Hello, I'm Roz Chandler from Field Gate Flowers. You are listening to The Cut Flower Podcast. This is for you if you want to learn more about growing your own cut flowers. We'll cover loads of subjects things like setting a patch, your soil, manure and compost, seeds and germination, perennials and biannuals, foliage and so much more. We'll have some exciting guests along the way. Thank you very much for listening. 

And happy Sunday to you all. Gosh, is cold and dark out there tonight. How are you? What have you been up to on this Sunday? I don't know where the weekend's gone. I had a lovely walk up in Woburn Woods this morning with the dog. And then I'm on this mad 75-day boot camp. So in 75 days, you have to say Roz, you look amazing. The food is  wonderful, actually too much food, but the exercise is quite gruelling. So as I'm doing this podcast, I'm looking at my battle ropes on the floor. But hey-ho, all in a New Year's resolution. Like I say, every year they're exactly the same. So maybe I'll stick to it this year. 

So today, I thought we'd talk all about compost. Muck. Compost and more muck. So it was all around this, really by this week, Milton Keynes Council were saying that they weren't going to collect any more green waste garden waste in Milton Keynes at the moment. And so I thought perfect thing to do. I wonder if in your area, you have the same issue. Please let me know. You do need to bear in mind that making good compost takes about six months or actually six months is a minimum. And therefore hopefully it'll be ready by the end of the season for you to put on your cutting patches and your fields. Compost is expensive to buy and honestly, you don't have to do that. So I want to go tonight to talk about why compost, the benefits of composting, what to compost and what not to compost, how to compost and obviously the turning of compost which is quite important. How'd you make compost bins and then just other forms of compost things. Things like wormeries and so on. We can just touch on those. 

So first of all, homemade compost is definitely an invaluable part in your garden. It's a great soil improver. Our horticulturalist here, Emma Thompson, always says whatever you take out you got to put back in. So to make good compost, you need a 50/50 mix of materials that are rich in nitrogen and carbon. Nitrogen comes from lush green materials such as grass clippings, and carbon comes from brown materials such as your woody stems and your cardboard. More of this later. If you can just remember 50/50 nitrogen to carbon.

So what are the benefits of composting? We've said why compost. Obviously it’s a soil petitioner. With compost, you're creating rich humus for your lawn and for all of your garden. This gives nutrients back into the soil and helps to retain soil moisture. Compost, for me, is the single most important supplement you can give back to your soil. So like I said, give back what you take out.

Also, another benefit is it recycles kitchen and yard waste as well. Any waste that you've got. Composting can divert as much as 30% of household waste away from your rubbish bin. That's important when organic matter hits the landfill. It lacks air, it lacks air lots of oxygen it needs to decompose quickly. Instead, it creates harmful gas as it breaks down, increasing the rate obviously of global warming and climate change. It takes me back to my degree days of doing environmental chemistry. So actually methane and gas and global warming were very much on the agenda then and still are today. What else? Another benefit, it introduces beneficial organisms to the soil. So it introduces microscopic little organisms and it helps aerate your soil, breakdown the organic matters for plant use, and ward of plant disease. So another benefit is it introduces little organisms to your soil. I wish we could see them as we put them in. Great for the environment, you know, offers a natural alternative to chemical fertilisers when applied to your garden beds. So again, good for the environment and we’ve also touched on it reduces landfill waste. So it diverts your land waste from landfill and that obviously means that landfills will last longer. So we'll leave our open spaces so we won't be needing more landfill space. So going back over them, the benefits are conditions your soil, reduces your kitchen waste, introducing little organisms to the soil, i's good for the environment, and obviously reduces landfill waste.

