Since I took the decision right from the start to concentrate on no-dig raised beds I have struggled to find (affordable for me!) sources of growing medium. Each of my pallet-collar raised beds is 1.2m x 1m and to get a depth of even 20 cm (8″) requires 240 litres. So even using the cheapest bagged compost I’ve found – Care Compost made from Birmingham’s Green waste by Jack Moody of Wolverhampton and bought from the wonderful Martineau Gardens at £2 per 40 litre bag – it costs £12 per bed. And that doesn’t include the cost of car hire for me to fetch it – or the bus fare to go and collect the car!
I’ve also had half a load of manure from a local horse stables – it was in May and had to share with my neighbour as it was the last they had before the autumn. £35 per load delivered (c. 3 tonnes) so pretty good value for money – but I need more! And I found someone with manure from their horses in a field a few miles away. I had to dig into the mound and bag it up myself but it was free! However the digging and lugging of about 10 bags put my back out and I was incapacitated for a week. And although well-rotted it turned out to be full of grass seed just lurking and awaiting to sprout a couple of weeks after I planted out my leeks in it.
I have been making my own compost with slightly mixed results so far. My first compost bin was not up to scratch and the slats kept breaking so I’ve now dismantled it – and I’ve yet to rebuild one from the pallets I’ve scrounged. Instead I’ve been throwing everything into a large dumpy bag and trying to mix it as best I can. I haven’t achieved the temperatures I would have liked for initial ‘cooking’ of the compost but its got loads of worms in which are doing their stuff. I’ve used some compost from here to top up my early beds after their first harvest before replanting.
Worrying that I wasn’t going to be able to get hold of much more manure from the usual allotment supplier this autumn – and other sources costing much more – and still having lots more beds to get filled before next spring I decided I needed a different approach. On a day out I’d driven past some bagged up (fresh) horse manure by the side of the road at £1 per bag and managed to squeeze 6 in the back of the hire car. So instead of piling it up to leave it to mature or even adding it to my compost bin I’ve split it across 3 of my beds as a layer in what will become lasagna (or lasagne) beds. Starting with a base layer of cardboard or newspaper to suppress perennial weeds I’m now layering up with alternating green and brown layers to strive to get a good carbon:nitrogen mix. So pretty similar to compost-making but doing it right in the bed rather than the compost heap – making lasagna beds is also known as sheet-composting.
There’s a lot of confusion about C:N ratios and greens:browns and what materials are brown and green. I’m not slavishly following any ‘recipe’ but using what I have to hand or can get my hands on and now seems like a good time of year to be doing it. Brown materials include woodchip and autumn leaves whilst fresh manure is considered to be green. Other greens I’ve used so far include my cleared bean and tomato plants – plus a load of nasturtiums and windfall apples I found on the communal compost heap (normally reserved for those things that no-ones to compost in their own heaps!). A few barrow loads of wood chips have so far formed the brown layers – burrowing into the communal pile to find the previous load that was dropped there which was from deciduous trees and included leaves whilst the top layers are from chopped conifers and may be a bit resinous/acidic. I’m using those for my paths.
So I’m layering it up and watering each layer well and to the beds above I’ve since added a layer of semi-composted material from my compost bin. I’ve covered them over with black polythene to see if it will ‘cook’ the mix and bump-start the breakdown whilst there’s still some warmth in the air. Although I’m slightly concerned about cooking the many worms I introduced from the compost! I assume they’ll have the sense to move to cooler parts of the bed if it warms up too much 😉
As I get hold of more material I’ll keep layering up more beds and letting nature and the winter weather do its stuff. When it gets to spring my plan is to top off with a layer of brought in compost for seed sowing or adding to planting holes for plants. Now my main task is to go on the hunt for as much organic material as I can source for free – I’ve already got friends and neighbours giving me their last lawn mowings and saving me their swept up leaves. And the money I save on buying in tonnes of compost I can spend on more seeds and plants…..:-)
My Plenty Food Project 