Tag Archives: Compost

Priory Picture Post # 16

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Still got plenty of …

… to collect.  So have to spend a lot of time over at the …

… trying to make more space.  But whenever I do a local busy body …

… turns up. Uninvited.

Getting in the way, making a nuisance of himself.

Turning the compost had exposed a wriggly mass of …

… and so you-know-who was straight in there …

… helping himself.  Without so much …

as a by my leave.  The cheek of it.

Let’s Build A Compost Bin!

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the compost bins at the Priory (see “Composting the Priory“) and was inundated with a request for more information on how I built them.  So, for what my carpentry skills might be worth, here we go.
(Before I start, I ought to point out that until fairly recently, I had hardly ever made anything out of wood.  Oh, except a rather fine Sopwith Camel when I was eight.  Not a full size, flyable one – I hasten to add).
A couple of years ago,
- ahh, sorry.  So sorry.   Our eleven year old son is defying my parental authority.  Excuse me a second while I lock him in a wardrobe.  Don’t worry – I’ll give him a jug of water and some bread crusts.  Honest.  And it’ll only be for a day or two.  Or three.  Maybe four.
So – where was I?  Oh yes – a couple of years ago, I picked up a copy of Geoff Hamilton’s ‘Cottage Gardens’ in a charity shop.  And within this lovely book by this lovely man, I saw his design for a rose arch and decided that I would build one in our garden  So I did.  And do you know what?  It was surprising.  It was surprising on two counts.  Actually no; three counts.  It was surprising on three counts; it actually turned out as an arch, it actually supported roses and, most surprisingly, it actually didn’t fall over.
Here it is, with an over-enthusiastic Rosa ‘Dublin Bay’ growing up one side (when this photo was taken in June 2010, I had taken out its companion, Rosa ‘Iceberg,’ from the right hand side.  The latter’s propensity to suffer both rust and blackspot depressed me too much.  Mind you, the red and white roses intertwined did look amazing).  The success of my rose arch gave me the confidence to build two wood stores, a couple of simple garden benches and, when the time came, compost bins.
The compost bins were very loosely designed around the concept of the rose arch.  Four posts (7cm x 7cm) are sunk into the ground.  But then rather than fixing battens for the roses to grow up you simply nail boards to the posts in order to make a three-sided box.
Two more posts are added for each additional bin.  Make as many as you can and more than you think you need.

The boards I used were 15cm wide and 4.8m long.  The length actually determined the width of the bins – I simply divided the length of one board by three which gave me three bins each 1.6m wide – wide enough to accommodate my needs (!).  My mighty, substantial needs.  A board cut in half gave me the depth of the bins: 2.4m.  Six boards nailed to the posts made bins 90cm high.You may, as I did, over engineer the fixing of the posts into the ground and use post spikes.  These are long spikes that you first hammer into the ground, with a square bracket at the top that holds the posts.  BUT they are a pig to use.  They invariably twist as they go into the ground and as they have to remain square, this is a real pain.  Also it is very hard work to sink them into the ground – I put the bins at the Priory on the site of an old brick road (called, rather charmingly and aptly, The Red Road).  Imagine hammering these spikes through brick.  Hard work?  Yeah, just a bit. So don’t use spikes.  Do as I did at the Old Forge and just sink your posts a foot or so into the ground and then back-fill with hardcore and soil.  When you nail on your boards and the bins are full, they won’t budge much.

The Priory Bins

The bins I’ve made for both the Old Forge and the Priory are very big but that is because they have to accommodate a ride-on mower and/or a trailer.   Make yours to a size that suits; in my own garden, the bins are 1.5m wide but only 1m deep.

Back view of the Priory bins

(Sorry this is all pretty dry stuff.  Almost done – hang on in there; you can all go outside and play in a minute).  I was always going to build two lots of three bins at the Priory and realised that if I spaced them correctly, I could have a seventh bin made out of the gap

between them.  Finally, screw or nail a batten to the front edge of each of the posts at the front of the bins (the red piece of wood above) and to that, attach a length of planking equal to the height of the bins.

