Horticultural

My raised bed floweth over (if only)

Ask me what I want for Christmas. Go on. I know it's early yet, and Santa's barely roused from his summer slumber (or so I keep telling my children), but I've already planned it out. I'd like a towering pile of well-rotted manure, a 20kg bag of biochar and as much Rockdust as the reindeer can haul.

When I had an allotment, I took it as a given that the soil covering my modest five-pole plot the guts and structure for the job. Every year it produced fat pumpkins, trugfuls of beans and tall sunflowers, provided I kept the rampant weeds at bay. I knew I was lucky: I just didn't know how lucky (this must be the reason why my home county of Bedfordshire has historically been such a centre for veg growing). When I moved house and gave up that plot for an 80ft-long garden, still in Bedfordshire, but not blessed with quite such a fine tilth. The back section is given over to a shed-cum-greenhouse, two compost bins and two wormeries, a couple of regular beds and two 2mx2m raised beds, each about 50cm tall, built just before my son was born three years ago (see right for them in their unfilled state).

I knew the theory that the soil would need improving, but the reality of placing raised beds on previously unimproved soil has been chastening: it's like the moment as a new parent when, about two weeks in, the novelty of being woken at night fades and you realise what the phrase "sleepless nights" really means.

However much organic material and nutrients I pour into those beds, the level lingers stubbornly a finger's depth from the lip. The soil I've got isn't bad, but there isn't enough of it. In idle moments I picture it brimming gently over the top like a pint of Guinness being poured: that's the kind of deep, humus-rich, moisture-retentive environment I'd love for my hungry fruit and veg. But as fast as I throw in wormcasts, homemade compost, spent compost from containers, mulches of grass cuttings and cardboard, the beds seem to soak them up. A few days of sunny weather and the raised beds are drier than an Amish birthday party. Courgettes and beans struggle: lettuces aren't the puffy quilted jobs I remember from my allotment, and rhubarb stems wilt without warning, even under the cool shade of the nearby plum tree.

The more I grow, the more I realise one thing, long known by everyone from Lawrence Hills to Prince Charles by way of Michelle Obama and Raymond Blanc: it's all about the soil. If you've ever been on one of the many allotment forums and read plot holders merrily promoting Jeyes Fluid for "sterilising" the soil of pests and diseases, you'll know what a long way we've yet to convince all gardeners how important those bacteria and organisms are. Alys Fowler reminded me of this in a recent column: one which received the most feedback I've ever had for her writing for the Guardian: in Heart and Soil she wrote about the healing powers of getting your hands dirty, both mind and body. I've put the book Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web by Wayne Lewis and Jeff Lowenfels  on my Christmas list so I can learn more.

My raised beds are a work in progress: Alys tells me they will reach a tipping point where the humus levels out. Everything I've tried so far - green manures, mulches of corrugated cardboard and grass clippings, rockdust, biochar, and lashings of wormcasts and homemade compost - are all working, but it'll be a while before I have won. I can't afford - and don't really wish to - repeat the exercise of buying in a bulk bag of peat-free vegetable compost to shortcut the task, and anyway, it probably wouldn't work as well in the long term as my slow but cheap solution. If anyone has any top raised bed-filling tips, please shout. I'll try anything, provided its organic.

I do have one tip for impatient gardeners like me: if you have a wormery, and grow potatoes in containers or sacks, here's something to save you time and money. If you're anything like me, the bottom tray in your wormery may look nearly ready for harvesting, but when you delve below the top centimetre or so of wormcasts, you find lots of lumpy bits and a few worms roaming around. When it comes to potato harvesting time, add a square of corrugated cardboard at the bottom of your sack, builder's bucket or pot to absorb any excess water and stop it running out of the holes too quickly, then tip the contents of the wormery tray, worms and all, on top. Add a layer of bought-in peat-free compost, say 10cm-deep, then add the seed potatoes and more compost as usual, earthing up as the plants grow. Shove more cardboard sheets around the sides of the pot if you can, too. By the time you're ready to harvest, the worms will have finished work, the cardboard will be almost gone and the wormery's contents will be completely broken down, barring a few eggshell fragments and the occasional rogue avocado seed. And you'll have well-fed spuds, beautifully clean easy to store.

