Tag Archives: compost

Seeds, salads and soil

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Having been seduced by exotic seeds and tempted by Twitter I’m now getting back to the straight and narrow. I’m going to grow salads and help my fellow man. If these salads can include bamboo shoots and the helping can be done via Twitter I will, of course, be a very happy man but if not, it’s back to basics.

This is why we started Quercus Community. It was meant to be about working in the open air, growing good food and making compost. Well, it wasn’t originally about compost but give a man access to garden waste and animal manure and there can only be one result.

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When I worked in the antiques trade simply breathing the air of an antique shop was enough to calm me down, in this new life I find that compost works the same magic.

Meanwhile, I have been suffering stress from both Twitter and the computer, one being fixed by the application of a sense of balance, and th eother being fixed by a pen knife. It’s probably best not to ask about that repair.

And yes, I did have to thing long and hard before selecting the three “s” words in the title…

 

 

Behind every successful man…

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You wouldn’t think one small woman could contain so many orders but by the time she’d finished I had a list big enough to see out my Saturday, which is why I’m sitting down at just after four to finish the day. It’s not been the longest of working days, but it is Saturday and a chap expects a bit of slack.

I’ve bought compost, potted, repotted, sown seeds, weeded and swept up. I’ve tidied, moved things, made compost, picked rhubarb and watered. I did find time for a cup of tea and to show off my new “tea plantation”, talk to a keen new volunteer (I’ll soon turn her into a cynic) and er…

That reminds me, I seem to have missed lunch. I knew there was something I’d forgotten.

If I call it a diet I can feel virtuous. And hungry.

My nettle crop is looking good – enough tops for a good soup and enough mature leaves to start drying for tea. Unfortunately The Farmer and his farmer’s brain have noticed them and told me to eradicate them. This calls for either blackmail or distraction tactics. I will apply my thoughts to the problem.

This was the weather this afternoon just before the rain. Not quite as good as it has been and there’s a definite bite in the 25 kph wind – good job I decided not to jump the gun with the planting out. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It seems like progress

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Now that it’s settled we’ve edged the keyhole bed (well almost…), planted it and watered it.

As you will see from the photograph and the “well almost…” my calculation of the circumference based on 2 pi r is slightly at fault. I think it’s the radius that’s at fault rather than the calculation but it’s a bit annoying and calls for another trip to the Poundshop tomorrow morning. Once that’s in place we can start adding more soil. All we need to do is find the soil – it seems a bit of a cheat to buy more when we’re trying to be sustainable but you can’t grow veg in poor soil and principles. We’ll be talking about that tonight I suspect.

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As for the watering, we’ve transplanted some veg from other places so it looks like it’s established and they needed quite a lot of water to help them get over the shock. If only I’d known it was going to rain this evening I wouldn’t have carried quite as many cans. 

We’ve even started to refill the compost heap.

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The trench left from fitting the biomass heating system to the farm cottages (which has been the subject of some discontent over the last two months) is now filled and the equipment has also been used to put tarmac down at the back of the centre so we don’t look like a building site any more.

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All in all it’s looking like progress, and when you add the weeding and tidying we’ve also done today, and the fact that I’ve been able to tick eleven jobs off my office list I’m going home tired but happy. I’ve also taken a booking for a cookery group and agreed the catering for a meeting this weekend – eight people, one requiring gluten free sandwiches, and all keen to try nettle soup!

Finally, I saw my first swallow of the year this morning and as we left the allotment tonight a female kestrel circled round us at head height. Where else can you get that sort of job satisfaction?

 

Spring at last!

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I have to say I’m feeling a lot better after a couple of nice warm days. The soil feels better too, We’ve had the soil turned over for us and started spreading compost and there’s hope for the future. Strange how it only takes a few days to turn things round. After a couple of false starts we’ve even got the community allotment project off the ground.

That’s what I wrote on Saturday, but didn’t have time to continue. By Monday morning we’d had a cold snap, a cloudburst and I’d watched the jackdaws pulling up the newly-planted community onion sets. Now I like jackdaws, but I’m also fond of onions, and I do like cropping what I plant. It was a bit of a moral dilemma, which I resolved by taking the Josie Wales view – “Jackdaws gotta eat, same as worms.”