So what to compost? I can be quite complicated when you first start. How do you get 50/50 of nitrogen and carbon? But we can talk about that. So the secret to a healthy compost pile is obviously the ratio. So let's talk about it. For every bucket load of green material you need to add the same volume of brown material. So shredded wooden stems, you need to shred them actually before adding them in, so they can break down more easily. Crumple paper up and leave egg boxes or loo rolls intact. These help to keep the compost aerated. I can just see you all with your toilet rolls on your compost heap. Most compost bins have too much nitrogen. That's the major problem, especially if the main sources from grass cuttings. The result, as you'll probably find out is a smelly sludge. If you have too much carbon in your bin, the composting process will be slow. So try, really try, and get 50/50. So carbon-rich matches things like branches, stems, dried leaves, peels, bits of old wood, bark, sawdust pellets, shredded brown paper bags, coffee filters. And this is a popular one coffee grounds. People often say what can they do with their coffee grounds. Conifer needles, eggshells, straw, all gives it a good carbon mount in the compost. So all of those things you can add to your compost mix.

Nitrogen or protein rich matter, that’s actually what my diet is all about but we'll come back to that. This is food scraps, manures, green lawn cuttings, kitchen waste, green leaves. Iit provides, you know, the enzymes in all of that for the nitrogen. So if you have all of that, and the carbon and you can get it to 50/50 that would be amazing. So I'm going to turn this into a PDF and I will give you a chart of all the things you can put in your compost and whether they are carbon or whether they are nitrogen. So for instance, tea leaves are nitrogen and things like straw or hay are carbon. Shredded paper is carbon. So if I give you a long list, you know, all your normal things like green comfy leaves and grass clippings are nitrogen. So if I give you a long list, you'll know which are nitrogen and which are carbon and try and get them mixed 50/50. 

One of the questions what not to compost? You can't compost meat bones or fish scraps, they basically will attract pests, mainly rats. So do avoid that at all costs. Avoid composting your weeds or any diseased plants, since you'll just spread weed seeds or diseases when spreading your compost. So if you put it in, the seeds will actually go back out on your patches, so not a good idea to do that.

So how to compost? And we've learned over the years how to get the best out of our compost. You start your compost pile on bare earth and people worry about this because they think that rats or mice will be able to get underneath there. And if you're really worried just put a layer of chicken wire on the bottom but it does need, you know, this allows the worms and other beneficial organisms to aerate the compost. So you need it to be on bare earth. You can lay twigs or straw on it a few inches deep. This helps drainage and helps aerate the pile and then you add the compost materials in layers alternating between moist and dry. Moist ingredients: so you know, food scraps, your tea bags. Dry materials are your straw your leaves your sawdust. And if you have wood ashes, sprinkle thin layers or they'll clump together on wood very slow to break down.

Right so keeping your compost moist. Water occasionally or let the rain do the job. You do need to cover it, your compost bin. Otherwise it will get too wet. But you know you do want some moisture within the compost. Turning the heat. Everybody talks about turning the heat. It adds air and air is necessary for the composting to occur. If the heap is too wet or becomes too compacted, then the composting process is too slow. Ideally placing a lot of composting materials on the heap in one go and turning it periodically, let's say perhaps every month, to introduce air is the best thing to do. Failure to turn the heap is probably the main cause of poor results. Many gardeners are only unable to fill the heap in one go as they accumulate waste gradually, of course we do. Because of this homemade compost is seldom as perfect as municipal compost, but it's still really effective. Remember to keep the heap moist in dry weather. Turning will help give you the opportunity to assess the moisture levels and look at your compost. When the mixture turns brown and crumbly, and there's sweet smelling, it's complete. Your job is done. As I said this will take about six months if the heap has been turned regularly, but can take much longer. 

So how do you make a compost bin? Oh, there's lots of ways of making a compost bin. We take the simplest option. We get four pallets. And then we obviously produce a compost pin with two sides and a back and then a side on the front which is removable. So that's the best thing. Like I said, you need to put it on bare soil, not paving. And if you want to add chicken wire, if you're worried about the rats getting in, that's fine. You can also buy compost bins already made and they're available at all garden centres.

So people say well, it didn't work that composting, you know, it wasn't what I thought. It wasn't what I expected. So some of the issues are it's wet and slimy and strong smelling, which really isn't very nice. This means is too little air has got in and too much water. So cover the heat to protect against the rain and add more brown waste such as chopped woody material, shredded wood chip, straw or paper.

Others say I've got dry and fibrous with very little rotting, it doesn't seem to be rotting down. And I'd say this is usually caused by too little moisture and too much brown material. So then you need to add some more green waste. So think of your compost bin as a chemical experiment and look at it quite often. Perhaps go out and have a look at it weekly or every ten days and see what it's doing.

