[Michael196]

you could mix in that compost material with you exiting clay while picking out weeds, and then add the new material on top.

you could find good compost at the center or bottom of that heap.

just grass clipping will compost eventually, albeit alot slower that compost and paper mixed.

[Blowin]

Hello, Digger! You have my sympathies.

Re. the raised beds, your scaffold planks aren't going to last long. I found concrete boards locally (6ft x 1ft) for €14 each and they'll last more or less for ever. Get short lengths of T-section mild steel to drive into the ground and hold them up - again will last for decades.

For runner beans in my old small garden I put a 9 foot concrete post in the middle of a metre square, eighteen inch deep pit. I lined the bottom and sides with soaked newspaper, then as much lawn mowings as I could get and filled the rest with soil. Every day then we put potato peelings and other green rubbish all round the pole which gradually built up a soggy mess.

When planting time came I put an old bike wheel on top of the post and a series of pegs round the edge of the pit. I then ran stout nylon strings up and down from pegs to rim of bike wheel, zig-zagging all the way round, and planted two, tray-grown bean plants to each string. We had beans coming out of our ears. We kept the area moist by continuing to throw kitchen waste round the pole and it never needed moving.

[medieval knievel]

[Blowin]

As an add-on to what I wrote earlier, clay soil, being light in colour, reflects heat from the sun so doesn't warm up as quickly as dark soil. Thus seeds don't germinate as quickly.

If you can source fallen leaves, a few bags of them will loosen your soil if dug in (and darken it). If you can get hold of soot, put it in a barrell, fill the barrell with water and leave for 3 months. The resultant water makes a good fertiliser and the left over soot can be dug in to darken the soil more. A sweep I once knew had soil that was nearly black from years of doing this but he had lovely crops.

Chopped stinging nettles - no roots or seeds, of course - provide excellent green manure for your soil and a solid mass of them in your runner bean pit/trench will provide all the iron they need. As with soot above, an armful left to soak in a barrell of water will also make useful fertiliser before being dug into the soil.

[Liparis]

And if you keep rabbits, cut and dry the nettles like hay, makes great hay for bunnies.
Bill.

[Fiachra]

I would recommend peas and dwarf french beans. I grew them for the first time last year . I didn't plant till mid June and we were eating them from mid August to October - a huge crop from very little space.They are good fun for the kids to pick. I also grew calabrese(broccoli) which was a great success.Cabbage was a disaster - all huge leaves no heart and riddled with caterpillars. Planted swede and carrots too - I found that the ones left in the ground until Nov / Dec were much nicer than the ones we ate while still small.They (whoever "they" are) say that carrots sown in June have a better chance of escaping carrot fly.

[Digger Dan]

Thanks Blowin,

your suggestion to use concrete boards is good but I had picked up some scaffold boards locally and will have to accept them rotting at some stage.

Previously I had used 220mm x 40mm joists which lasted 4 years. The scaffold boards are a bit heavier at 220mm x 60mm which I'm lining on the soil side with heavy guage Visqueen plastic (left over from a building project). I hope to get 5 years from these!!

What's the opinion among organic gardeners about using chemical wood perservatives? I avoided using the 'standard' garden stuff like Ronseal Fencelife as I suspect that there might be some chance of chemicals leeching out and absorbed into plants. Maybe if someone from Ronseal picks up this thread they can confirm?

I went with Leylands 'Fence King' as it clearly states 'on the tin' that it is safe for animal and plant life but I don't have any more information on this product. Maybe someone knows more?

[Cindrella ella]

Just wanted to say I love this thread. Learning so much even though I am just lurking.

[Blowin]

In response to Cindrella, I've picked up a lot in dribs and drabs from stray remarks by other gardeners along the way but, by far and away the best investment I ever made was a book called 'Food From Your Garden' - a Readers Digest 1977 publication which, as far as I know, doesn't have an ISBN number - but has everything I've ever needed for formal advice. Book shops may still be able to order it or you may find a good used copy on Amazon.

Another mini-Bible I use is 'Vegetable Growing' by Dr W E Shewell-Cooper - ISBN O 85468 180 9 - that majors on composting and 'no digging' gardening but has a lot of individual crop advice too.

[Digger Dan]

First of the new raised beds are in!

I nailed the lined scaffold boards together with 125mm round wire nails and thankfully all came together pretty square. The old bed went with the lie of the ground and there was a 50mm fall over length. This time I leveled the bed and anchored it with four support pegs (see photo below).

You might also notice in the photo that I picked up the new compost bin. These are made by Carbery Plastics Ltd., Clonakilty, Co. Cork ( ph: 021-33531).
I see from ALDI this week (5th Mar) that they are doing an ECO composter for €39.99, this one was €15 from Wexford County Council. So get on to your local County Council and support an Irish manufacturer!

