Does anyone else get excited about worms? I kinda squeal when I see big ones. I just think they're the best little critters known to man. I get this kinda childlike glee every time I uncover them in my garden.
Nobody likes me,
Everybody hates me,
Guess I'll go eat worms.
Long, thin, slimy ones,
Short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms.
Down goes the first one,
Down goes the second one,
Oh, how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one,
Up comes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.
I'm not going to eat them, and I've never seen a fuzzy wuzzy worm, but I swear to god I get this song in my head every time I play in the compost. The more worms in my compost, the more they're breaking it all down, so I do tell them I super duper love them and think they are doing a fantabulous job!
I say play because I love my compost heap. I find it an absolute miracle - how can you throw waste somewhere and have it turn to gold? Are you KIDDING me!
Actually, it took me an awful long time to get a handle on making compost, and now that I've got it figured, I'm making as much as I can. It's a good time of year to get it really going, when it's still kinda dampish and I don't have to water it, and the air and ground are heating up to really turn over bigger quantities. I'm so enamoured with it this weekend that I'm going to tell people who might listen, because J. is too busy mowing out front to care about worms and dirt. What's wrong with the man? I bet if I told him there was a landrover in there he'd be into it.
So here's my basic set up - three bays. One is resting, 'cooking' stuff, and the other two are on the go. I kinda thought I'd have the third one for turning the compost into as you turn it over to help it cook, but I've never really needed to do that so I just do it this way. I love that I have a path going all the way from the house to the bay area and I dont need to get my feet muddy - it's the little things!
Here's a little video walk through, and at the end you can even see my comfrey tea with a slater bug or rolypoly in it. They're absolute pains that eat young vegie seedlings, but they are also really very good at processing toxins in the soil including heavy metals, so you gotta love them really. Oh, and a warning - this video is only interesting for gardeners. There's also a close up of our mulching fork, which seriously is the best tool we have bought in the last year. Why didn't we get one before?
It took me a long time to work out that big twigs were a no no - well, to be honest, I didn't put much thought into it. I don't like being told what to do and I like to figure it out myself, which has worked for me so far. Now I just scream at J. - DON'T PUT BIG TWIGS IN THERE! They just don't break down.
What I do love is COMFREY! I have a HUGE comfrey patch next to the bins to make it easy. They're just beginning to poke through the soil now, so in a month or so I can start doing that again. Comfrey is an amazing FREE fertiliser and if you're not growing it you should. It contains the Big 3, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, and many trace elements, and it's high carbon to nitrogen value means it doesn't take nitrogen from the soil as it decomposes - it becomes a source of nitrogen, and has more potassium than composted manure. So that's one of my WET layers, as you need layers of wet and dry in a compost. I also use it for comfrey tea fertiliser, which is awesome, and I have a few bins of that around the place too which are full of broad leaf weeds and comfrey leaves that are breaking down to make a liquid fertiliser.
Artichoke leaves are brilliant green manure as they are so large and the big lower leaves always need pruning! Plus, their fibrous leaves take a little longer to break down, so they create useful air pockets which are needed to help break it down.
Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid, which is poisonous, but it's perfect safe when broken down in the compost pile. I absolutely love growing things that have more than one purpose - rhubarb is one of the most prolific and easy plants to grow for sweet desserts and flavouring drinks too!
I also LOVE the big leaves of rhubarb and artichokes for my wet layers too - the wet layers are the green compostable garden waste and food scraps between the dry layers of straw. I have a huge artichoke patch and about eight rhubarb plants, so the excess leaves go in the compost. Very occasionally I put grass clippings in, but we don't use a catcher on the mower and I can't be bothered raking it up. Of course, vegies go in there too, the big broccoli and cabbage leaves and so on - just not the stalks, unless I chop them up more finely with a shovel.
Coffee grounds are also a winner for the wet layer and I often grab them from local coffee shops in the area. We put our food waste in there too, but I'm not too keen on doing that as it attracts mice. We're getting new chickens soon so they'll likely eat most of the food scraps anyway. I also layer the bags of chicken manure we get from an organic chook farm up the road, which helps the microbes do their work a lot better and I've noticed much richer compost since I started doing this. Of course, when the chooks are back in the garden I'll be using the straw from their nests which is rich with manure and urine but for now, I have a big bale of straw that I layer between the wet layers. I also use the excess pond weed, which is perfect for organic matter too - just not now as collecting it makes my hands too cold!
I need a sign to remind J. not to put huge branches in my compost.
I'm so impatient with the compost - sometimes it's like waiting for a kettle to boil. I really need a lot of it for the wicking beds that I'm putting in for mid Spring, so I'm really giving it a lot of love and urging it to hurry along!
Well, my fingernails are proper dirty now, and so am I, so I'm going to tend to my bath. It's nearly hot enough, and the sun is very low in the sky, so it's a sunset bath with wine for me! Oh, and J. I suppose, if I let him dirty my bathwater!
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