Do you buy bags of potting compost / mixes? Why not make your own from readily available ingredients? And do you use a commercial seed sowing compost? What about trying something experimental?
This was so helpful and informative - thank you. I don’t grow anywhere near as much as Steve who commented above. And I probably would always need to buy some compost, but I have started to make my own with leaf mold and compost I make on the Allotment. There are always seeds in it.
But it does seem much better than what comes in commercial
Thank you! A lot of the cheaper composts use green waste which is so variable in quality and content, sometimes with contaminants such as aminopyralids. You soon learn to ID weed seedlings! I can manage to produce enough compost for my greenhouse but need to buy in mulching materials. I have been reliant on bought-in seed composts hence my interest in sand.
I think of weed seeds in my compost as a bonus. It's green manure. You wait two weeks for them all to sprout, then hoe them back into the soil then sow your seed or plant your transplants. I'm not completely self reliant with compost either but getting there. It helps that this year, a friend gave me horse manure uncontaminated by medications.
Yes I'm much the same - sometimes when I have time, I sieve the compost and put it in a wheelbarrow with a sprinkling of water and let the weed seeds germinate and hoe them off - bit like creating a stale seed bed. You are lucky to have a friend that can supply horse manure - our allotmenteers have found a reliable stable owner too and it helps their composting effort greatly.
It's a great resource and they need to get rid of it, win-win for everyone. There's also a farmer up the road who has told me to help myself to cow manure!
Great post Sally - I was thinking of you earlier when I was snacking on rocket and purslane in the garden! I have been making my own composts for several years now. I have much more consistent germination and like you say below, great connection between the roots and soil which I never had with the sterile bought in compost. It closes the loop for me and takes very little time. I am sure my plants are more pest and disease resistant, and I wonder more nutrient dense but this is just my opinion (and hope!)
Thank you Anna - great that you are making your own and keeping your nutrients on site. I think if you have the space and supply of raw ingredients, homemade is the best re the local microbiome. I bet your veg are nutrient dense!!!
Wonderful! Yesterday I harvested a wheelbarrow full of homemade compost and spread it over loam from molehills which I had spread out over cardboard on the lawn to create a new bed for planting potatoes. The potatoes are saved sprouted ones from last years harvest so the cost is zero!
I love your leaf collection area. Is it made from willow? Over the past few years, I've been able to reduce my need for buying in potting medium by direct sowing more and sowing seeds indoors as late as is practical so I don't have to pot them up into large nursery pots. I can stick with smaller ones, but I still need to buy a lot. I'm not sure making my own mix is logistically practical for me, mostly because I'm working inside when I sow seeds and pot up.
Yes willow - it will last a few years before needing to be replaced. I think it's important to reduce our use, if just a few bags, it all helps in reducing our carbon footprint
The idea of this is so appealing, but the practicality and cost puts it out of reach. To make space for all of those leaves I’d have to take a big part of my garden out of commission, about 4m2 for 2 years, I harvest £40/m2 so that’s £320 worth of food I’d have to buy. Then there’s the work involved and sourcing the soil and compost, which I don’t have enough of already, so I’d have to buy or make more compost. Finally there’s the weeds, dispute being fairly experienced at hot composting there’s always weeds in my mix, either from my green waste, the wood chips I add as a source of carbon, or the horse manure. I don’t want weeds in my compost. Back in the day most people seeded direct for many crops and only grew 1 or 2 successions, I grow 3-5 successions now which means a lot of pricking out and potting on, that takes a lot of compost bags and I’d be spending hours a week making that myself, which is about as much time as I spend growing plants in the first place and I don’t have that spare time in my week. So much as I love the idea of being more self sufficient I just can’t afford the cost in lost harvests or lost time to make it work.
