So. Spring is just around the corner (all evidence to the contrary) and I've just taken delivery of a truckload of compost which is currently hiding under a tarpaulin on the driveway, awaiting my pleasure. Compost isn't cheap to buy in, largely because of haulage charges, but I've got no choice this year; I have an area of about 20' (7m) square to bring into cultivation in a hurry and various patches of ground where I'm still trying to build up fertility. Then there's the regular stuff – the raised and flat vegetable beds, and the polytunnel. But herein lies the problem of no-dig gardening; the Hollow Garden itself only produces enough compost to cap the rasied beds. If I'm going to be able to practice no-dig sustainably, I need to take a serious look at how I make compost.
There are two sorts of composting people, apparently; utility composters like myself who make compost as a way of recycling kitchen and garden waste, and fertility composters who see compost as an end rather than a means. Gardeners who are lucky enough to live very close to a ready source of organic material (spent hops and coffee ground are favourite old chestnuts from permaculture books) can compost these, but there are no obvious green waste-producing businesses around here so I'm going to have to get creative.
Growing green manures will only take me so far. We already compost every scrap of kitchen and garden waste, except the woody stuff (which goes into the dead hedge) and weedy material. Weedy stuff needs hot composting, and up to now I've not been running a hot heap. This has to change, as my next obvious source of organic material is the abundant supply of chocolate-covered sludge formed by the action of traffic on the edges of the shared roadway that links the Hollow Garden with the rest of the world. Made up of leaf fall and weedy growth, it's lovely stuff - but full of viable seeds.
A regular hot heap is, I'm afraid, not for me. Ingredients have to be collected in piles and kept dryish until they are mixed, and the heap mixed several times to keep the heat up for as long as possible. In my heap things arrive as and when, and mixing largely happens to other people - but there is another way to end up with a hot heap, and that's to add fresh manure balanced with untreated sawdust (next to free from a nearby sawmill). And the handiest source around is...
Well, have a look at this book and you'll see what I mean. A little unplumbing and a modicum of carpentry, and we should be in business; that's my target for 2009!
7 comments:
DO IT!
We ended up with a dry compost loo while we were renovating and had no plumbing. After a brief affair with the newly plumbed in facilities we've gone back to using the compost loo.
It makes a massive difference to the compost heaps and is really easy.
You should look at Anna Eddy's composting flush toilet in her book Solviva. It solves a lot of the human waste problems and still leaves you with a flush toilet. Worms do most of the work, and a solar "pasteurizer" kills off any remaining pathogens you may not want in your garden.
6,000 years of "night soil" on Chinese gardens. Nothing to...sneeze at!
But yes, the true objective of permaculture is site-based fertility, with nothing trucked in. It's something to consider, surely. (Me, I am lucky to have a couple horses nearby to heat up our piles.)
Well why not? its as good as any other poo!
Woohoo! Glad to hear you're going the humanure route.
I think one of the first points made in the book though is that you do need to compost it first. Whereas 'night soil' is waste spread directly onto the ground before it has actually composted.
Most excellent! Our local organic/permaculture park has one of these. My daughter loves visiting 'the long drop'.
Only trouble is, it's a bit too close to the cafe in regards to the 'waft factor'.
Good luck with the project.
Post a Comment