Compost advice please

[MarkPelican]

I'm surprised that farmyard manure is expensive, our allotment has a "friendly" farmer who sells us manure at £40 (ish) a trailer load. You have to store it for a year to let it rot down (sometimes you're lucky and get well rotted manure but most times its relatively fresh).

If you want to put in a green manure, buy a bulk quantity of broad bean seeds (I buy mine from Moles Seeds). They overwinter, you can dig them in in the spring or leave them to give you an early crop. I sowed some last year (as green manure in two of my beds), never got round to digging one in and had the best crop of broad beans ever. Grow The Sutton as they won't get blown out and don't need support.

[ESBkevin]

Sources of organic matter. (Do you know someone with a car trailer, that can be a great help).

Stables for horse manure, they often have to give it away if they get too much. Always compost it for a season to kill any seeds in the hay, horses don't have stomachs like cows who ruminate thier food so the seeds come out the back of a horse still viable.

Farms, pig or cow manure. Far less likely to have viable seed in it but when fresh it will burn your plants roots so needs composting/seasoning for 6-12 months.

Brown Cardboard. Yep corrugated boxes without plastic tape and not the 'retail' printed colour on white type. The cardboard is just trees and the glue is gum/fruit based so worms live it.

Wood chips, when new don't dig them into the soil as they rob nitrogen on first breaking down, you can spread them as a mulch after you've planted, then come next season they have composted into the soil and fed the worms and such.

Autumn leaves, now is the time to prepare for these, make a chicken wire cage and get a rake. Bagging them in black bags works too but I find a big sheet laid out, rake the leaves onto it, gather the corners and drag it to the pile/trailer whatever. They need one year to break down before they can be used, if you mulch/chop them first the breakdown faster and contain lovely trace elements and nutrients from deep in the earth.

Other peoples waste, the work canteen, neighbours grass cuttings, a local cafes waste (including coffee grounds). The heap in the corner of the park/churchyard they don't know what to do with. it's all free and will add to you getting a good start next year.

Look up trench composting, dig a trench and fill with all sorts (even cooked fish/meats) and then cover with earth to keep out the foxes/rats etc. Come next spring it's all broken down and feeding your plants.


You just have to find as many of these things as you can and keep gathering to build up a reserve, then it gets easier.

[8875june]

I don't have access to a trailer, so even if I could find a local farm / stables offering manure I would struggle to get it to my allotment. I was talking to allotment neighbour the other day and he said they use to get a lorry load of compost delivered from a farmer but he is no longer around. To buy a loose load of 15 m³ its £520 delivered. I also found another supplier who offered me a cubic metre of farm manure for £114 which they said would cover 22 sq metres, I need more than five times that.
I compost everything I can and I plan to collect leaves this autumn, my next door neighbour has been saving me their lawn cuttings.
Regarding growing broad beans for green manure ... I do intend to grow a large crop of broad beans next year, to use them as green manure would I have to dig them in before or after they've cropped, if this so I could grow twice as many.
Thank you all for your help and advice I really appreciate it.

[MarkPelican]

Regarding growing broad beans for green manure ... I do intend to grow a large crop of broad beans next year, to use them as green manure would I have to dig them in before or after they've cropped, if this so I could grow twice as many.
Thank you all for your help and advice I really appreciate it.

I grew mine last year (and I'm going to sow some more this week). They "protected" the soil over the winter because they were between 4 & 6 inches high. Then they grew quickly and as soon as I harvested them, I dug them into the ground before the plants died back. How much they've improved the soil I can't say.

I don't know about others, but I pick my broadbeans small. They're really nice at a couple or three inches long when you can cook and eat the whole pod, when the beans are pea sized (when you eat them like peas) and when they're twice or three times that size (which is when I freeze them). So they were all out by mid June when I planted courgettes.

If you just want them as green manure and want to use the space for other crops, you'll probably dig them in before they're big enough to eat.

[Snoop Puss]

Would you consider hay? It's surprising how good hay is at adding humus to soil. I had access to a load of really old hay when I first started. I just piled it on the surface. It made a lot of difference to the soil quality the next year. No nutrients, but it improved the soil crumb. You can use it to protect the soil surface all year round and it will reduce watering requirements. Might be a bit easier to cope with financially as well, especially if you just buy bales every now and then rather than having to cough up for a delivery of muck all at once.

[8875june]

If you plant broadbeans now, when would you harvest them? Do they grow this time of year? Do you plant them straight into the ground? If they are to cover the ground, Do you plant them close together? Sorry about all the questions ...

I have good crumbly soil ( although very stoney) but concerned it may be lacking in nutrients as for the past two years it's been a field of weeds which I have cleared bed by bed, with only one left to clear. This year I planted potatoes, onions, beetroot, btoadbeans, runner beans, autumn raspberries and cabbages. They all did pretty well except broadbeans which I had a problem with snails etc. I don't know whether they would of done better if I had be able to compost the ground beforehand.

[Jungle Jane]

I harvested my first broad beans in May,they'll grow a little bit now,then they shoot into growth in the spring. I plant mine straight in the ground but I sowed more than what actually grew,some could have rotted. I sow mine about two or three inches apart,you could make some of these plant protectors to place over the plants,it's a plastic bottle half with the end cut off & copper tape around it,keeps leaves safe from slugs & snails & can be reused for years.

