the compost area: to be or not to be

One of the first things I did was to identify a spot for the future compost area. At first, I was thinking along the lines of a typical compost space: 3 compost piles each with layers of brown and green organic material. In order to get started with the kitchen waste, I made one out of iron chicken wire enforced with some branches. 

Our first compost bin, with a front panel which can be opened

However, the big amounts of autumn leaves, grass clippings and cut branches already started piling up next to it and after reading some books on permaculture, I changed my plans. I decided I wanted to have a compost area to gather organic material separately, but not necessarily turn it all into ready-to-use compost before applying it in the garden.

I learned that mulching and using living green manure on the spot would save me a lot of work and would create far more nutritious compost. If one turns compost, airs it, let it shrink, and then move it, one has already used some of its energy and nutritions and one disturbs the micro organisms at work. It is apparently better to add the layers of brown and green material, the manure and final mulch cover on the spot where you need it. Even kitchen waste can be tucked under the mulch layers: with the help of all the tiny soil animals it will be turned into compost on the spot.

This implied that I would just need a place to temporarily store some surplus leaves, branches, manure, etc. Nevertheless, I decided to leave my first compost bin in use for the time being and gradually get used to the new way of composting/mulching.

In any case, I wanted to cover the compost area from sight. We opted for a natural little fence made of branches.

The first layers of branches filling up our natural fence up to half its future height

We gathered our cut raspberry stems and some pretty reddish branches from our neighbour's birch trees which had flown into our garden during the last storm. We tried to make the fence a little curved to give it a more organic look. We still need to fill it up to the top, but that will only happen next time when we get some more branches. In front of the fence, we will plant our giant sunflowers.

I might even wait with finalizing the fence for a while, because just behind it there is a pile of big branches, grass and leaves which would make a good hugelculture base. Hugel culture is a permaculture technique reusing rough garden waste as a bed for planting veggies. You make a kind of trench and fill it up with branches and then layers of organic material. On top of it, you have the perfect spot to plant pumpkins and alike! This is where I will try to plant pumpkins this year, combined with nasturtium to protect them from pests like squash bugs and aphids.

The compost area will also be used to make liquid plant tonics (gier, udtraek). I will use plants like nettle, dandelion, comfrey, elder and rhubarb, but other plants are also possible like fern, tansy, and tomato. I will post more on this topic later on.

first harvest of dandelion in a bucket ready for the rain to fill it up and 
to be used for a plant tonic after two weeks of fermenting