Turning Earth: compost making

All the heaps I have known

A compost heap or compost container has been part of the garden here right from the early days. The allocated space has always been small, as it's a small garden. Currently the compost container is a rather ramshackle construction made from four corner posts with polythene stapled to it around the sides, wrapped around with bought-in screening material. The compost heap sits on the flowerbed in front of the golden hop, in an area that in summer is rather overshadowed by overhead growth of the hop, and roses and clematis, on an overhead trellis. Nothing much grew there, so it seemed the ideal place for my compost heap. Previously the compost container was at the end of Millennium Shed, and before that, right near the house - too near - the tiny flies in summer used to drift in through the open windows.

The fact that tea bags and banana skins and vegetable peelings that you'd normally throw in the bin can rot down to something you can use to improve your soil is enough to convince me that a compost heap is essential to my garden. There's something very satisfying about finding that a load of vegetable matter has ended up as brown, fibrous, nice-smelling stuff that you can use in planting holes for your new plants, or put on the soil as a mulch. As the garden has become more established, there's more plant waste from prunings and dying foliage in autumn, and it seems like a good policy to put the garden's waste back into a process which returns the dead material back to nourish the living material, in the same place, in the same garden.

In autumn and spring there is sometimes too much to compost, so this goes to the green waste facility at the council tip, to go on to a bigger compost heap somewhere else.

Contentious compost

Some years ago, when I was first on the internet, I entered a debate about compost making on an online garden forum. I remember the debate getting quite heated and adversarial, following a suggestion that plastic composting bins maybe didn't work very well. It was just that a couple of people I knew thought that plastic composting containers were rubbish, compared to the traditional compost heap. This didn't go down well, as the general consensus of the time was that we should all be committed to promoting the use of compost bins. So, I embark on this page about compost-making with some trepidation.

I'm all for everyone recycling their rubbish, and our household is one of those that has for a long time been committed to recycling as much as possible. Indeed I've since heard from people who have found that plastic composting bins have worked well for them. I just don't think that it should be suggested, as it seems to be, that all you have to do is chuck your kitchen and garden waste in a plastic bin. That you just throw it all in there, leave it, and one day before too long you'll take the lid off and find that it's full of something like the stuff you buy in bags as compost from the garden centre.

Compost making does of course take a bit of effort, and a bit of time. Sometimes you can get away without much effort, but then you have to allow more time. Generally I've found that you do have to put a bit of effort into getting the balance right for the necessary processes to take place, and that this involves putting in a mixture of soft, sappy stuff and rather woodier material. You also, usually, have to turn and restack the ingredients. And they need to get some air. Anyone who's emptied out the results of a load of vegetable peelings rotting in the bottom of a plastic bin will know what I mean.

I spent hours in the early days of gardening reading up on exactly why some heaps of organic matter would heat up and end up as sweet-smelling compost, while other heaps would turn into a stinking sludge, and why the stinking wet sludge would be more likely to happen in a plastic bin. Something to do with aerobics, or anaerobics, or something. Nothing to do with the kind of aerobics where you jump up and down. Though it might involve this, if you are startled by a mouse running out of your compost heap and over your foot.

Long-leggedy beasties, legless beasties, all kinds of beasties

Lots of creatures live in compost heaps. Most are the small kinds of beasties you see about the garden anyway - centipedes, woodlice, worms and slugs. Slugs and snails are universally disliked, and we assume they're just there to irritate gardeners by chewing holes in hostas. That they're just on the planet to annoy us. Actually, they do seem to have an important part to play in the eco-system, as far as I can see by helping to eat rotting vegetable matter in compost heaps. I just wish they'd stay in there doing that, and not venture out for fresh lettuce that I've just planted.

Creatures seem to be attracted to the compost heap and congregate there for big insect get-togethers. When you disturb your compost heap to remove or turn its contents you can feel a bit like you're intruding. All these beasties look disorientated and start rushing off for cover. There they were, going about their beasty business chewing on old bits of lettuce that you didn't want, and suddenly you're there sticking your garden fork into their little world. It can feel like you're the police raiding a really good party.

I don't use a garden fork anymore, or even a spade, after encountering a toad in the compost heap one summer. There are also lots of frogs in the garden, and I imagine they might like the compost heap too. I would be upset if I injured any innocent amphibians. So these days, when taking out or turning the compost, I just put on a pair of big gloves, and stick my hands in instead. I just hope I never meet a grass snake or anything else snake-like.

I do though expect to meet the occasional mouse.
More about the occasional mouse.