 

I've been recording my yields from container potatoes for the past few years and since I started this technique, my harvest per container has roughly doubled in weight terms.

The HotBin: Aerobic hot composter review - part two

I really wanted to like the HotBin, I did. It's been well over a year since I started to trial this new composter, and in my initial review, I was excited about the HotBin's claims to safely compost all kinds of food at a temperature of 60C.

And yet ... a few months later, my HotBin was sitting forlorn, half-filled with semi-rotted stuff. The main problem was the hatch at the bottom: once I'd opened it once, I couldn't fix it back in place properly, and it kept falling out. The folks from HotBin sent me straps to hold the door in place, but that made opening the hatch a hassle.* And even if the hatch was working like a dream, the HotBin suffers from a downside common to this type of composter: the opening is awkward to get to. It's hard to get a spade inside for unloading finished compost, so I found myself down on my knees scooping out the compost with my gloved hands while wet compost smeared my forehead. Not good.

Plus, it's ugly: this can also be said of many of the other composters on the market, but for anyone with a small garden where there is no place to hide away less beauteous pieces of kit, this counts.

So, my HotBin adventures are over. My trial model has now gone to a new home at a local school garden, where I hope they'll be able to make better use of it. And me? I am going back to my beehive composters. They don't solve the problem of what to do with the cooked food that can't go into a "cold"compost system, but for that I have trench composting (a technical term of burying food waste underground). And they're much easier to access, because each layer of the wooden beehive structure comes apart, making turning and "harvesting" compost a simple task.

My wormeries, too, are keepers: they are far smaller than the HotBin, and I find managing them far easier: plus you have the valuable byproduct of "worm juice" which can be used as a plant tonic (once diluted) in addition to the worm compost.

I'd love to know whether other HotBin owners have had a better time with their composter: and what composting systems you use. With peat-based compost looking ever-more unsustainable, it's vital that we all renew our efforts to make as much compost at home as we can.

*Since my HotBin was made, I believe further adjustments have been made to the design, which may have solved the hatch issue.

 

The HotBin: Aerobic hot composter review

It's normally around Christmas time - when other people (some may call them 'normal') turn their thoughts to presents, festive nights out* and how long it takes to defrost a turkey -  that I start getting twitchy about my kitchen caddy.

With the potato peelings, sprout snubs and pouring in daily, the caddy seems to be full to overflowing (not a good look) every time I turn around. And yet my composters - the two "beehives" and two wormeries - are also stuffed full of not-very-decomposed kitchen waste already. Yes, I can dig a bean trench, but if the grounds frozen or I am feeling sluggish, that may not happen.

So when the chance to try out a new compost bin that promised to chomp my kitchen waste and garden waste and aerobically compost it at 60C, even in the depths of winter, I jumped at it.**

The HotBin's claims include that it "recycles more types of household food waste, generates rich compost more quickly and delivers efficient hot aerobic composting". So we're talking about composting at a temperature of at least 60C, and the ability to add garden waste including weed seeds, and kitchen waste of all kinds including meat and fish. Yes please!

About a month in to my trial, it's proven a bit of a tease to get the HotBin "up to speed".The setup instructions recommend adding a starter layer of compost 30cm deep to start with: added to that, I primed the beast with regular additions of all and sundry from the now much-relieved kitchen caddy. Still I only managed to get the temperature up to 60C once (at least I managed to get a picture of the moment, above) usually stalling at a steamy but not quite hot enough 40-50C. I did try the recommended 'kickstarter', adding a plastic bottle full of boiling water nestled within the pile, but this didn't seem to work, and repeatedly boiling the kettle didn't seem particularly green. I think I know what some of the problems were:

1. I do not, and never will, chop up my kitchen waste. If an apple's whole, it goes in whole. The HotBin does come with a handy poker/rake device which I did use to break up a few bigger lumps once they've softened, but nevertheless I suspect this slows things down a little.

2. Being a curious type, I lifted off the 'access hatch' at the bottom to see what was going on down below and had trouble getting it back in position tightly - I suspect cold air may be leaking in that way.