[Cadalot]

Have you thought of having a comfrey Bed you only need a narrow strip along the edge of the allotment and it will provided lots of fertiliser and is good to go in the compost heap as an activator take a look at



There is only 29 days between the top two photographs

There are 16 more days between the second and third making 45 days between the top and bottom photograph. Such is the rate of growth of comfrey in its second year

Alans Allotment: What Is Comfrey?

Alans Allotment: Comfrey From Seed - DO NOT DO IT

Alans Allotment: Grand Erections - Comfrey Pipe

[1Bee]

BTW, if your soil is good at growing weeds, then chances are there's at least a good basic fertility to it.

Just keep moving forward a bit at a time, and cover everything you can't get to with some sort of mulch. Try not to be daunted by the scale of the whole job, but enjoy the bits of progress you make.

[8875june]

Thanks for all your advice. I will try and plant some broad beans soon, but will definitely harvest them before digging them in as they are one of my favourites.
A comfrey bed sounds a great idea too. Thank you also for the links and the advice not to grow it from seed.

If I collect leaves this autumn, do they need to rot down before they can be used as mulch or can they be layed on a empty bed over the winter?

[bario1]

You can pile the leaves straight onto the beds as a mulch, and let them rot down in situ.

[Jay-ell]

I've also got 2 plots and your soil sounds a bit like the soil I have in the New Territories plot. This is a bit gravelly with some clay but lacking in organic matter.

If you've got stoney/gravely soil then you'll probably have alot of nutrients weathering out the stones and washing away, except nitrogen (which a legume such as field beans, clover, lupins can lock in from the atmosphere during spring (the bacteria works when the soil is warm) and to get the most nitrogen you need to chop and drop once the flowers start showing as the plants will use the nitrogen in producing seeds - of course there's still quite a bit in the stems and a fair bit of organic matter.

If you improve the organic matter in the soil it will hold onto the nutrients better. A healthy soil can also develop populations of bacteria such as Azotobacter which are free living, non-symbionic nitrogen fixing bacteria (and therefore not tied to a crop rotation)

Buckwheat is a good green manure to grow in spring to autumn if you have a patch that's going to be open for four weeks. It produces an acid in it's roots which is supposed to break down phosphates from the rocks which it stores in the leaves. It's shallow roots so easily pulled out if you need to clear the ground quickly.

I've been mulching some of the beds heavily with grass, weeds, manure, straw and it's made quite a difference in one growing season. Not only is it improving the soil but it's keeping down the weeds, feeding the worms and holding in the moisture. There's a local gardener who cuts my mothers lawn and he's now dropping off the mowings and prunings from the neighbourhood for my mulch and compost. He's been delivering a couple of bin bags of grass each week for mulch and I've upped the order so the other day I took down a builders ton bag full of rose and hedge clippings plus 5 bin bags full of grass clippings. This has not only filled up a couple of compost bins but has been used to mulch some of the plot as well.

I get public transport to work every day and stock up with loads of free news papers. These are laid thick on the ground overlapping each other and then covered with mulch so they should help suppress the weeds till spring when I'll do it again if need be. They'll rot down, feed the worms and add organic matter to the soil.

I also have a shredder so this year as well as shredding the prunings from my fruit bushes, fruit trees and vines I've shredded any tougher garden matter such as the bean bines and I'll be shredding the tomato stalks and brassica stems once they’ve been harvested - that way they'll be chopped up smaller to either add to the compost bin or used as a mulch around the plot.

Rhubarb leaves can go into the compost but they can also be used as a sheet mulch over any empty patches or torn into shreds as a general mulch. I#ve also done the same with brassicas where the leaves have gone past edible.

Now that I write it down it looks like I've been doing quite a bit to improve the soil. Swings and roundabouts - what time I've saved on weeding has been used in mulching.

p.s. there's a hedge down one side of the plot and a large bird cherry tree over haning one end. The leaves are dropping onto my beds and I have a couple that are now self mulching and covered in a nice red blanket.

[8875june]

Can shredded paper be used as mulch I have added some to the compost bin. My neighbour has been saving her grass cutting for me all summer but I have been putting them in the compost bin as all I had was fruit and vegetable peelings. I shall have to ask a few more people to save there grass cutting next year.

[Jay-ell]

Can shredded paper be used as mulch I have added some to the compost bin. My neighbour has been saving her grass cutting for me all summer but I have been putting them in the compost bin as all I had was fruit and vegetable peelings. I shall have to ask a few more people to save there grass cutting next year.

What type of paper is it? Glossy paper shouldn't be used but newspaper is ok. Shredded paper can go into the compost - especially if all you've got to put in it are fruit & veg peelings and grass as it's a high carbon which complements the high nitrogen of the other ingredients.

As for using it as a mulch by itself I've not tried this yet. It might be too light and blow away easy as a mulch, but if you give it a good soak and spread it around the shreds may stick to each other and hold it in place (you know how a newspaper goes when it's gets wet - the sheets stick to each other then goes hard once dried). Why not try a small area and see if it's possible to paper mache the garden

[8875june]

It's computer paper ... I would use it with green, leaves etc not on its own. I shall soak some and see if it maches btogether.
I have now added grapevine leaves, pea plants, tomato plants to my compost and as time goes on I will have more to compost.