Friday 8 November 2013

the secret's in the soil

I promised to return to the subject of home made compost.  Or threatened, depending on your point of view.  I am very keen on compost myself, wonderful stuff that improves any soil.  My latest cache has gone on to the near rose bed, where I hope it will help turn the solid clay surface into a crumbly tilth.  That's a vain hope, with only one application.  If I kept it up, the top few inches of soil in that bed might be turning into a crumbly tilth at about the point that I'm ready to move into the retirement bungalow, but still the compost will help, along with a top layer of Strulch.  The final dressing of mulch will help suppress the germination of annual weeds, and the layer of compost will make those that do appear much easier to pull out, at least for next season.

Organic material has a wonderful effect on all soils.  I explain this to customers who ask, at the plant centre, and like to feel that some are becoming almost as enthused as I am, although others probably just have nice manners, and privately feel as though they have been waylaid by a horticultural version of the Ancient Mariner.  Humus helps bind the small particles of a clay soil together, making it lighter and fluffier, more aerated, and able to hold water in a form that plants can use.  We think of clay soil as holding water, but in pure clay not all of the water is available for plant growth: some is so tightly bound to the clay particles that plant roots can't prise it free.  In a sandy soil, humus helps create texture, something that looks like structured soil rather than the contents of a child's sandpit.  It helps the soil retain water, full stop.  And it helps it retain nutrients in the top layer, instead of them washing away down into the ground water.

I particularly like home made compost.  I feel it adds life to the soil.  I can't quantify that scientifically, but plant seems livelier in areas that have had the home produced stuff than purchased mushroom compost.  Certainly the domestically produced compost is alive, since the heaps don't reach a high enough temperature to kill seeds or pathogens.  For that reason I am very careful about what goes on them, no weed seeds, and no ripened seed heads of garden plants if I don't want them spreading around the garden.  No weed roots, no visibly diseased leaves.  Suspect onions from the kitchen are even banned from the bin of peelings destined for the compost heap, since I don't want to go introducing white onion rot.  The compost bins are not a receptacle for waste, that goes to the council tip.  They are a factory for making something wonderful.

I have to confess, the home made compost did contain quite few stems that were not fully rotted down when the rest of it was ready to use.  I suppose I should have shredded them, or spent longer chopping them up with secateurs, before adding them to the heap.  Instead, I had to pick them out as I shovelled compost into the wheelbarrow, and chuck them back on the pile to go round again. I'm sure they'll rot eventually.  I heard Monty Don say that box clippings did not rot, and should not be added to the compost heap, but that's impossible.  Everything that was once alive rots on a compost heap, eventually.  Excavating our heaps, I've found no trace of the many stems from the ivy hedges that I've added after cutting them, or any box clippings, except for the most recent ones.  The only failure has been a discarded oven glove, that I put on the heap under the impression that it was cotton, but is obviously some sort of artificial fibre.  Everything else is gradually turning to a lovely, crumbly, dark brown, fluffy pile of goodness.

Alas, though, I am down to the last quarter of a bucket, and I would have spread that out hours ago if it hadn't started to rain.  Next week, or Sunday, or whenever the next dry day is, I'll have to start buying mushroom compost again.  That's a fifteen minute round trip, and the necessity to put rather stinky bags in my car at one pound fifty for every thirty litres.  Home made was nicer, cheaper and more convenient, but it is all gone.  It is amazing how such large piles of stems, leaves, small prunings, old litter from the chicken house, and kitchen peelings, can rot down into such a thin deposit of compost.  I suppose if they did not, civilisation would have disappeared some time ago under a layer of compost a mile deep.

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