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Sydenham Community Radio have asked me for some gardening tips - well, this is what I was writing when Ray spoke to me to say about encouraging KHLGA tenants to do more composting:
We all know we ought to compost kitchen scraps to improve the fertility of the garden, but what about the inconvenience, and the practical problems of flies and vermin? So ...
Step 1 is to buy a nappy bucket with a tight fitting lid from one of the £ shops, and put it under / near the sink. Scraps go in it, the lid goes on, and no smell or flies.
Step 2 is to have a compost bin or heap somewhere - maybe not too close to the house, say 10 yards away - to empty the bucket into, and where the sort of worms - brandling worms - that turn kitchen scraps into compost can do their work. I've generally found brandling worms live in the soil anyway, so as long as the compost is in contact with the soil, you don't need to buy them - but you can if you don't trust nature, or if you want to do the composting in a sealed 'wormery'. I think the main reason people go for such wormeries is that they worry about attracting rats. Realistically, you will occasionally get rats when the compost is in contact with soil - which is one reason for not putting the compost too close to the house. But you can minimise the problem by not putting the sort of things rats prefer - e.g meat and fish scraps. I think they also prefer cooked food, which is why, I think, some people say you should not compost this. Personally, I don't bother about this; I've only ever seen the occasional rat, and never enough for the neighbours to start complaining. I also add garden waste to my compost - grass cuttings, hedge clippings, etc. These will compost more slowly than kitchen scraps, but that doesn't really matter. If you add too much dry material, you may need to water (pee on?) the compost to keep it moist; if you add too many fresh grass cuttings, they can form a layer of slimy sludge, so mix this up with drier material.
Step 3 is to use the stuff. If you've been very careful, turning it over regularly with a garden fork, or using a tumbler composter, it's possible you will just have the sort of dark, moist, crumbly compost you see in the adverts for wormeries. But if you're like me, about half will have rotted down to this, and the rest will either be stuff that hasn't yet rotted down, or stuff which is never going to rot down - e.g. that teaspoon that got mixed up with the kitchen waste, or the twiggier bits of hedge clippings. With the good stuff, you can just put it on your garden beds to improve general fertility and soil quality. But you can also use it for potting on plants you might want to give special attention - tomatos? basil? chilli peppers? - or just use it to fill up a hole you put such plants into in the garden. However, unlike compost you
might buy at a garden centre, it's unlikely to be sterile, so various interesting seedlings will also appear. In some years I've had very nice tomatoes this way. Peaches, nectarines and cucumbers may also appear ...
The most important thing, however, is just to get the organic material into your garden soil, which over a period of years will increase the soil quality and fertility, whether you do everything very carefully or not. And you don't need to feel restricted to composting your own - if your neighbours are about to put their garden waste in their wheelie bin, offer to take it instead. And if you're not easily embarrassed, in the autumn, when most of it is fallen leaves, take home some of the plastic bags the Council leaves the street sweepings in, and compost that. Fallen leaves take much longer to rot down than kitchen waste, and you will need to put some gloves on to sort out the cans which also get swept up, but it's all good stuff.
Tim
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