Anyway – to Monday. I love the smell of meetings in the morning, which is good because that’s what we had. I walked away with a page of notes, which was a bit like the curate’s egg – good in parts. The headline news is that we will be getting some help with the gardening, both in terms of labour and plants. We’ve struggled over the years and though the display gets better every year, much of it depends on one of the neighbours who gives us surplus plants.

Part of the help featured a small digger, which broke up the ground for the second keyhole bed. It was a mixed blessing as it also carved a trench for a water pipe (hooray!) by digging up our newly rotovated bed (boooo!). Still, we will have water, and the bed has benefitted from some extra digging I suppose.

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We’ve also filled some tyres and planted potatoes, using a lot of compost. I’m sad to use it (do I sound like a compost miser here?) but quite proud that we’ve managed to produce so much in the last year. It’s a bit variable and included quite a lot of plastic despite all the care we took, but a lot of it is black and friable just like proper compost. The bits that aren’t so good are still good enough to throw on the ground and the bits that aren’t good enough to throw on the ground are already in another bin waiting for a second chance.

Just in case you think I’m a bit dull talkig about compost look at this club. I found it while I was looking for Be Nice to Nettles week. I’m getting a bit worried that I can’t find details for this year.

 

A few numbers

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It’s been a packed month. I’ve been telling people I haven’t had a proper day off for two weeks but looking back at the diary I don’t seem to have stopped all month. That’s partly due to a lack of organisational skills rather than just workload.  I really ought to make time off for my family, but when I say that at home they always tell me it isn’t necessary…

In that time we’ve hosted five school visits, a guide pack (or whatever group they come in),  two nursery visits, two college days,  two lamb days, an evening meeting, four yoga classes, two baking days, our regular Quercus days, a party and  three other events. That’s around 275 individuals, plus the people who came to eat at the cafe.

Hopefully they enjoyed themselves and some of them learnt something. Even if they didn’t they did leave us some compost so no visit is wasted.

 

 

Keyhole Garden (2)

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We added the last barrow loads of soil to the bed today and although the central compost basket isn’t quite finished as it should be we’re pretty happy with it.

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Working on the basis of striking while the iron is hot we have started a second bed using recycled materials to form the boundary. This time it’s old tyres, because we have plenty of them (somebody just dumped another four in one of the fields recently.I’m hoping that the black tyres will heat up in spring and give us a slightly earlier start to the year, though we will have to wait until next spring to test the theory out.

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We’ve also started a trial in one of the raised beds. They were made from conifers felled during the building of the centre and half filled with a mix of rubble and rubbish from a demolished barn. We used general purpose compost from the local garden supplier (bought by the ton so it wasn’t too expensive) but there isn’t a lot of body in the soil in the beds as you may imagine.

Digging holes today it was clear that the top foot of the bed we were working was very dry and though it had roots in it there wasn’t a lot of organic material in it. I spotted three worms, but that isn’t a lot for the soil we shifted.

Hopefully we’ve addressed this lack by sticking in a layer of wood chippings, a layer of paper towels, fruit peel, teabags, toast and eggshells. Mainly paper towels to be honest, but we generate a lot of waste on a school visit and we need to reuse them if at all possible. We followed this up with a layer of pig muck and then replaced the soil.

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We harvested the leeks this afternoon so next week we’ll repeat the process with the second half of the bed and use the whole bed as a raised bean trench. It’s going to look decorative and hopefully be very productive. If it works we’ll start a proper rotation and do the same to another bed next year.

 

Keyhole Garden

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After six months of discussion (the “we should build a keyhole garden” phase) and three more of procrastination (one of my better developed skills) we eventually entered the final phase of pre-building – the “do a few hours and then stop” phase. We’ve had a circle of bricks and roughly chopped earth waiting for us for a bout a month now, but with trees and lambs and such we haven’t had time to get on with it.

At the weekend we decided we needed to start work again. There’s frost forecast for next weekend, and that’s just what we need to break up some of the lumpier bits. If that isn’t enough there’s a whole list of other reasosn to get on with it – planting time coming up, the need to focus and the upcoming “Kenya Day” we’re having.

You will search in vail for any Kenyan National Holiday on 9th May, we just seem to have chosen 9th May as a convenient day. I’m not sure what is being organised because I’m trying to avoid adding to my workload, but it’s pretty certainly going to involve a reduction in the goat population round here. What? You didn’t think we were rearing goats for fun did you? Farmers, as we always tell the kids coming round, don’t keep pets.

