Kitchen Garden Forum

The magazine this month talks about making squash pits by digging the holes and filling with peelings etc over time. I've always rotted them first in a closed bin. What do others do? Are there rat problems in chucking them in gradually?

MW

I've always made my compost in a fairly traditional way. I use one bin for collecting stuff together; all the vegetable waste, weeds, herbaceous trimmings, wood stove ash, etc. During the summer when I am mowing I build heaps with layers of this plus grass clippings, shredded paper,torn up cardboard, comfrey and occasionally straw. The over winter heap is more of a problem as it tends to become a bit of a sloppy mess even though I add in the paper waste as I go. I usually try and restack this with the first mowing of the season and as much dry stuff as I can find then after only a few weeks use it when I dig the triffids bed (pumpkins, squashes, courgettes, gourds), always the last bed to be prepared. So I do use the peelings for these but not in the way the magazine describes.

I do have a traditional compost heap, but make mini "squash pits" in several of my outdoor plant containers over the winter in which I grow my summer tumbling tomatoes. It works absolutely fine. They rot down well and it saves me having to replace the compost in the containers every year

I also do this in my climbing bean trench over the autumn/winter with veg peelings and lawncuttings and as this is up against a south facing fence, by the time the beans are ready to be planted out, they've all rotted down well as the soil has warmed up,

For anybody not having space for two compost heaps (one current work-in-progress and one old one ready for digging out), this can be an effective way of making use and disposing of kitchen waste. I've even just dug little holes in borders on occasions, put in the waste and covered with soil. We've had rats in the garden on various occasions but they've never dug any of these little heaps out.

I work it very similar to Geoff. We have two large wooden compost bins on the allotment, each one filled over about 3 years and then left to "stew" for 3 years before they are being used and a new one started.

At home, though, we have five ex-dustbins, drilled with plenty of holes in the sides and bottom, which are filled with kitchen rubbish, cardboard, toilet roll inners, annual weeds (without seeds), lawn cuttings, shredded prunings etc. This time of the year, I take two large buckets full of this semi-rotted material down to the allotment on every trip and create the beds for courgettes and marrows and also for runner beans and sweet peas by digging a large hole/trench, tipping the stuff in, covering with manure (as long as it still lasts) and then covering up again with the excavated soil. By the time I plant these vegetables, the compost will have rotted.

Think I'm going to stick with rotting it down first. I dig holes about 18" across and fill with a mix of rotted compost stuff and manure, then heap the soil back on. I make a dip in the centre which gives the young plants some wind protection. They look like volcanos!