And bear in mind that the outside temperature was dropping to 0C and below at this point, so compared to my other compost heaps, which were icy to say the least, I should be impressed by its performance. This is only my early-days findings - I'll report back again in a month or two once I have conmposted some more. But to summarise so far:

HotBin pros

• Can take all kitchen and garden waste: a huge bonus. My black bin waste has dropped as a result and I should be making more compost than before.
• Produces compost more quickly than conventional garden heaps (32 times more quickly, according to the marketing bumph): again, a huge plus if it's true - and so far, without quite reaching the heady heights of a constant 60C temperature, the pile sinks very fast. In smaller families may have to beg waste from neighbours to feed their HotBin.
• Is wheelie-bin sized and compact (takes 200l of waste) and not as hideous-looking as some other composters (see point below about siting though).
• The lid stays up when you lift it. Let me repeat that: THE LID STAYS UP! This, my friends, is compost heap progress.
• The HotBin setup kit includes a thermometer on a stick, which is very useful for checking how hot things are. If you're a bit sad like me you may find yourself becoming a bit addicted to checking the temperature.

HotBin cons

• I am not entirely convinced of the long-term durablility of the HotBin's walls, they look as if they could easily be damaged by a wayward trowel. In fact mine already had a ding in it when it arrived, which you can see in the photo (right).
• Though I could theoretically keep it on the patio outside the back door, as it's pictured here, there does seem to be some liquid coming from the little grille right at the bottom - possibly not very good for my stone, so I have moved it onto grass.
• Price - how many of us can afford (or want to) spend £138 on a new compost bin, even if it is a whizzy one?
• The hatch - I had trouble fitting it back in place snugly. If you are batch composting and emptying the whole thing it shouldn't be a problem, but if (like most of us) you want to remove some compost and leave the rest to mature, it's hard to get a proper fit and avoid compost jamming the entrance.

* I don't do festive nights out, I have two small children so prefer to get drunk on Stone's Ginger Wine in front of the Come Dine With Me Christmas special.

**Disclosure: As per the Guardian's editorial code I can't accept gifts so this composter will be going back to the people at HotBin to be passed on to another tester when I have finished with it.

Review: the Worm Cafe

When the people at Wiggly Wigglers offered to send me a new model of wormery to try out, I couldn't resist giving it a try: I've become a bit of a wormery enthusiast - it's an excellent way to deal with kitchen waste, and my daughter loves looking at the worms. Up until now, the Can'O'Worms was my wormery of choice: superior to all-in-one models in that the "tray" system made for easy harvesting of worm compost. I've had my Can'O'Worms for a year and a half and haven't had many complaints, but it does have a few shortcomings, which I have already written about: the legs can get a bit unstable when it's really full, the ventilation holes on the lid also let in a lot of rainwater if it's left outside, and I also had a problem with the drainage tap (although I understand this was a faulty batch of taps).

Anyway, I've been using the Worm Cafe for a couple of weeks now, and so far the best thing about it is its shape: while the C'O'W is round (and therefore awkward to fit in the corner of sheds, taking up more room than it should) the Worm Cafe is rectangular. That means it's more stable and takes up less space. The other huge bonus is the hinged lid - also made possible by the rectangular shape. With the C'O'W I am always juggling with the lid in one hand and a crock of kitchen waste in the other: "feeding" the Worm Cafe is far easier, the lid can be lifted at either end, and then it's held in place by hinge while you check on the worms or give them a feed.

There's one other big advance: the ventilation holes on the Worm Cafe are on the side and not in the lid, so you can leave it outside without the contents becoming soaked by the rain. In the winter the worms will stop eating if it gets too cold, so it's advisable to cut down on the amount of food waste you're adding (trench composting will handle any excess) and either move it to a shed or garage, or wrap around an old woollen blanket as insulation, making sure not to block the ventilation holes.

Any downsides? Not so far (I'll let you know if that changes), but my main quibble with the Worm Cafe and most other wormeries come to that is the price: most companies, Wiggly Wigglers included, sell them for between £80 and £100 for a kit including worms, bedding etc, which is big outlay for a "non-essential" item for lot of families* (although there's a special offer to save £10 on Worm Cafes at Wiggly Wigglers right now). I am still not sure why wormeries are so expensive - perhaps it's the fact that they're not sold in high volumes so the margins aren't that great - or perhaps the plastic box is expensive to manufacture. With a little bit of ingenuity and time, though, you can build one yourself from some cheap plastic boxes and just buy in the worms and bedding. There are some decent instructions on WikiHow.

