Autumn is almost as busy as spring for gardeners. You’re clearing the beds you so lovingly planted six months ago and cutting back many shrubs and herbaceous perennials. So what do you do with the resulting mountain of vegetation?
Many councils offer a green waste collection service and you can always lug it all to a recycling centre. The council will compost it and you can buy the green waste compost next spring. I don’t knock this approach, but would add a word of caution. Although a council’s composting system screens out most of the damaging material, such as broken glass and old cans, it has no way of excluding dangerous chemicals such as clopyralid. This long-lasting pernicious chemical is still used in some lawn treatments and householders often put their contaminated grass clippings in their green waste collection bins. Consequently, some batches of green waste may contain traces of damaging herbicides.
Green waste also varies hugely in nutrient levels, so I prefer keeping and processing my garden waste and returning it, as compost, to the garden next year.
We feed the soil with compost and fertilisers to encourage plant growth and then remove much of the resulting vegetation. If all these nutrients are lost to the garden, we have to fertilise again next spring. So recycle your garden’s fertility by making compost.
Vegetation, such as old tomato and courgette plants, rots down quickly in a home composting bin and this year’s herbaceous prunings are also easily processed. Thin woody branches will decompose, but may take more than a year.
That’s all very well, you may say, but the compost bin fills up in minutes and can’t cope with everything. Surely the answer is to buy another one? With quite a large garden, you may find it’s easier to put a second or third bin in different places, so you don’t have so far to go with a full bucket of weeds. I supplement my large composting bays next to the kitchen garden with a plastic one in the fruitcage and another behind the polytunnel.
Check if there’s any finished compost at the bottom of your bin and remove and store it in a robust plastic bag. This gives you space for more fresh material.
You may be able to reduce the volume of your compostables by using a rotary mower as a shredder for soft green garden rubbish. Make low piles on the grass, slowly and gently lower the machine on to it, letting the rotor blade chop it up. Then empty the full grassbox into your compost bin.
This method also works with soft green prunings and because the shreddings are a mix of green, sappy material and soft brown stuff, it quickly reaches a high temperature and composts down perfectly.
But use a shredder for old, woody prunings. When mixed with green, sappy material, they do rot down, though slowly. This fibrous stuff absorbs surplus moisture from green vegetation and raw kitchen scraps, so both ingredients are perfectly suited to each other.
If you don’t have a shredder, chop up the woody material as best you can. Fungi and bacteria work round the edges of leaves and stems, so the smaller the pieces, the faster they rot. If you still find any woody stems when emptying the compost bin, put them back for another year.
Treat prickly prunings – such as rose, gooseberry and holly – differently. The prickles don’t magically disappear, so make next spring’s compost untouchable.
Heap these up in an out-of-the-way part of the garden and let them rot down over several years. This pile is a magnet for birds, insects and toads, making a perfect wildlife haven. An alternative is to build a dead hedge in a hidden corner. Drive two lines of stout poles into the ground, 45-60cm apart, leaving 45cm between poles along each line. Pile the rubbish up to make a slightly neater wildlife haven.
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