I have some concerns about composters that use kitchen waste attracting rats and mice. Anyone got any tips to ensure that a composter remains rodent free?

________________________________________________________
Digger Dan

[walltoall]

Hi DiggerDan
I've been using all types of composters for decades and long before green became an issue rather than a colour. No problems with rats ever but I'm rather careful about what I've recycled into compost. I never put cooked food in the compost. We have urban foxes prepared to eat such stuff so we include them as stake-holders in the overall eco-plan. All garden debris is recycled. We shred all paper and it goes on the compost. Kitchen peelings are obvious. All prunings from trees and shrubs goes through a LIDL shredder and then onto the compost. Rats are not attracted to rotting vegetation. They are attracted to grain and anything made from grain. They wil eat meat and meat flavoured food so avoid any such stuff near manure heaps, compost bins or the garden in general.

[Blowin]

Hi, Walltoall,

I'm convinced on the value of composting but, at times when I'm adding to the heap, I never seem to have time to do all the things you're evidently supposed to do like bashing cabbage stalks and dock roots to aid decomposition. I also add anything that'll rot, including food waste and the contents of the vacuum bag - rightly or wrongly.

With absolutely NO knowledge or science on the subject, I put specific compost material into the soil where it'll eventually be needed. One example is stinging nettles in my runner bean trench. I dig a 12-15 inch deep trench in summer, line it with newspaper and old phone books, then fill it to about twice its depth with nettles. If I've got something like an old carpet or piece of lino, I cover the trench, put something heavy on top to weigh it down and leave it to rot away. I may add manure or something in the spring but my basic nutrition is already there.

I've got Dr Shewell-Cooper's book on Vegetable Gardening - £1.75 in 1972 - and he seems to have a 'thing' about adding fishmeal as an accelerant. His method also leaves the heap undisturbed whereas others tell you to turn it regularly. I can't find fishmeal anywhere.

Can I pick your brains on the method(s) you use? I expect you'll know Manor Road where I once drove coaches from?

[Liparis]

Fish & Bone meal can still be bought from garden centres. it's actually best used as a fertiliser. Pigs blood you can usually get from your local butcher for free, one of the reasons to avoid super/hypermarkets, they won't offer a service like that. Avoid the supermarkets for your fish products as well and you can very easily strike up a good relationship with your local fishmonger. Ask him to keep you the fish he would normally dump when it's past it's use by date, dry it quickly and chop it up as fish meal. An older method was to get fish - easily done if your near a fishing port - that is no good for human consumption, take out your trench when digging your garden and use in place of farmyard manure. Do it late autumn/early winter so that it has the whole of winter to break down, otherwise you might find yourself planting amongst slime.
There's lots of sources of free fertiliser out there.
If your not going to turn your compost heap, you can end up with the wrong kind of bacteria in it and your compost will be a mess, especially if adding cooked food, add a half kilo of worms to it, they can be bought reasonably cheap, but you can sort out the worms when your adding your compost to the garden etc and seed them into your next compost batch. I know worms get in there anyway, but compost worms added do a terrific job very quickly and cheaply, you shouldn't need to buy them again, in fact you can end up selling them or sharing them. I have a compost heap kept especially for that, adding to it every year and it never gets above 3' deep, but I use it to add worms to my compost heaps I use for the garden.
Bill.
Bill.

[walltoall]

Blowin
Liparis' post is worth reading. You may not go the route of making your own fishmeal but the ideas behind the post are valid. You are treating your compost heap as a dump and that is not a good idea. The contents of the vacuum bag is fine. It's mostly dust, cat-hair ans maybe sweet papers. Nothing much for a rat here. But throwing 'food' into the compost is NOT A GOOD IDEA unless you know what you are doing. The reason for 'turning' the pile is to ensure oxygen gets in to the centre to nourish all the bacteria and low life which will work on the contents and turn it into compost. Proper compost is organic matter which has completed the total life cycle and returned to the earth it once was. [Organic matter is living matter even if it is now dead]

Soil is a mixture of inorganic and organic material which together provides an ideal environment for seeds to germinate and grow. When you are working with compost you need to know this simple truth. Follow the logic always. Horse shite is simply what comes out the other end of an animal that eats largely grass and hay. Farmyard manure is usually a mix of cowshite and straw. Composting is not rocket science. It is common sense.

So from now on I expect your compost to get better and better by the year.

[Blowin]

Wow! Thanks both of you. I'll look again in the garden centre. Fish scraps round here go back in the crab and lobster pots but I get your points.

I promise I'll try and get a bit more scientific with my composting henceforth.