recipes for your own composts, seed, seedling and potting

[Nature's Babe]

Not much of a choice I know, yearly peat extraction has a great big carbon footprint of 400,000 tonners of CO2 per year and a lot of the peat free composts are not up to scratch. I thought it would be useful to post garden organics link here -

http://www.idontdigpeat.org.uk/take-act ... 1Q,1IOL1,1

Go direct to simple home made compost recipes here....

http://www.idontdigpeat.org.uk/download ... ecipes.pdf

[solway cropper]

The carbon footprint of peat extraction is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. What's more important is the destruction of habitats that have taken thousands of years to establish. I have about 1200 acres of peat moss just a couple of fields over from my home and thankfully it's now a national nature reserve.

If people just took a little effort and made their own composts there would be no need for the scale of peat extraction that currently takes place.

I compost everything I can, collect mole-hill soil, make leaf mould and gather dead seaweed from the shore. End result: no need to buy in expensive peat-based products. Except for seed compost. I've tried making my own but it's a bit of a faff sterilizing the stuff so I do buy small bags of a well-known seed compost which gives me fantastic germination rates.

For everything else peat-free material mixed with my home made stuff does the job. This year I had almost 100 assorted containers producing healthy crops with minimal peat usage. You just have to think a bit about what you're doing and don't expect to get owt for nowt.

[Nature's Babe]

Well said, I agree Solway cropper, when peat is gone it's gone, and that habitat which takes thousands of years to build is irreplaceable.
Like you I make loads of compost, it only takes a little thought as you said. Building biologically healthy soil is habitat creation. Compost and cover crops are key to being hospitable to earthworms and other macro- and micro-biotic creatures that help build soil, you know you have a biologically active and healthy soil when you can hear your earth worms. Moles are part of the soil foodweb too, like you I save the lovely crumbly soil they dig, my cat caught one a little while ago amazing how clean they stay while burrowing through the soil. Seeds seem to grow whether in a sterilised medium or not, and plants and seedlings thrive in healthy aerobic soil which is full of microbes and fungi.

[solway cropper]

NB, you're quite right about seeds growing in any kind of soil...just try and stop the little bu...rs

I suppose I'm just a bit paranoid in wanting to give my babies the best start in life they can get.

When we moved here and I started this veg plot from scratch I was determined to try and work with nature rather than against it. Every year my yields have increased and this can only be down to adding large amounts of home-produced compost. Last year I started a no-dig approach as well. I just put layers of compost on the surface and let the worms do what they were designed to do.

I guess the big problem is that most people just go with the flow rather than actually thinking about they are doing.

[Nature's Babe]

Like you, I also stopped digging, the most used tool now is a trowel.
I avoid walking on the beds and mulch to conserve moisture, I was quite surprised how quickly the worms take in the mulch and because of their activity any weeds that make it through the mulch pull out very easily. Worm populations increase very rapidly when cultivation stops and organic material increases. Where is here? It helps to show where you are, helpful when others reply to any questions, eg planting starts earlier in the south later in the north .
I am on the look out for a good microscope now so I can check the balance of beneficial bacteria and fungi, and if nematodes are present.etc

http://www.soilfoodweb.com/sfi_approach1.html

[Tony Hague]

Coming back to the topic title ...

I grow indoor tomatoes and peppers in a mix which is

6 buckets sieved garden compost
1 bucket perlite
1 bucket vermiculite
two handfuls seaweed meal.

(all measures approximate, of course !)

Works for me. I have heard it said that tomatoes like nothing better than growing in the decomposed remains of their fallen comrades, which makes sense to me since tomato plants are surely composed of exactly what tomato plants need to grow. Watch out for blighted material though !

[adam-alexander]

I grow my potatoes in large pots (about bucket size) I mix a compost consisting of:
1 part sieved soil,
1 part garden compost,
1 part old grow-bag (or any cheap propriety brand if I have no g-b compost left over)
1 part leafmold
and a handful of chicken manure pellets to each batch.

Always had a good crop.

a-a

[solway cropper]

Where is here?

I'm in north-west Cumbria. How do I add that to my profile?

[Nature's Babe]

Hi Solway, you will find the place to add it in your profile under location, then it will show up under your name as east sussex does under mine.

[Nature's Babe]

Tony and Adam, thank you for adding your useful suggestions.
Tony, I was interested to see you add both perlite and vermiculite, which look similar, guessing you have a good reason, just wondering why both ?
I add waste chicken bedding old compost bags and rock dust layered into my compost seaweed too so it probably ends up a similar composition to yours. I figure many different ingredients in the compost feed the many different organisms in the soil, they all have different needs, fungi like seaweed and cardboard paper and woody things for instance, apparently beneficial bacteria like molasses and decaying veg matter ! I even save prawn shells and crushed eggshell to add to the compost.

[Tony Hague]

Tony, I was interested to see you add both perlite and vermiculite, which look similar, guessing you have a good reason, just wondering why both ?

Ahh. I read it somewhere ... but the summary is that though they are similar in function, perlite is better for aeration and drainage whereas vermiculite is better for water and nutrient retention. Since I have both, and the cost is similar, a mix seems to be the best compromise.

My compost heap also gets egg shells, and a fair bit of wood ash. I've heard it said that adding the wood ash to the compost heap retains the potassium in the mix better than using it directly as a top dressing, where the solubility leads to it being washed away easily.

[Nature's Babe]

That makes sense Tony. Banana skins and overripe bananas are also a good source of potassium.

[alan refail]

Before this thread continues with more lists of ingredients for home compost bins, I trust I may be forgiven for returning to the initial post. I have been aware of Garden Organic's recipes for seed, potting-on etc composts for some years. I have never made any for the following reasons.

Garden Organic's recipes depend on the easy assumption that everyone has plentiful supplies of leaf-mould and loam. This is hardly likely to be the case.

I do not grow on anything like a large scale; however, I probably use between 400 and 500 litres of multipurpose compost per year. There is no way I can replicate this using leaf-mould and loam.

We have at least two dozen mature trees along the riverbank which borders our field. Unfortunately, come the autumn winds, three quarters of the leaves fall in the river and the rest on grass. Gathering leaves from grass is difficult and unrewarding; I know because I've tried it. I don't intend to try recovering them from the river. As for loam - defined as a soil consisting of a friable mixture of varying proportions of clay, silt, and sand - we do not have that sort of soil.

Even if I did have the raw materials I'm not sure that I would have the space or energy to produce and store the quantity of compost I need.

Maybe it's not surprising that, as I understand, a good 90% of the bagged compost sold in the last year was peat based.

[Nature's Babe]

Actually Alan, although we do have lots of trees and woodland around here
most of the leaves are produced in my garden I do think vertically to produce quite a few leaves within the garden, pear, apple and cherry trees and 3 kiwi vines, also two grape vines the oldest grape vine seems to produce a mass of leaves the more I trim it back, and it can be quite a job to clear from the vine fed into the greenhouse
Also your point that most people don't have loam sort of reinforces the whole point of making lots of compost, loam is indeed desirable and whatever soil is like to start with a soil can behave like loam if it has a strong granular structure, promoted by a high content of organic matter, which is precisely why the compost we produce is so important. However, a soil that meets the textural definition of loam can still lose its characteristic desirable qualities when it is compacted and depleted of organic matter.
One could argue the rights and wrongs of peat or peat free and air ones prejudices till the cows come home. However, you get from soil exactly what you put into it, the soil food web is a cycle, break the cycle and the soil will deplete, soil that is full of organic matter becomes loam like and fertile.
Also having looked at the most recent figures it is 58% peat free and 42% containing peat sold.