Here’s a close up of that arrangement with one of the front boards shifted slightly out of position.  Gosh, but this is gripping stuff.

You can then cut six planks to slide down the front of each bin.  Strictly speaking you don’t need to do this but it does increase the amount of compost each bin will hold without spilling out of the front. Site your bins in the open, not under trees; you want rain to fall on them.  Build them on level ground if you can – it’s much  easier than building them on a slope.  Much, much easier.  Do you cover the compost?  Hmm.  Well, I don’t.  Should I? Probably.  It would keep in moisture and warmth and keep thistle-down out.  Perhaps I’ll cover them next year. Perhaps I won’t.  Perhaps I’ll just surprise you.  Keep you guessing.  On your toes. And that’s it.  Easy peasey, lemon-squeezy.   If anything’s not clear – please say.  Next week I’ll be showing you how to build your very own domestic nuclear reactor.  Free energy for life!  You’ll need to bring your own uranium fuel rods.  And hammer.  Please don’t forget.

Composting the Priory

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I like to build compost bins.  Can’t seem to stop.  Stick me in a garden and before you can say, “Sticky Toffee Pudding,” I’ll have knocked up a range of ‘bins.   Whether you want me to or not – I just keep on building them;


at the other garden I tend,

My own garden with partially built compost bins on left with raised veg beds, olive tree and Jim, Spring 2011

in my own garden

The Priory compost bins, with mixed hedging on left - freshly cut a few weeks ago with clippings waiting to be burnt in foreground

or at the Priory.  I’ve written about the compost bins at the Priory before (see “Compost, Compost and Yet More Compost“).  They sit out on the footpath over on the western boundary.  In the above photo you can see the (as yet uncut) beech hedge and the three oak trees I transplanted back when the world was young and I was but a lad (Feb 2011 – Ed).  They’ve survived their ordeal (see “Planting for the Future“) and whilst not truly flourishing they seem to be fine.  Here’s hoping they make it through the coming winter.  If they survive that, I think they’ll be home and dry.

The front of each bin has six boards that slide up and out

The bins are big – five foot wide, eight foot long and three-foot high and with seven of them you’d think my composting facilities could take all that I could chuck at them.  But, of the seven bins only three were, until recently, available for this season’s grass clippings and garden waste.  Two were filled with last year’s compost and two with last year’s leaf mould.  The gardens produce so much  in the way of lawn cuttings  that I was worried I’d exceed Priory Composting Capacity.

My lovely, lovely leaf mould is in the bottom two bins.

Recently though, and since the above photo was taken, I’ve managed to amalgamate all of the leaf mould into one bin and, by now having four available bins, averted Complete Composting Chaos.  Shudder.
I turn the contents of the bins regularly as this adds much-needed air into the mix and helps the composting process.  Ideally though, there should be a lot more other plant material mixed in with the clippings.  Left to their own devices and unturned, heaps of clippings mixed with a similar amount of ‘brown’ waste (i.e. leaves, cardboard, paper, etc), should heat up to an extraordinary degree and produce wonderful compost in about three months.  Grass clippings on their own also heat up amazingly but need to be turned regularly if they’re not to become just a slimy, foul-smelling mess.  In the above photo the grass clippings are fairly young and yeah, boy do they stink. No, I mean really.  I suppose this is understandable considering that they are being digested, consumed by heat, microbes, fungi and bacteria with, hopefully, sweet-smelling compost as the main waste product.

This collapsed cardoon is actually off to the bonfire - its stems are too woody for the compost bins.

