First parsnips

 

 

Now we have had a couple of decent frosts here at Compost Mansions, it is time to start using our parsnips.

This year I constructed a raised bed so as to have a greater depth of friable, enriched soil to grow them in.

We are on over 100 foot of solid clay here and the parsnips were really hard to dig out of it once they got thier roots down into the clay. I was fed up with losing the end of the parsnips so created the raised beds.

It seems to have worked!

Mmm parsnips, we love them!

How to make Leaf Mould

Autumn brings a carpet of leaves, which take a long time to compost. I have been recently making Leaf Mould (or Mold) from all the fallen leaves in our wood and garden. I used the ride on mower for some of the leaf gathering as we have SO many leaves to collect! I do, however, also gather some the traditional way, with a rake!







Why do I want to make leaf mould? Why do I not just leave the leaves where they fall?
Well, I DO leave the leaves in the wood where they can compost down as nature intended, and provide a wonderful home for all manner of insects, worms and small mammals as well as a rich and varied eco system of fungi and microbes.

BUT the leaves which fall on the grass will simply exclude light and damage the grass AND I want them to make a valuable resource in an organic gardener's repertoire of tricks, a fine, brown compost-like material, which can be used in the same way as compost.

It is very easy to make leaf mould. The best method is to gather large quantities of leaves and put them into a container and leave them to rot down. A wire enclosure or a black sack (with some holes for aeration) will work fine for this. It is best to collect the leaves when they are wet as this will help them to break down quicker, if they are dry, water them a little as you place them into the container.



Please note I use compost bins simply because I have some available!



Compostman squashing down the leaves so as to get more in the bin!



All that big pile of leaves gone into 2 compost bins.



Covered over and ready to leave for a year or so. These two bins will produce a little less than 1 bin of finished leaf mould compost


Leaves will take a year or two to decompose into a usable form. To speed up this process I mix the leaves with some grass cuttings (another reason to use the ride on mower!), this gives me a much richer leaf mould in about a year , due to the leaves being chopped up a bit and the grass clippings adding heat to the composting process.



The finished leaf mould can be used in a variety of ways, it can be used as a weed-suppressing and moisture-retaining mulch, dug in, spread over a lawn, sprinkled over seeds or for making potting compost. It will improve the physical structure of the soil and make it more fertile. Leaf mould is incredibly rich and nutritious and I have found is very good for using in an onion or shallot bed.



Digging out the 2008 leaf mould to use in a shallot bed. This has the happy advantage of freeing up compost bins to make this year's leaf mould.

So, next time you see some leaves in the Autumn, if you don't make leaf mould, have a go! Its a free way to get some wonderful organic matter into your soil and it is another step along the path to a more self sufficient/self reliant way of life.

Glass painting

Finished painting my candle jars yesterday. Will fill them with candle sometime this week. Am rather pleased with them

The one on the right which is just an outline is being filled with a coloured wax mix, the rest will probably be a single colour candle.

I did the butterflies from a template, free hand but based on a template in a glass book but the others were sort of generally out of my head.

probably derived from something I have seen though!

Took me ages to draw the shape on paper, so I could put it inside and then use the outliner paint...glass is a right so and so to paint on!

Compostman liked my colourful take on a Green Man best. I am in the middle of designing a "traditional" Green Man to transfer to a larger candle jar at the moment.

Top tips to maximise how much compost you make.

As I have already mentioned in my previous posts on composting, we make a lot of compost here at Compost Mansions.

We compost as much stuff as we can, as we want to maximise the fertility of our land and what better way to put back the nutrients we have taken out by growing veg, than to compost the peelings, weeds, leaves from the plants and add the compost back to the soil.

We also don't want to generate any more greenhouses gases than we have to by sending putrecible waste to landfill, to sit there and generate Methane, which is more than 20 times worse a greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide.

By composting everything and anything available it is possible to dramatically increase the amount of compost you produce. But to get the best from the composting process it is important to know what can and can't go in the compost bin.

Remember, to get the ideal compost mix you will roughly need a 50:50 mix of both "green" (high Nitrogen) and "brown" (high Carbon) containing material in your bin.

So, here is a list of things which can be composted.


‘GREENS’

● Fruit scraps (including citrus peel)

● Vegetable peelings

● Tea bags

● Old flowers
● Spent bedding plants
● Rhubarb leaves
● Comfrey leaves
● Nettles
● Young annual weeds (e.g. chickweed and speedwell)
● Pond algae and seaweed (in moderation)
● Coffee grounds and filter paper
● Grass cuttings
● Manure (horse, cow, pig, sheep, goat, chicken, rabbit – not too much as could become too wet)

Human urine is a very good activator!

I stockpile various weeds and prunings and grass cuttings from the lawns, until I have a good quantity of raw materials to fill up the compost bins.

‘BROWNS’

● Tissues, paper towels and napkins (unless they have been in contact with
meat or disease)
● Tumble dryer lint (from natural fibre clothes)
● Old natural fibre clothes (e.g. woolly jumpers or cotton t-shirts
– make sure you cut them into small pieces)
● Vacuum bag contents(as long as you have natural fibre carpets)
● Garden prunings
● Toilet and kitchen roll tubes,
● Woody clippings
● Dry leaves, twigs and hedge clippings
● Human and pet hair (slow to break down)
● Cotton threads/String(made from natural fibres)
● Feathers
● Wool
● Newspaper(scrunched up)
● Shredded confidential documents
● Straw and hay
● Vegetarian pet bedding
● Ashes from wood, paper, or lumpwood charcoal
● Sawdust and wood chippings
● Corn cobs and stalks
● Cereal boxes
● Corrugated cardboard packaging (scrunched up in small amounts)
● Pine needles and cones (although slow to compost don’t put too much in)
● Egg shells (but crush them first to speed up composting)
● Egg boxes (good as they trap air)


I keep a few "browns" bins in the house which I use for all the little bitty bits of card, paper, tissue etc which is too scrappy to recycle, as well as a caddy for peelings, tea bags, coffee filters etc ec in the kitchen.

I am always on the lookout for cardboard sheets, from shops or from Freecycle.

I add the used wood based cat litter to a special bin, having first removed the cat faeces ( these can contain pathogens which might be harmful to humans) This bin also contains the roots from pernicious weeds ( dandelions, nettles etc) which I do not want to spread around the garden. I use the compost from this bin in the bottom of holes where trees are going to be planted or spread it under a hedge bottom.




If you have any other things you add to your bins, which are not on my list, why not leave a comment!

Walking in my wood

I love walking in fallen leaves. 

After the storm of yesterday, which was pretty wild and blowy, I went down to check that the trees were OK in the wood. It was still very windy and the wind had blown off nearly all the leaves, but only a few dead branches had been blown down and nothing unexpected was found.

No leaves left

Even the log circle clearing is bare.

I love this time of year.