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Sheila Wright of St.Albans Friends of the Earth and Sustainable St.Albans Week spoke about the enormous environmental damage done by extracting peat for use in our gardens. She asked that we only buy Peat Free composts – if it doesn’t say Peat Free, it won’t be.

Food Smiles St.Albans‘ Compost Champion Peter Bloomfield explained how great home grown compost is for your garden, and how, if you follow a few easy rules, it is easy to make. There’s lots of good advice on the RHS website. or take a look at the advice that Peter gives to Food Smiles workers which he’s kindly shared below.

Having won not just one but 2 awards at the Mayor’s Pride Awards, Sustainable St.Albans hope that you will want to help them make Sustainable St.Albans Week 2016 a success by making a small contribution.

Peter’s compost advice….

“Making compost is an integral part of growing organically. It’s a vital part of

putting nutrition and humus back into the soil. Compost is easy to make but the

process does need some thought and paying attention to detail.

The Mix: When making compost we need to have a mix of ‘Green’ and ‘Brown’

materials. If we try to make this a 50/50 mix we won’t go far wrong. Better if

60 – 70% browns. If it looks like a bin is filling up with ‘greens’ please start a

new bin.

Greens are generally the foliage left after a crop has given us its vegetables;

the leaves, stems, vines etc. We’ll make better compost if we chop everything

up before adding to the bin. We’ll try to provide an area for chopping with

spades. Otherwise cut with shears. Grass clippings and nettles before they

have produced seeds are also ‘good greens’ (but no roots or flowers from these,

please add them to the ‘weed bin’). Annual weeds can be added ( chickweed,

annual grass etc.)

Browns can go up to 60 -70% of the mix. Organic manure, if we can spare it, is a

good ‘activator’ plus dead stems and dead top growth, autumn leaves and

BROWN cardboard. (you can bring yours from home rather than recycling it….

but only brown stuff please). Cardboard needs to be torn into pieces about the

size of a paperback book and then screwed up (to trap air) before being thrown

on the top of greens.

Mixing: Once a bin is full it’s ideal to mix the contents and then cover the bin to

keep heat in.. One way to ensure good mixing would be to turn a full bin, after a

month or so, into another bin, so maybe we should only fill alternate bins to

start with. Take care not to strain your back doing whilst mixing.

Watering ! Composting materials need to be moist but not so wet that they

become slimy. Often it’s difficult to check this because compost in different

parts of the bin will have different moisture levels ie at the top, middle, bottom

and all the sides. One way of overcoming this is to mix the compost. A good

monitor of ‘wetness’ is that there are plenty of worms throughout the bin. If it

does look too dry then water it evenly over the whole surface and replace the

cover to prevent evaporation and heat loss. If in doubt, ask someone.

Hotbins: The essence of making compost fast is to raise the temperature by

natural fermentation of the ‘mix’. We’ll try to line a few bins with an insulating

material as a trial. This traps the generated warmth and accelerates the

composting process, which is the same as described above.

Using Compost The ideal texture of compost is coarse and fibrous. This fibrous

material is slow to break down and will last for a long time when added to our

soil, making that a better texture. Once ‘usable’, compost can be spread

anywhere on site, between plants or over the soil surface before planting or as a

mulch to keep moisture in the soil. Keep an eye open for weed roots which may

have got into the mix (especially the thick white ones) and put them in the weed

bin.

Remember….

Chop and cut; no perenniel weeds; get a good mix; keep heat in; turn regularly; keep moist

and covered.

Making compost communally, chatting over tearing cardboard or chopping greens

or mixing is very therapeutic, and the results are “Magic”.