I appreciate these comments Steve - for me, I only need the equivalent of 10 large sacks of compost a year so easily achieved - I do get weed seedlings but they are easily removed
That doesn’t sound easy to me though Sally, 10 bags sounds like a lot of work. I’m sure it would take me at least 10 hours a year and thats more time than I have had to create and improve my database each year, so something would have to give and the tens of thousands of people who’ve enjoyed that database wouldn’t thank me. Weeds in my compost means extra work too, it all adds up. I’ve spent 8 years trying to eliminate all of those little 5 minute jobs that add up to hours a week and thats how I managed to hit my target of growing a rich diet in 1 hour a week/person that I feed. Also as I mentioned, to make 10 large bags of compost a year you need a lot of leaves, they take up a lot of space for a long time and since I don’t have a personal source of leaves, I’d have to go and find some and gathering that many leaves would be more hours. All hours that have to come from somewhere. And the space required for the extra compost and leaf pile means that someone does’d get fed, I feed a few low income friends, they’d definitely miss that few hundred pounds of food that I couldn’t grow for them, because I’m making £50 worth of seed compost. As a general rule, I prefer to outsource anything that someone can do better and quicker than me, unless I enjoy it more than some other job that I can outsource. Now one of my viewers often recommends to me his approach, he just digs up soil from his plot for seed compost, his logic being his seeds are growing in the exact biome that they will enjoy when planted, he doesn’t mix it with anything (it’s already soil+compost) and he doesn’t need to store to, compost it, bag it up etc. It wouldn’t work for me, because I have no empty beds to dig soil from (everything is always planted) and I start my seeds at home, not on the plot, but it’s interesting and efficient : all the best - Steve
I agree with the comment from your viewer about the biome - the soil around the parent plant is rich in microbes that ware working with the parent plant and the plant actually wraps up an inoculum of microbes (endophytes) in the seed to give it the best start in life - I wrote about this last year (https://climatechangegarden.substack.com/p/polyculture-and-seed-endophytes) But for me, my aim is to produce food with a low carbon footprint and to see if the garden can be carbon negative like the rest of the farm. But I know your aim is producing food and lean gardening - which I find fascinating
This was so helpful and informative - thank you. I don’t grow anywhere near as much as Steve who commented above. And I probably would always need to buy some compost, but I have started to make my own with leaf mold and compost I make on the Allotment. There are always seeds in it.
But it does seem much better than what comes in commercial
bags.
Thank you! A lot of the cheaper composts use green waste which is so variable in quality and content, sometimes with contaminants such as aminopyralids. You soon learn to ID weed seedlings! I can manage to produce enough compost for my greenhouse but need to buy in mulching materials. I have been reliant on bought-in seed composts hence my interest in sand.
I think of weed seeds in my compost as a bonus. It's green manure. You wait two weeks for them all to sprout, then hoe them back into the soil then sow your seed or plant your transplants. I'm not completely self reliant with compost either but getting there. It helps that this year, a friend gave me horse manure uncontaminated by medications.
Yes I'm much the same - sometimes when I have time, I sieve the compost and put it in a wheelbarrow with a sprinkling of water and let the weed seeds germinate and hoe them off - bit like creating a stale seed bed. You are lucky to have a friend that can supply horse manure - our allotmenteers have found a reliable stable owner too and it helps their composting effort greatly.
It's a great resource and they need to get rid of it, win-win for everyone. There's also a farmer up the road who has told me to help myself to cow manure!
yes exactly! Like a green manure and feeding the microbes.
And I often find a seedling I want!!
Great post Sally - I was thinking of you earlier when I was snacking on rocket and purslane in the garden! I have been making my own composts for several years now. I have much more consistent germination and like you say below, great connection between the roots and soil which I never had with the sterile bought in compost. It closes the loop for me and takes very little time. I am sure my plants are more pest and disease resistant, and I wonder more nutrient dense but this is just my opinion (and hope!)
Thank you Anna - great that you are making your own and keeping your nutrients on site. I think if you have the space and supply of raw ingredients, homemade is the best re the local microbiome. I bet your veg are nutrient dense!!!
