during the period I have learned about compost I have moved from a remote rural property in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales to inner suburban Melbourne. My relationship to my compost therefore underwent a profound change. For the first time, I was forced to contemplate a bin rather than a heap.
So I really have to talk about two methods - one rural, one urban.
When I was living in the country I nearly always had at least one, and sometimes two or three heaps going.
In my infrequent bouts of clipping and weeding, I would throw all the plant rubbish in a big heap, scatter it with chook poo or blood and bone, and leave it to wilt until I got around to making compost.
When the mood took me, I’d drive stakes or star pickets into the ground, and wind chicken wire around to make an enclosure about a metre square. Into the middle of this, I would place a couple of lengths of PVC drainage pipe with slots cut, to make an air chimney. Around the pipe I would throw in whatever I had, roughly in ten centimetre layers. I didn’t chop as much as I should have, meaning that my compost always had “bits” in it. This never bothered me.
Litter from the chookpen was the high nitrogen booster for the heap, especially the rich piles of poo from under the perches. Sometimes the litter included things like bones and avocado stones, left over from the kitchen scraps I threw to the chooks.
The main contents of the heap were weeds and plant litter. I had lots of comfrey growing in the garden, so I would add armfuls of that as well. I would water each layer, and the PVC “chimney” doubled as a way of getting more water into the centre of the heap as the weeks went by. Other contents included exhausted potting mix and tea and coffee grounds. Gentlemen callers were encouraged to piss on the heap - preferably down the chimney if their aim was good.
Only rarely did I get around to turning the heap. Life, after all, was very busy. Once built, the heap was usually neglected. It took at least three months to rot down, but made excellent compost.
Now, in my inner suburban home, my vegetable garden is a kilometre away in the community gardens, we have only a few ornamentals and pots of herbs at home, and I have no chooks. It is a big change.
The compost bin - a Gedye - was the first thing my new partner John and I bought for the house together. Into this go all our kitchen scraps, except for meat.
In our second week of composting we bought a cheap paper shredder from Australia Post, and we shred newspaper and junk mail for high carbon bulk. Without this, the contents of the bin would be too rich and mushy.
We use the compost worm or spiral that I have written about before. Every week, or whenever we think about it, we give the bin a thorough “going over” with the spiral to aerate and mix the contents. I have also tried some of the spiral’s cheaper imitations. They don’t work nearly as well. I heartily recommend a proper compost spiral for any “bin” compost system
The results of all this are terrific, and have banished my scepticism about the workability of the bin method. Within weeks of our arrival, the compost was steaming. Despite the slow “add a bit” method, it is still cooking well, and the contents are sweet and rich.
We also have a worm farm, which we use alternately with the bin as a disposal method for kitchen scraps, boosting it with shredded paper and swept up leaves every now and again.
Meanwhile at the community gardens, we are in charge of the enormous six-section community heap, which keeps us busy, but which is presently in abeyance due to the water restrictions.
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