This is what I got up to last weekend! I've had some compost bins for a while, just the standard types you can get from hardware stores; plastic square things that take ages to break anything down and a tumbling composter that makes a nice, rich mix in a few short months. But a week or two ago I caught a great segment on Gardening Australia (Produce to Preserves from 28/09/2013 which can be found here).
This segment captured my imagination for three reasons;
- The couple in question are from my state (home state pride!)
- I really want to learn to preserve food
- I'd love to be able to churn out my own compost for my garden
So I set to work! I started trawling Gumtree and found a listing for free pallets, then my friend Sarah and I went and picked up a trailer load to share. I used mine to construct a simple little compost area as seen above, then set to work mowing the verge to collect enough "greens" to use in the layers. I followed the tips I found on Deep Green Permaculture and layered the cuttings with shredded paper, dry leaves, horse manure and wood chips that I had left over from my large gumtree being removed. Because we had some cool rainy weather during the week I covered it up with some black plastic pool liner.
Since I have a spare propogation thermometer I've kept it stuck in the top of the pile to ensure it's staying warm and today J did the first turn for me; so far it's looking pretty good! This is the temperature it was sitting at the other day and this morning it was up at 50 degrees. The thermometer was back down at around 30 degrees when I put it back in after the turning so I covered it back up with the plastic to keep the warmth in overnight. We'll keep turning it every couple of days and hopefully soon I'll have a cubic metre or so of compost for my patch!
0 comments:
Post a Comment