Try this system to compost as much as possible in your garden | Gardening 101 | Gardening Australia
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2024
- Compost is certainly something you hear about a lot on Gardening Australia. And it’s easy to see why. It improves the fertility, drainage and water-holding capacity of soil, sequesters carbon, and making it means you’re not constantly sending kitchen scraps and garden waste to the tip. Best of all it’s free and easy to do. Subscribe 🔔 ab.co/GA-subscribe
A serious food production effort like Jerry’s garden can’t exist without compost, and so Jerry has a multitude of different ways of creating it. He’s going to show us through his systems for composting as much as possible in his garden, and how he makes sure as much organic waste as possible is turned into this garden gold.
Jerry has 3 working compost bins on the go all year round. One is for kitchen waste, one for leaf mould, and one for garden waste.
Kitchen Waste:
Jerry says “kitchen waste materials are often wet and rich in nitrogen” compared to garden waste. This means they’re more likely to get soggy, rotten and not compost properly. So for his kitchen waste bin Jerry is mindful to balance with an extra carbon-rich dry material on top. Striking this balance means the compost will break down evenly, and avoid going putrid. Jerry says you need to provide “nitrogen for the bacteria (in the pile) who work more quickly, as this is their preferred food. Fungi (in the pile) are more thorough, and work slower, feeding on carbon”.
To strike this balance in his kitchen waste bin, Jerry applies carbon-heavy leaves from his bamboo plant after he puts in a load of scraps, like making a lasagne.
Jerry’s recipe for a continually thriving compost pile is kitchen scraps, dry material layer, horse manure layer and then a wet down. “Think about what goes in, and balance. I will hold inputs back for a time when they can meet the balance.”
Leaf Mould:
Leaf mould is a garden staple, made entirely out of decayed, composted leaves. It’s used for everything from potting mix to surface mulch. Traditionally made of the falling leaves from winter deciduous trees, Brisbanite Jerry says “I don’t have that luxury here”.
Instead, Jerry creates his precious leaf mould out of chopped bamboo leaves left to compost and break down over months. Jerry uses the dark, damp, spongy and moist material as a surface mulch “around soft leaved plants that enjoy cool roots year round”, like palms and caladiums. You can also use lawn clippings or fallen evergreen leaves to make leaf mould.
General Garden Waste:
Jerry says using the layered, lasagne technique is also useful for his general garden waste bin. The first layer should be something like straw, to allow water to drain and oxygen to penetrate. Jerry uses woody vine prunings as a carbon rich material.
Jerry also uses his garden waste compost bin break down horse manure, and important step before applying it to his garden. “I always compost it because it deals with weed seeds, and worm treatments or persistent herbicides also break down”. He applies the horse manure in layers, on top of the dry material.
Say Hello to My Little Friends:
To keep the compost factory ticking over, Jerry isn’t afraid of enlisting a little help. We all know about compost worms, but Jerry’s got a new recruit. Enter the Surinam cockroach! Jerry deliberately conscripted this little insect to help keep his compost pile ticking over, sourcing it from a community garden. “This beneficial species lives exclusively in the garden, favouring damp leaf litter, mulch and topsoil. In a warm climate, Surinam cockroaches are the equal of composting worms”.
Sin Bin:
However some things remain stubborn, even in the face of Jerry’s multi-layered approach. “Some things are too difficult to compost” says Jerry. Hidden under the house he keeps a bucket with 1 litre of water in it, known as “the sin bin”. Here is the final destination for things that refuse to break down.
Featured Species and Plants:
SURINAM COCKROACH - Pycnoscelus surinamensis
CASSAVA - Manihot esculenta cv.
SNAKE PLANT - Dracaena sp. *
* Check before planting: this may be an environmental weed in your area
Filmed on Quandamooka, Turrbal & Yuggera Country | Brisbane, Qld
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This needs to be taught in schools
Agreed! Thanks for watching.
Fantastic setup, great explanations…and plantabulous results!
Thanks so much!
Great idea having a sin bin. I need one here. I'm doing most composting a metre cube old tin bin inside the main chook pen. The chooks turn the layers for me and deposited goods , they also feast on the scraps and bugs etc and are the happiest flock here . Laying very well and eating less grain than the others. The bins half full of beautiful dark , smell free compost and im hardly doing anything but add water or hay between layers. 🤩
Incredible, no doubt learnt over many years of experience.
Thanks for watching!
Where is the article where Jerry talks about the relationship between mulch types and different fungi types? That was the most new to me, informative and interesting article I've seen in the last 3 years on gardening australia.
Thanks Mate grate help
Great information, thanks.
Even if they only live in leaf litter and compost, I could not handle having cockroaches in my worm farms! 🤯
My composting method is easy and simple: no rule composting.
Thank you for sharing. It's so systematic. Everything has its own purpose. Tq again
Brilliant thanks! Do you (or does anyone) have a special trick for regularly getting the decomposed material out from the bottom of the compost bins/containers when all the half done and newer stuff over it on the top in their layers?
If you fill your sin bin with water and allow it to rot for a couple of weeks, you can use the water as a fertilizer and innoculant for the soil and your compost piles.
Does this work for my onion weed, Nothoscordum inodorum? Im trying to eradicate it from my place by digging it up, and all the surrounding soil and then putting it in the bin. Repeat every year. Also, leaving that area a pit into which all the water flows as I want to drown the remnant bulbs and seeds. Plus those pits tell me where the onion weeds were and not to plant anything there for the next 5 years?. But, all this earth makes the bin so heavy , I can only (partially) remove 60cm2 per fortnight.
Would submerging the onion weed bulbs, stems, seeds and surrounding earth in water for 4 weeks be enough to completely kill them to the extent that I could pour that mess back onto my garden??
Yes, and you can add food scraps to charcoal, the charcoal will absorb the nutrients, then add it to your compost pile. It gets mighty stinky though, I keep it far from the house, it is similar to Korean natural farming fermentation. When you use it dilute 1/4, and water your garden. They will be very happy.
Great video 🙌
Super video 👍
Thank you 👍
@@GardeningAustralia thank you so much 🥰
when we have a home kill or deceased hen they all go in compost with loads of carbon rich material amazing compost and the worms party like they are on speed. no smell at all cause i keep offal to centre no flys either cause i cover it well.
Great tips Jerry 👌 I live on acreage & I hand weed a LOT of prickly weeds Can I place them in a "Sin Bin" & use same way? 👩🌾
Interesting
Does BCC know you've repurposed *their* recycling bin for plant waste?
I thought that too!
Didn't I just see this on TV?!
I have just found a bag of sugar cane mulch behind my shed I bought 5 years ago, it has decomposed, Is this ok to put in my vegepod and worm farm. Thanks for any info.
Over 6 Tons do you mean wet/green material weight that goes into it not what you get out?! 🤔
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