Kitchen Garden Forum

I read in a gardening magazine recently a recommendation to start difgingn a runner bean compost trench now and filling it withnkitchen waste over the winter and wonder how many people,do this. I remember my grandparents only had a small garden to grow their vegetables in and no spare space for a compost heap so they were continually digging small trenches all around their growing areas and burying theirs waste to compost it a continuing basis. It made me wonder if compost heaps were a relatively new idea and whether in the past people just buried and composted theirn waste as they accumulated it.

I know my Dad used to have his bean trench open all winter for peelings etc. I know my great grandparents used to chuck in the contents of the outside privvy....

The only problem I can see with this is rats.

My late husband always opened a trench for the beans for 25 years and then my son did it till last autumn he was recovering from a stroke so gave it a miss in the spring this year we just dug a hole by each cane popped some compost in the hole planted the beans( already grown in trainers) and we had a great crop too many for our needs and lots to give away.

Bren

What i've done on the basis of what i read and this years soil performance after digging lot's of cow-poo in last autumn is to open a trench where the beans will grow, fill it with cow-poo slurry then back fill it with the soil so you actually get a mound though the mound has already reduced within two weeks.

I have done this again in another raised bed though i'm undecided what will be grown there next year.

I wonder if liquid feed such as comfrey tea and poo tea will suffice for my cabbages and winter salads as I have already dug masses of NH soil improver into the soil to loosen it ?

I've never been convinced of growing beans on a trench of raw kitchen waste I have opened a bean trench after a year to find much of the material still intact. That's how composting probably started: as a way of hasting decomposition, rather than having scraps linger in the soil intact. I knew an old boy who dug in only old newspapers every autumn. He got good beans, but who was to say he wouldn't have got good beans anyway from digging in compost, manure or what have you. I'm not certain if anyone's done a comparative trial between compost / kitchen waste / nothing. But I do know that incorporating rotted organic matter the conventional way works perfectly well for me. Compost is so much easier to work with than raw peelings, is how I see it.

Another big problem if you do this and keep the trench open is, Rats.
There was someone in the village that used to use this method, and there was often a rat or two rummaging through the peelings.

I always make a bean trench (which, incidentally, carries on as a sweet pea trench because they are all on a long permanent frame) but I don't use kitchen waste because of the possible rat problem, as MW and OH have mentioned. But I do put a lot of crunched up newspaper in the bottom, cover it with semi-rotted cow manure and then cover it up again. By late spring when the beans and sweet peas are planted, the worms seem to have done their work. It also means that the whole stretch of bed is nicely lifted up above the surrounding area.