 I add huge amounts of waste to the bins.  Trailers and trailers of stuff.  Wheelbarrows and wheelbarrows of stuff.  And yet it all continuously breaks down and reduces in bulk.  ALL of last year’s garden waste now sits in one and a half bins.  Remarkable.
In a bid to help the breakdown of all those grass cuttings, I add as much brown waste as I can.  The bins devour all the old paperwork from the theanxiousgardener.blogspot.com offices, as well as increasing amounts of cardboard, newspaper and kitchen waste from the Priory, and recently the chopped up beech hedge clippings.  The sheer bulk of the latter was perfect for mixing in with the smelly grass.  Obviously all the general garden waste (dead plants, prunings, etc) is also added to the heaps, as well as some wood ash from the house fires.
I was seriously worried with the overwhelming amount of cut grass I was adding to the bins last year.  But I continued to turn them from one bin to another (great upper body workout) and to add more and more newspaper and cardboard and leaves.  And, miracles of miracles, it seems to have worked.  Look – chock-a-block full of worms and what was nasty, foul-smelling gunk is now becoming lovely, pretty much odourless, compost. So much so that I’m happy to stick my hand in it. Wouldn’t have done that a few months back!

The Long Borders - Aug 2011

I should be able to use all of this compost during the coming autumn and winter months as a mulch and improver for the beds and borders, and so reduce the considerable amount of mushroom compost that I usually buy in.  Last year that was four cubic metres … so the money saved can be spent on tequila.

Compost, Compost and Yet More Compost

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A great deal of my time at the Priory is spent  gazing into the middle distance and humming, (cough) is spent dealing with the huge amount of grass clippings, leaves and general garden waste that the grounds produce.  All of this precious resource had, during previous years, been dumped in one enormous heap.  Rabbits burrowed and lived in it, nettles and goose grass smothered it and I fretted that all that beautiful ‘stuff’ was just going to waste.

So, ta daaaaa

In January 2010, I built seven compost bins.  They’re pretty big at 5ft wide and 8ft long, and yet do you know what?  I may need more!
Presently two are full of one season’s worth of grass clippings and garden waste.  There is an awful lot of grass at the Priory.  An awful lot.  From March through to October I spend, on average, ten to twelve hours a week mowing (and that doesn’t include strimming).   And yet all that grass waste now sits in just two of my bins and week by week they reduce still further.  Unbelievable.  Clippings don’t rot down that easily, so I have added large amounts of newspaper and cardboard, leaves and straw in order to add carbon to the mix.  Also, I turn the heaps regularly so as to get oxygen into them.  This aids the breakdown process.  Bit of an experiment.  But ever hopeful, I’m hoping to end up with two bins full of lovely jubbly compost.  Fingers tightly crossed.

Both this year and last I have had to buy in 4 cubic metres of spent mushroom compost.  I’m hoping that as my own compost production shifts up a gear I’ll be able to reduce the amount bought in.

I have more confidence in the leaf mould.  Two more of the bins are just full of leaves.  I’ve had to jump up and stomp them down in order to fit them all in.  This is my second year of leaf mould production and quite frankly, I can’t have too much of the stuff.  It is gorgeous.  Sweet smelling, crumbly – yum, yum.  The relatively small amount I made last year was used up early on in the winter, mostly as a mulch.  I’m hoping to produce five or six times as much this year.  All I have left now is in a trug bucket in the greenhouse.  This I add to potting compost when potting up ferns and the like.
Lovely innit?  Makes you want to rip your clothes off and dive straight in.
No?  Oh, well suit yourself.

Now, bizarrely and totally unplanned for, one other bin is half full with …… duckweed!!!  A quick explanation called for – pay attention at the back.  The Priory sits in a valley surrounded on three sides by open grazing land.  When it rains heavily all the runoff from these fields flows into the Priory grounds and into the east pond.

The ditch connecting the two ponds.  The east pond is in the background,
the meadow to the left.

A ditch connects this to the west pond.  When the latter is full it overflows through a channel and then out under the beech hedge to a culvert and into a small river.  Last summer, for the first time, both ponds were blanketed with duckweed and all the rainfall a few weeks ago effectively flushed most of it out and deposited it at the base of the hedge.  I had to rake it all up and lost count after I had filled 25 barrows!  That’s a lot of duckweed.

So that’s five bins currently being used and the grass cutting season only a few weeks away. I was thinking of building another three bins but think that actually, I’m becoming just a tad compost obsessive.  Two empty bins will be more than enough.  Won’t it?