Hubster made me laugh the other day. Rather than ‘eat the rich’ which might be slightly unsavoury he suggested, tongue in cheek obviously, we should compost them so the minerals and nutrients they contain would be recycled into something much more valuable which can promote plant growth on the smallholding.
Although his sense of humour is not to everyone’s taste it really has kept me entertained for 30 years or more.
Black gold compost
We have nearly finished using all of last year’s garden compost to mulch around the spring planting in the veg patch. Peelings and scraps from the kitchen never go in the bin as they create an amazingly unctuous fertiliser. Hubster built the compost bins with some old planks of wood that had been used as fencing in another life. As recommended by the RHS, he chose a sheltered, shady spot directly on the soil so the decomposers such as worms and beetles can access the material and break it down into moist, mahogany-coloured, enriching feed for our plants. It means we can reap the benefits rather than recycling it through expensive council waste collections with the added environmental cost of transport and industrial-scale processing.
We’ve tried using sheep’s wool compost for seeds or potting on. As the market for wool declines, producers have created alternative ways to make use of their fleeces by composting them with bracken. This year, for some reason, it really wasn’t particularly successful on its own so Hubster has created his own magic mix of various added ingredients, such as loamy soil, composted bark, and sand. He’s thinking of trademarking it, but I have a feeling that it’s his green fingers that provide the real wizardry. When spread over the soil surface or lightly forked in, home-made compost adds valuable organic matter that improves the soil structure, moisture retention, drainage, and biodiversity. Composting is ideal for supporting a whole host of minibeasts, with many kinds of fungi and soil micro-organisms contributing to the process, while worms, woodlice, slugs, and other invertebrates also feed on the decaying material. These in turn provide food for birds, hedgehogs, toads, and other precious wildlife. There is no such thing as waste on a well-maintained smallholding, just endless possibilities for reuse.
Slip up
Back in the school garden I’ve unfortunately been banned from collecting compost. The Eco Committee made a colour coordinated rota for the different year groups to collect apple cores and peel alongside vegetable leftovers from the kitchen. Each week they carted a full bucket down the corridor, out into the garden and poured it into one of the four compost bins. It was all going swimmingly, until Pupil D tripped over an untied shoelace and dropped the bucket of slightly wet slops outside the head teacher’s office. Luckily no one slipped on a banana skin, and we tidied up the mess but even a few days later there was a faint odour of decaying organic matter. We blamed it on the lovable yet boisterous Zebedee who had been in school for the weekly wellbeing sessions – he tried barking to clear his name to no avail.
The other, slightly more serious issue that closed our composting efforts was that they attracted rats. The school caretaker said the ‘vermin’ needed to be poisoned to exterminate them. As many members of the Eco Committee feel that all wildlife is somewhat sacred, they were slightly traumatised by this suggestion and requested humane traps be used instead. I didn’t ask for any further details on what will happen next but, to relieve any anxiety, I allowed the concerned pupils to build a small shrine to the rats in my classroom which I’ll quietly remove when we break up for the summer.
For Pete’s sake, avoid peat
If we do have to buy compost at school, we always purchase peat-free. Peat uplands and moorland are precious habitats which are vital for nature and for our climate as they store vast amounts of carbon and are home to some of the UK’s most special wildlife. When it is ‘harvested’, peat releases huge amounts of stored carbon dioxide, which adds to greenhouse gas emissions. Peat extraction is also unsustainable as it grows back at just 1mm a year. Needless to say, the incredibly short-sighted Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has now delayed a ban on all peat-based gardening products until 2030. Can’t wait until this current lot ‘bog off’. The Wildlife Trusts estimate that policy failure to end peat mining has caused up to 31 million tonnes of CO2 to be released since 1990.
Sometimes I struggle to find sustainably grown mushrooms which aren’t grown on peat, but the market is improving, and suppliers often use old coffee grinds or sawdust and wood chips. There are always alternatives and purchasing power with the money in our wallets can change the status quo of commercial operations. By coincidence I was teaching about classification this week and one of the kingdoms of living organisms is fungi. Despite class 8S being a captive audience in the classroom they didn’t laugh at my joke about the fungus not having mushroom to grow. It’s probably fortunate that I didn’t go into stand-up but there’s always shroom for improvement unless they tell me to put a cap on it.
Anyway, the banning of peat compost is a valuable discussion point and I send pupils home to share their new found knowledge with any adults in their lives. Children are an often-overlooked force of nature full of untapped potential – they make me smile every day in one way or another. I’m never ‘spored’ of spending time with them!
Note to self: Ask Hubster to move the tank of compost tea made from rotting comfrey and nettle plants well away from the back door. It might be liquid gold when it comes to increasing crop yields, but it really does stink to high heaven especially now the weather is warmer. He seems immune but maybe that’s just down to a blocked nose and hay fever – living in a meadow is one of the silliest places he could choose to reside but he’s still a ‘fun guy’.