While we're on the subject of wormeries, I got a great tip from Kathy Roach regarding the problem of ants in the wormery which I've blogged about before: a sprinkling of cinnamon apparently drives the ants awat, according to this post of the Wiggly Wigglers blog (which also identifies some of the other things you might find in your wormery).

*On a related theme, I just noticed that Recycle Now is no longer offering subsidised compost bins in England. It's a shame, but their argument, I think, is they've reached most people they were going to reach, and cheap bins are widely available now, so they're focusing on giving advice. Hmm... not so sure that's true, but what do you think?

Composting, credit-crunch style

The Garden Monkey recently pointed the finger at me for having more money than sense for including a bronze hherb sickle costing £55 in Weekend's Christmas gift guide.

No offence taken, of course: I've got a well-documented love of Implementations' bronze tools. I agree it's a big outlay for a little tool, it carries a lifetime guarantee, and should last a lifetime too. And who wants top open something desperately practical on December 25? It just reminds one of jobs yet to be done ("a Karcher pressure washer? Thanks so much, I'll go and rinse down the decking right now!")

Most of my tools have been much-treasured gifts, and I intend to be using them into retirement: my Felco secateurs from my sister, various trowels and a spade from my partner, and rakes and a huge pickaxe secondhand from my dad, which I haven't had cause to use but am eyeing up a concrete path in my garden that needs breaking up. I'd much rather buy one pricey but very well constructed tool than a succession of cheapo ones. It is easy to spend a lot of money on our gardens and even "being green", though.

For instance I often encourage people to buy worm composters but I always balk when it comes to the price: most models cost at least £80 and up, which is a lot of cash for a glorified dustbin, some coir bedding and a few accessories. A few councils now offer deals on wormeries, as they do on compost bins, so that's worth looking into: the Wrap site can help. And of course you can make a wormery out of a set of drawers, as Alys Fowler does in her excellent Thrifty Gardening book, and just buy in the worms. But for most of us don't want to "make it at home with a small aubergine".

A Bokashi bucket is a chunky investment too: I want to try it but can't quite bring myself to spend the requisite £70 or so (although Tesco do a good deal on two buckets for £42 I just noticed), not to mention the continuing cost of the bran containing "effective microorganisms" that ferments the food. But I do need to find some way of speeding up the decomposition process.

This is something I have been thinking about of late because, despite my slow progress on the garden front, the one thing I have managed to keep up with is composting. When I moved house in August it was from an area with a food waste collection to one without, and I cringe every time I have to put some meat scraps or some other non-compostible foodstuff in the waste bin. And the compost heap is bursting full and I am putting in far too much citrus, which turns the heap too acidic.

The wormery is going strong: I've moved it into the garage for the winter. Worms, like us, dislike being too Thecold and tend to go on strike, so this will help to keep them moving, although they won't be able to handle as much food as in the summer. I'm also hoping to secure an old woollen blanket at the local junk shop to wrap around it and increase the insulation while still letting in air, which will help too. I need to empty out the bottom tray but it's a messy job that can't really be done in the dark - which seems to be half the day at the moment.

So what to do? Thankfully my perspicacious colleague the lovely Lia Leendertz reminded me of the totally free and easy solution to my kitchen waste overload: trench composting, which I used to do a lot of at the allotment in wintertime when heaps tend to get overfull (yes I do miss it, and walk past the little plots down my road with great envy). You can trench compost any bare area of soil, but it's most useful under beans and squash. Full instructions here if you're not acquainted with its charms. The other solution to the citrus issue - and a great one for all anyone feeling the credit crunch - is compost heap jelly.

