Our Garden Life

Most gardeners will tell you that good compost is the secret to successful gardening. This holds true whether you’re growing a decorative or a productive vegetable garden.

At Our Garden Life we love our compost!

For years we lived in small city apartments and struggled to live the kind of sustainable gardening life that we wanted. Smelly buckets of scraps on the kitchen bench and worm farms valiantly trying to survive in courtyards facing the afternoon sun, led us to explore how compost could be produced in almost any environment.

Even a tiny balcony can produce compost and grow vegetables, flowers and indoor plants. If you have a bit more room, you can definitely feed your family with what you can produce from your own yard.

There is nothing more rewarding than eating, seasonally from your own garden. It’s nutritious, delicious and good for the planet. If you have children there is the added benefit of opportunities to teach them about science, the natural world, cooking and sustainability.

We started this journey into organic gardening via hydroponics. We had a hydroponic herb farm where the importance of what you put into the growing medium is essential to the health of the plant. This is the same for growing in soil.

A healthy nutritious plant needs to be fed from the soil.  The degradation of nutritional minerals in our top soil has resulted in plants containing less nutrients then they may have had in the past. By creating humus, through composting, your gardens soil structure will improve and provide nutrients for your plants.

Compost is suitable for all gardens whether in containers or beds. If you are creating a no dig garden, which is easily maintained and suitable for all ages, compost is a key ingredient.

What is compost?

Organic gardeners often talk about compost and humus together. Humus is what you get when you layer garden waste, soil and old manure and it turns into a black crumbly soil-like substance. It is the end product of the composting process. But often these are referred to as the same thing.

Humus is what enables the soil to regulate the plants access to water. If your soil is too sandy, the water leaches away. Alternatively, if there is too much clay, the water can’t penetrate below the surface. By adding the humus from the composting process the soil can function correctly.

As they grow all plants take nutrients from the soil and unless they are replaced whatever your growing will struggle to survive. Inorganic fertilisers and chemicals can be used but these may do long term damage to the soil. Compost from organic material will look after your soil and in turn feed the plants what you would prefer to put in your body.

The composting process is caused by the microorganisms metabolising the organic matter. These micro organisms include bacteria and fungi and they breakdown the solid matter into a stable compost that is free from odours and pathogens.

Hot Composting

Hot composting uses a balance of organic materials allows aerobic heat generating bacteria to break down the compost. By turning it regularly the compost is oxygenated which speeds up the process.

This is perhaps one of the more difficult and time-consuming methods of composting, producing large amounts of compost. It requires attention to keep the compost pile at the best temperature that allow the bacteria to flourish rather than overheating and killing these organisms.

Most gardeners using this method have a two or three bin system to make the turning easier.

Cold Composting

Cold composting, sometimes referred to as passive composting, is the easiest method. It is slow, sometimes taking up to 12 months to decompose completely, depending upon the size of the pile, the environmental conditions and the organic composition of the heap.

How long it takes will also depend on the size of the particles you put in the compost. The smaller the particles the quicker it will breakdown.

In this composting method you layer on the organic material as it comes to hand. This is particularly convenient in the home garden where you seldom have access to large amounts of either carbon or nitrogen material. Kitchen scraps, dried leaves and small green cuttings are ideal for this method.

You cannot put bones, meat, weeds that have gone to seed or diseased plants, as the pile is not hot enough to break down these materials or to kill off any nasties. You don’t want pathogens spreading around your garden.

We like to add compost to our vegetable gardens at least twice a year; once in the Autumn/Fall and again in Spring. This coincides with the planting of seasonal crops and helps to top up raised beds that may have subsided over the season. However, we will often use compost throughout the year to top up pots of herbs or to refresh areas of the garden where we are going to plant. Having compost ready throughout the year is a bonus.

We have several compost piles that use different methods including stationary compost bins, a compost tumbler and worm farms. For each gardener there will be a composting bin to suit how you like to garden.