Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: jambop on October 20, 2020, 08:29
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So I have just completed my raised bed veg garden. I ended up with 17 3m x1.5m beds and three 6m x 1.2m beds which I will use for stuff I used to grow in long rows the slightly narrower width giving two nicely spaced rows. Anyway I used up my nearly entire stock of homemade compost covering them. I have one large bin left to spread. The compost although nice enough looking stuff has quite a few grubs of different varieties in it I have left the beds uncovered hoping the black birds will scoff them :lol:
The one question I have is about new compost preparation. I normally just load all my waste into the bin a bit at a time as and when it is available. However in the summer I bought a secondhand shredder and had recently chipped up some bay branches and leaves. If I intersperses this material with grass clippings in layers will it compost down? I am about to thin my fig trees out too so there will be a lot of chippings from them which I thought to do the same with. Will this work and how long does it need? The chippings are quite fine.
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Stuff like bay does rot down, but it is never quite as fine as compost made with softer green waste.
I have quite a bit of bay in my garden at home and truck that, plus other woody chippings, to the plot to compost. I keep it together in a single bin and add in greener material. Grass clippings would be fine. I cover the bin with split open compost bags weighed down with bricks and it takes at least all winter here, or into mid spring in a cold year. It is warmer where you are, so you might find it quicker to rot down.
I use this compost for mulching areas for growing things like squash or tomatoes, but it would not be ideal for small seeds. By the following year, it has disappeared into the soil and does add a lot of heart to it.
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I just wondered if it broke down OK as there are a lot of oils in the leaves which might work as some sort of preservative or anti bacterial. The smell of the bay oil was really intense when I was shredding.
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It did for me and didn’t seem to affect anything. The leaves are quite tough, so I found bits and pieces of them remained in the compost, but like I said, perfectly OK for a mulch.
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I would shred it & compost it before using, mixing as News says with whatever you have available, the difference being I would not make a separate bin of it as all my waste gets added together as I have 5/6 bins & turn from one to another as it goes along. Bin 6 being a green Johanna & sealed so cooked food can be added to that one.