Taps, mats and legs: the finer points of worm composting

I sent this email to Wiggly Wigglers today:

Hi Wiggly Wigglers

Just wanted to trouble you with a small inquiry. I was bought a Can O Worms for my birthday last Feb – my first wormery. I have been very happy with it on the whole, except for one thing – I have found the tap at the bottom just isn't strong enough. Within weeks the plastic “handle” to turn it on broke off, making it very hard to move at all. In trying to turn the tap off and stop liquid feed pouring all over my patio, I then managed to damage the tap further, causing a leak. As a result I now have an old washing up bowl under the tap collecting the liquid, which isn't ideal as my toddler thinks it's a wet play area set up just for her! My only other quibble is the legs, which could do with being a tad sturdier in my opinion: when the wormery's full they got dangerously close to buckling, which was a bit alarming.

I should balance this out by saying that I love the “tray” system and have found the Can O Worms easy to set up and use. The worms seem pretty happy with their home too. I find an old woollen jumper works brilliantly as a “moisture mat” (and breaks down amazingly speedily) and the anti-lime mix and worm feed keep my wiggly charges on top form.

So I wonder if you could send me a replacement tap?

Many thanks

jane

Has anyone else experienced the same problem with their C'O'W?

I got an email yongs ago from George Pilkington, pointing out that although Wiggly Wigglers gets a lot of press attention, there are other wormeries on the market, including his very own Waste Buster, which is made of FSC-approved wood in the UK - not something the C'O'W can boast. He also sells a wormery with a viewing window, which sounds like a brilliant idea for classrooms. As the author of a book about worms, George knows a thing or two about vermiculture. One can never have too many wormeries, in my opinion, so I might have to put a Waste Buster on my Christmas list.

Comfrey confidential

Were you in the Bedfordshire area on Bank Holiday Monday?

if you drove past a shifty, cagoule-wearing individual skulking in the greenery of a grass verge, hacking away at plants, that was probably me.

I'd eyeballed a huge stand of comfrey plants on either side of the road several times before deciding to swing by and bag a few sackfuls for my compost heap. (I bang on quite a lot in my book about what a wondrous plant comfrey is but you can learn more about it here, too.) I have got a Bocking 14 comfrey (ideal because it doesn't set seed) on my plot but I needed serious quantities to kickstart the compost, so I filled a few sacks.

As I cut down the plants in the drizzle two bizarre thoughts occurred to me: one, how would I explain what I was up to if I found a dead body and had to report it to the police? (It was one of those slightly scuzzy laybys bejewelled with the occasional stray crisp packet as well as the lilac and blue of comfrey flowers, and I think I've been watching too much police procedural drama of late). Second thought: how far would I go in search of good fertiliser? I am sure if I lived near the sea I'd be regularly combing the beach for seaweed in the rain, too.

Other than putting it straight onto the compost heap, you can stuff some leaves into an old pair of tights or string bag and stick the lot in a bucket of water - ideally lidded to keep in the smell and keep out the mozzies. After a fortnight to a month, when the water really stinks and is black - drain it off and dilute with 10 parts water and use as a liquid feed. Works a treat, but make sure anyone with a good sense of smell is downwind or you might have to apply the smelling salts.

Incidentally, I found myself chuckling knowingly when I saw Joe Swift planting comfrey on a lovely-looking bed on his allotment on Gardeners World. "Joe, Joe, Joe", I said to the telly. Why give space in a nice bed like that when you could stick that comfrey somewhere inhospitable and it would still thrive? I caught myself: I had become what I most despise, the annoying person who leans on their spade and shakes their head at your technique as you toil on the plot. Actually although comfrey will grow pretty much anywhere, it's a rather attractive plant as a centrepiece to a herb bed (which is what Joe was working on, I think) and I am sure it'll attract a lot of bees, too.

As I said in my previous post, I am giving up my allotment. I know the theory - well most of it anyway - but I just don't have time to carry it out. Thanks for all your kind comments, everyone: it's lovely to know you're all going to keep reading.

The worms fend for themselves for a fortnight

On reflection, my decision to check on my wormery a couple of hours after returning home from a transatlantic journey of many hours, while still intensely jetlagged, furry-toothed and empty-stomached was a foolish one.

Normally I feel nothing but pride for my slithery charges, but at that moment, the sight made me want to heave.

