Gardeners' Gold

PRESENTER:
A very good morning to you on this lovely and sunny spring morning. I’m going to say a few words today about home composting. Home composting is a lot easier than one might expect, and it’s certainly a lot more rewarding for both your own satisfaction and the help of your garden; what your garden will yield as a result of your home composting efforts. 


Now, as you can see, there’s all sorts of things in this compost heap here. I add vegetable peelings. I add fruit that’s out of date. I put teabags in. Even the paper will rot down in time. Egg shells, you can see a little bit of egg shell there; it probably won’t completely break down, but it will go into your allotment or your borders, and it will aerate, so it’s still of use, even it doesn’t completely decompose.  


Now, some people use coffee grounds. I don’t drink coffee myself, but some people believe that is very, very good for your compost heap. I have never put in citrus fruit; it’s not good for your compost; it’s not going to add anything; it’s only going to detract from the decompositional process. So, no lemons, no limes. Keep those for your bin.


Some people, dare I say it, urinate on their compost heap. It’s supposed to be very, very good for the  decomposition process. I personally don’t like that! Something I’ve never done, but some people swear by it. 


Virtually all garden waste is good for your compost heap. I wouldn’t put leaves in. Leaves I do separately. I compost them in separate black bin liners, poke a few holes when the leaves are in, and let the elements do the work. Erm, turning aerates it, and you need to water it at least once a week. Grass cuttings are fantastic to put on the top if you’ve got any from late autumn or early spring. They keep the temperature up for decomposition, but make sure you do turn them after a week.


You can add a compost maker. It’s like a sort of powdery ash, if you will. It helps the decompositional process. Now, just sprinkle some on top, water, leave, and then a week later turn and repeat the process. When you’ve finished and your compost is actually ready – sometimes in some cases depending on the size of your compost heap, it can take a year or two years – but what is left, certainly at the bottom, you’ll find, is a lovely …look and see here, it’s lovely, isn’t it? Look at that: it’s a lovely rich, dark, crumbly, almost dry matter. It’s gardeners’ gold; it’s so easy to produce, it’s, it’s environmentally friendly because you’re recycling a lot of waste. It will go into your borders, allotment, flowers, everything benefits from it, you can even sprinkle a little bit of it on your lawn in small measure.  You can’t put a price on it because you cannot buy this in the shops; you can only get it by producing it yourself, and it gives a lot of pleasure to see those flowers and fruit growing, knowing you’ve actually encouraged them with your gardeners’ gold.  So, home compost and love your garden.

[ENDS]