Terry’s Composting Tips
PART THREE - WINTER
What is this black jelly?
It is the stuff that, if you are lucky and have plenty of worms in your soil, binds around each particle of soil. What use is this stuff? It makes sandy soil moisture retentive and binds it together. It makes clay soil less sticky and keeps it apart. Marvellous, you say: how does it do both? It encircles each grain of earth, and holds (and is) the nutrients that plants live on, that helps them to ward off diseases, pests, and infections and generally makes them healthy and strong. This unfortunately applies to weeds as well as the plants we want to eat, although some plants don’t like good soil having adapted to live on poor soil, but they still require some of this wonderful BLACK JELLY.
Compost again?
Just to recap on the many ways there are to make compost as I wrote about in part two. Some people just make a heap and keep adding to it, then digging away at the base whenever they want some compost and throwing any that hasn’t rotted back on top again. This is usual even in the best of compost heaps, as the sides are cooler than the centre especially if you don’t turn your compost. Of course it’s best to turn your heap twice if you can - (a) you can control the moisture content, and (b) you can turn the outside into the middle. Timing is important, the first turn just after the initial burn will let air/oxygen into the compost. You could also stand a perforated plastic pipe in the centre of the compost to let air in - the more oxygen you can get into the compost the better, except when the compost is buried in the ground when a different lot of bacteria go to work. Once the initial burn has done it’s bit, the worms move in. Some people who have not found any worms buy in wriggly wrigglers - these are tiger worms, they are very good hard-working and, with myriads of other life forms, live out countless generations in this compost, changing it almost beyond recognition to a dark crumbly soil like substance, which you then put on or dig in the soil. This is the stuff that contains and makes black jelly. More worms come into the soil and, because the soil is alive, will be very active bringing worm casts to the surface which will feed the plants far better in the medium and long term than expensive chemicals. Now that’s a little of the science of making compost - someone else might like to take it further? I would be interested to hear from you.
Terence N Tucker
|