I was rather anxious about leaving them to their own devices for a fortnight, so soon after the wormery had been set up. Put too much food waste inside and the worms would not be able to eat it all, so some would putrefy and make the worms ill: too little and somemight die off for lack of sustenance. In the end I added a couple of extra handfuls of peelings, plus some worm treat and anti-lime mix pellets as supplied by Wiggly Wigglers with the wormery (visible in the picture as the little brown nuggets).

All seemed to be well on my return - there was a lot of condensation on the inside of the lid, but there were plenty of worms in evidence.

A lot of wormery cynics are worried about the smell, but from my experience so far it's earthy rather than stinky (although we'll see what happens in the height of summer). So it wasn't the smell that made me feel sick, just the effect of the sight of decomposing food waste on an already unsettled stomach.

I've now added a second tray and a little more shredded paper to soak up the excess water. Once the weather warms up (hard to imagine at the moment as it snows) I'll move the wormery outside to the shade of the side wall, as it will undoubtedly get too warm in the garage.

As an aside, I learned from somewhere or other - possibly the Wiggly Wigglers blog - that they've started selling Bokashi buckets in Tesco. Good idea, bad idea? Discuss ...

Corrugated cardboard - is it ok for mulching?

I recently had a great question from a new organic allotmenteer called Doug, who said some very lovely things about my book, and then asked:

"You suggested the use of cardboard for weed suppressing/mulching - I have access to loads of it! But is it known if the adhesives used in the cardboard industry to stick the layers together break down to harmless elements? (Sorry if this seems overzealous). "

On the contrary, Doug, this is a darn good question and one I have occasionally pondered, so your email offered a great big kick up the backside to search out the answer before I use any more cardboard on my allotment, in pursuance of my mission to mulch, mulch, mulch this year. I should clarify at this point that what Doug was worried about was corrugated cardboard - the stuff with a wavy sheet of cardboard stuck between two flat sheets, and frequently used for boxes.

An initial, cursory Google search revealed very little of help, so I turned to the UK authority on all things organic - Garden Organic, formerly known as the HDRA. One of the benefits of being a member is free advice on such tricky matters, and a few days after submitting my query I got this response from Garden Organic adviser Carrie Pailthorpe:

"The type of cardboard you describe does not usually contain glue as it is made from cellulose fibres which stick together naturally. It is a great addition to your compost heap or can be used for mulching."

Well that is good news! I'd still advise removing sticky labels, tape and staples from your cardboard before use though.

In other exciting compost news: I have found a source of both straw for mulching and well rotted manure! A lovely lady called Laura swapped me bags of straw for some of my blackcurrant jam. I shall be popping back to her stables for some manure when I don't have the baby in tow ...

Trench composting saves the day

As fellow composter Simon Sherlock pointed out in the comments to my previous post, it will be some time before my new worm composter can take all my kitchen waste. Add too much in the early stages and the worms won't be able to eat it before some of the stuff putrefies, making the worms unhappy, and possibly dead.

I forgot to say earlier that my solution to the excess kitchen waste problem, now that my allotment site has banned it from compost heaps, is trench composting.

I am assuming the powers that be won't object because in trench composting, the waste is buried so isn't a food source for vermin. In fact this composting method is, aside from the effort of digging a hole, the easiest job in the world: no equipment necessary, and once it's in the hole you can forget about the waste. And it's a great way to prepare an area for growing "hungry" crops such as beans and squash.

The principle is simple - dig a trench (or a hole) to a depth of about a spade or a spade and a half and chuck in a few inches a kitchen waste - meat, fish and cooked leftovers are all acceptable in addition to the usual peelings and shredded paper. Then cover it over with the soil you removed, being very careful to cover all the waste thoroughly. This is best done a couple of months before planting time, to give the food a chance to break down properly.

I usually follow this method in the winter when the compost heap is shut down and left to its own devices. Now that the rules have changed, this will be a useful way of disposing of the waste until the worm composter gets up to speed.

Garden Organic has more information and a picture of a compost trench in action here.

Simon suggested Bokashi composting as another method of dealing with the waste. I'd love to give it a try, and will write more about this fascinating method in a future post, but at the moment I don't want any more outlay on composting equipment so the trench composting will do very nicely.