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From the top left – The Start,. The next phase with drainage layer, keyhole and wood chippings applied and the compost cage in place. The compost cage lined with straw. My hard working staff starting to put soil on the layer of well-rotted pig manure. Close up of hard working staff, who by that time were starting to abuse the photographer and talk of tea. Final shot – most of the soil is in place – probably six to eight barrow loads for me and Julia to apply tomorrow and then we just have to let it settle for a while.

The theory is that you put compost in the central cage and water it, thus getting best value out of the water and the nutrients. Some beds are much more like raised beds but the bricks we had earmarked for the job ended up in a path so we’re having to make do with a lower wall. Despite this we will be getting an increase in surface area because of the slope. There are all sorts of keyhole beds, as you can see if you follow this link.

The Moving Finger

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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald

Yes, I know it can be read as a bit of a miserable quotation, and I admit I do always get a bit gloomy at New Year. For the first few days it’s always a case of remembering what I haven’t done in the last year, though I gradually build up a good head of steam and start to look forward to the new stuff.

Things are already moving on for next year – we had a booking for a Yoga Retreat yesterday and a local college emailed to confirm five more dates to come and do its animal care course. This morning we had another email as one of our regular schools booked to bring three classes round to look at lambing and do some cooking. That’s a good start to the year.

I’ve also been writing a list of things to do. That in itself is enough to cause depression as it’s a bit like building a mountain for yourself to climb. However, I just mutter the short version of the above quote (The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on:) and get on with it. That’s what New Year is about for me, doing things and moving on.

This year we will be building up the butterfly garden and recording butterfly sightings in a more systematic manner.  We will also be doing more observing and recording of insects and birds. We’ll never be as good as the people at eakringbirds.com but that’s no reason not to try.

As usual the garden is the site of many of our good intentions, and as usual we’re already falling behind with it.

I’ve been doing some reading over Christmas so I have a few new notes to add to the cookery demonstrations. I’ve also dusted down my old guano notes as I’m feeling the time is right for more talk of manure. And dung, compost, fertiliser, nitrates, personal liquid waste (as Bob Flowerdew calls it), comfrey, nettle tea and anything else that rots, festers or smells.

I need something to replace the “Is it wrong to eat people?” presentation as this didn’t go down terribly well with the parent helpers or my wife. This will, for the moment, join the notes about eating guinea pigs as a subject that needs a little polishing before being used again.

It’s also the time for finalising all the special days – either traditional ones like Lammas or the modern manufactured ones. I keep meaning to do National Carrot Day just because it’s so unlikely, and because we could make carrot lollies just like World War 2, National Nettle Week is a definite for this year because it ties in with the butterflies and making people eat weeds. There are others I’m looking at too, though I’ll be giving National Chip Week a miss and National Mango Week is just taking the mickey.

So there you go – 2015 and it’s all to play for.

Compost short cut

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I used 10 eggs for the Honey and Treacle tart on Saturday. While I was cooking the tarts I dried the egg shells too. That way you can store them and deal with them later without them smelling. I learnt that the hard way one summer.

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After that all you need to do is crush them with a rolling pin and you can throw them in the compost, use them as a barrier to stop slugs or put them in the wormery.

Book Review – Composting Inside and Out

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Composting inside and out – Stephanie Davis

Betterway Home Books 2011 Published at $16.99 but we bought it for £3.99 from a garden centre.

This is a book about composting, rather than a book about the theory and technicalities of composting.

All you need to do is to throw some vegetable waste in a pile. That’s it. no carbon/nitrogen balance, no bin, just a pile of vegetable scraps. It’s simple advice and it’s right – better to have an imperfect compost heap no heap at all.

We currently bury thousands of tonnes of waste. We use lorries to transport it and we allow it to rot and produce greenhouse gases. It’s not efficient. It’s not good for the planet. And it’s a waste of a useful resource. Far better to keep it at home and use it to improve our garden soil. No garden? Use it in containers, or even give it away to someone who can use it.

As you would expect from someone who calls herself the Urban Worm Girl there’s quite a lot on worms. There is also plenty of information on other composting systems. Much of it is American, and for once that’s an advantage. Living in a country with some very cold parts (cold enough to freeze compost) she has a lot of information about keeping worms indoors. Yes, indoors. I always thought it made sense to keep them warm in the winter.

It’s 188 pages with pictures and plenty of space so it’s not a difficult read and it’s well worth it for the information.

Now all I need to do is have a word with my wife about bringing the worms in…