Flies. Well-run compost bins don't produce swarms of flies. If you see this, make sure you cover up the kitchen waste with garden waste before adding it to the heap. So put it underneath and hide it so you're not going to attract the flies. 

Other forms of composting. People often ask about worm composting, which is one way of composting. And worm composting is an efficient method of turning kitchen waste and small amounts of garden waste into nutrient-rich compost. And it's a concentrated liquid fertiliser. However, sorry, it's not a substitute for conventional composting. So yes, for some kitchen waste, but not really on a large scale.

Another exciting form of composting is the, well I can't even pronounce this so I'm going to spell it: B-O-K-A-S-H-I. Bokashi. Okay, we'll give that a go. which is in this case is bran impregnated with effective microorganisms. This is a system that's been used successfully by the Japanese, hence, that's why it's a difficult word to pronounce, for over 25 years and involves the addition of good bacteria. It’s the same principle as those Benecol yoghurts, I suppose that we all have if we want to reduce our cholesterol. So it's adding microorganisms into something. So this adds it into the waste to speed up the composting process. You put your kitchen waste and the bran into the bucket in alternate layers, and when full, you leave it to pickle for about two weeks. At the end of this time, you can either add the waste to your normal compost heap, or you add it to the wormery. So that seems quite a good system for kitchen waste. The main advantage is that you can add meat and fish scraps and all those leftover bits of food that you didn't give to your dog in our case. And once these have all been pickled, they can be safely added to your compost heap or your wormery. So it's kind of, I think they call it the new face of kitchen composting, which sounds like very good sales speak, but actually I think it's worth a go. So today we've talked a lot about muck. You wouldn't realise there was so much to talk about with muck, would you?

We've talked about why compost and all the benefits, what to compost and what not to compost, how to compost and about turning your compost. I mean, you've basically got to become a little of scientists and go out and keep looking at it. We've talked about making compost bins, and we've talked about wormeriess and other forms of composting. I really hope this has helped you and will help you make your own compost. I think the hardest point is getting the nitrogen and the carbon at the right levels. What we do on the farm is we have three bins next to each other, and we turn into each other, we turn to the left because it's easier and therefore, we're always turning it over and turning it over. And if you've got enough space, I would recommend more than one compost bin. The other thing is on the farm, we put them where we need them. Because what we don't want to be doing is taking lots of compost from one place to another to another to another because it's quite a long distance and you know, in a wheelbarrow, it's quite painful. So we'd always recommend if you can build your compost bins where you're going to need them. So we've got four different sites on our farm. And we've got four different lots of three lots of bins. So in fact, we've got twelve composting bins. So that's really greedy. But we need a huge amount. And even with Mr. Muck, the man who brings our horse manure as well, he came again this weekend. We have so much horse manure now. And we've covered that all with tarpaulin and we're letting that rot down. But again, that might be a year. So there are lots and lots of ways of making compost. So I hope we've helped you a bit.

As I said before, on the group, if you're part of the Cut Flower Collective group, that we will be turning these into PDFs, which you'll be able to read and print out if you want to, because there's a lot of information to digest at once.

I’m hoping to do that in the next 14 days, so keep an eye out for those. If you're not part of the Cut Flower Collective do pop over and join us. We'd love to have you as part of our flower community. And that's all for a Sunday night. So next Sunday, I think, yeah, give me some ideas for next Sunday. I've got some ideas for next Sunday. But I'm quite happy with the Flower Collective group if you'd like to say what you'd like to hear from me for next Sunday. And I think one of you had problems on Google Podcasts. I've sorted that out tonight so I'm hoping, we had to upgrade the account to go Google as well as everything else. So I've done that. And I'm hoping now that you will be able to get my podcast on Google. So thank you very much. Have a fabulous week next week. Don't know where January is going, which is a good thing for all of us and keep safe. Many thanks.

Thank you for listening. This has been the Cut Flower Podcast. Please do join us on our Facebook group, The Cut Flower Collective for lots more hints and tips. Thank you.