The Delights of Home-grown Compost!

Minnie, our Marketing Director, is a gardening zealot. Nothing enthuses her more than her own home grown asparagus and lettuce (which she munches at Notcutts HQ for her lunch).  Last year, Minnie set up bins to create her very own compost. We got the lowdown on the results...

I never thought I could be so excited about compost.

My very own 'black gold!'Two weeks ago I celebrated my first proper, home grown compost.  Dark, rich and crumbly like chocolate cake. Damn fine compost if I say so myself. I now understand why it’s called Black Gold. I feel very proud of what I have created!

I used two bins and it took about 9 months for the bottom half of each bin to mature into a perfect mixture. One of my bins has just a small ‘door’ at the bottom which was much harder to get the compost out – we had to tip it over to dig it out from the bottom.

The other one, as you can see in the photo, has a nice big door at the bottom and it’s much easier to get the compost out. I have got quite a large garden so a bigger bin also means more compost. I'd definitely recommend using the largest bin you can fit in your garden. 

The only things that had not crumbled down totally were tea bags and some egg shells that I had lazily not broken up. When I used the compost on my flower beds these two things looked a bit ugly, so I will probably put less into the mix in future.

MY SECRET TO SUCCESS TOP TIPS (I think!)

• Regular layers of the newspaper and chicken poo from the floor of my chicken shed
• Keeping some balance of what went in – a bit of everything but not masses of one thing like grass cuttings, that could make it go really slimy
• A couple of handfuls of ‘Compost Accelerator’ when I remembered.  You can buy it at the garden center.

DO ADD

All uncooked veg and fruit peelings from the kitchen
Grass cuttings
Cut flowers
Some newspaper – but not the glossy mags

DON’T ADD

Cooked food of any sort
Weeds that may spread seeds throughout your compost
Plants that have gone to seed unless you are happy to have loads of new plants pop up everywhere
Perennial weed roots
Anything diseased like rose leaves with black spot
Egg shells – unless you smash them up nice and small

I would whole heartedly recommend making your own compost. It’s satisfying, easy, yields great results and saves money. Homemade compost is a true star of my garden.

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Check out our range of compost products at notcutts.co.uk.

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