Wonderful! Yesterday I harvested a wheelbarrow full of homemade compost and spread it over loam from molehills which I had spread out over cardboard on the lawn to create a new bed for planting potatoes. The potatoes are saved sprouted ones from last years harvest so the cost is zero!
I find it very satisfying to harvest molehill loam! The potatoes will love that mix..
I love your leaf collection area. Is it made from willow? Over the past few years, I've been able to reduce my need for buying in potting medium by direct sowing more and sowing seeds indoors as late as is practical so I don't have to pot them up into large nursery pots. I can stick with smaller ones, but I still need to buy a lot. I'm not sure making my own mix is logistically practical for me, mostly because I'm working inside when I sow seeds and pot up.
Yes willow - it will last a few years before needing to be replaced. I think it's important to reduce our use, if just a few bags, it all helps in reducing our carbon footprint
The idea of this is so appealing, but the practicality and cost puts it out of reach. To make space for all of those leaves I’d have to take a big part of my garden out of commission, about 4m2 for 2 years, I harvest £40/m2 so that’s £320 worth of food I’d have to buy. Then there’s the work involved and sourcing the soil and compost, which I don’t have enough of already, so I’d have to buy or make more compost. Finally there’s the weeds, dispute being fairly experienced at hot composting there’s always weeds in my mix, either from my green waste, the wood chips I add as a source of carbon, or the horse manure. I don’t want weeds in my compost. Back in the day most people seeded direct for many crops and only grew 1 or 2 successions, I grow 3-5 successions now which means a lot of pricking out and potting on, that takes a lot of compost bags and I’d be spending hours a week making that myself, which is about as much time as I spend growing plants in the first place and I don’t have that spare time in my week. So much as I love the idea of being more self sufficient I just can’t afford the cost in lost harvests or lost time to make it work.
I appreciate these comments Steve - for me, I only need the equivalent of 10 large sacks of compost a year so easily achieved - I do get weed seedlings but they are easily removed
That doesn’t sound easy to me though Sally, 10 bags sounds like a lot of work. I’m sure it would take me at least 10 hours a year and thats more time than I have had to create and improve my database each year, so something would have to give and the tens of thousands of people who’ve enjoyed that database wouldn’t thank me. Weeds in my compost means extra work too, it all adds up. I’ve spent 8 years trying to eliminate all of those little 5 minute jobs that add up to hours a week and thats how I managed to hit my target of growing a rich diet in 1 hour a week/person that I feed. Also as I mentioned, to make 10 large bags of compost a year you need a lot of leaves, they take up a lot of space for a long time and since I don’t have a personal source of leaves, I’d have to go and find some and gathering that many leaves would be more hours. All hours that have to come from somewhere. And the space required for the extra compost and leaf pile means that someone does’d get fed, I feed a few low income friends, they’d definitely miss that few hundred pounds of food that I couldn’t grow for them, because I’m making £50 worth of seed compost. As a general rule, I prefer to outsource anything that someone can do better and quicker than me, unless I enjoy it more than some other job that I can outsource. Now one of my viewers often recommends to me his approach, he just digs up soil from his plot for seed compost, his logic being his seeds are growing in the exact biome that they will enjoy when planted, he doesn’t mix it with anything (it’s already soil+compost) and he doesn’t need to store to, compost it, bag it up etc. It wouldn’t work for me, because I have no empty beds to dig soil from (everything is always planted) and I start my seeds at home, not on the plot, but it’s interesting and efficient : all the best - Steve
I agree with the comment from your viewer about the biome - the soil around the parent plant is rich in microbes that ware working with the parent plant and the plant actually wraps up an inoculum of microbes (endophytes) in the seed to give it the best start in life - I wrote about this last year (https://climatechangegarden.substack.com/p/polyculture-and-seed-endophytes) But for me, my aim is to produce food with a low carbon footprint and to see if the garden can be carbon negative like the rest of the farm. But I know your aim is producing food and lean gardening - which I find fascinating
Ah, but I’m also easily carbon negative, for my whole lifestyle, not just my gardening already, in fact I have been for 7 years now