Help! There are lots of flies in the compost heap!

Apparently that means that the mixture is too wet.  The best things to add are shredded newspaper, straw or woody cuttings.  Cardboard egg boxes are super as they have ready-made air gaps in them.


This answer from expert Monty Don is pretty comprehensive:

"We had good results with our compost until two years ago. The bin was placed on concrete, and waste was turned regularly and urine or water added. But then the compost became infected with thousands of whitefly, so we decided not to use it and started a new bin placed directly onto soil. This is now covered with disgusting brown flies that attack us each time we lift the lid. Help!"

 
A This question really merits a long answer, but the important thing is: do not stop making compost. Very briefly, a compost heap is a living thing with millions of creatures - mainly bacteria and fungae, but also flies, beetles, slugs and every kind of creepy-crawly - helping to digest and process your waste into wonderful, enriching compost. Let them do it! 

There is no need to add water or urine, but it is important to turn it approximately once a month, unless you have lots of space to leave a heap to slowly mature over a year or two. 

Turning will feed the bacteria especially, which will speed up the composting process so the waste will soon become clean, fresh-smelling and free of flies of all kinds. So please, don't give up. Every heap gets flies, but they will soon go if you turn the heap often. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/gardening/article-1077154/Ask-Monty-Help-My-composts-infected-flies.html#ixzz33IZXLYmw
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Also on the internet there was one suggestion of leaving the lid of the compost bin off in the winter, then the larva and overwintering adults will freeze and be no more.

If, on the other hand, the compost bin's too dry - one indication is ants in the compost bin - then add more green matter, grass clippings, weeds - or even water the bin.  Other ideas include adding bonemeal or manure.

See also: http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/7-solutions-common-compost-problems

​Some advice from the RHS on composting:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Advice/profile?pid=444

Now we've moved to a garden with claggy clay soil, the state of the soil in this country - and how to improve our soil here in this garden - is of great interest to me.

How allotment holders are kings when it comes to soil management*

Soil is one of the great failures of modern intensive agriculture.  Healthy soils, beneath natural grasslands and - especially - woodlands, contain lots of organic matter that holds on to nutrients and gives soil structural stability, allowing it to resist damage by, for example, heavy rain, thus preventing erosion. 

There's also plenty of life in a healthy soil, lots of burrowing earthworms, so lots of pore space too.  A healthy soil is basically a giant sponge, which fills with water after rain gradually releasing it to plants in dry weather.


When land is cleared for agriculture, and especially for arable crops, all that goes out of the window.  The organic matter is lost to the atmosphere as CO2, and the soil loses its structure and strength, leading to compaction and erosion.  Arable soils also lose their ability to retain water, nutrients and pollutants, leaking nutrients into groundwater and lakes and rivers, causing eutrophication and, if the water is for human use, the need for expensive water treatment.

Although this is all well-known, the conventional view is that soil degradation is the price we have to pay for high yields of arable crops.  But new research in the Journal of Ecology says that gardening proves the conventional view wrong.

The researchers looked at the properties of soils on allotments in Leicester, along with those from other urban sites, and compared them with soils beneath arable local fields and pasture.


The arable soils showed the usual symptoms: compacted, lifeless and low in organic matter.  Allotment soils, by contrast, were more open, more fertile, and higher in organic matter.  The reason isn't hard to find: composting of allotment waste is virtually universal, most allotment holders also import household green waste, and use of manure and other kinds of commercial compost is widespread.  In short, soils on allotments are healthy because people take trouble to keep them that way.

Nor are these healthy soils any barrier to high yields.  During WW2 Dig for Victory campaign, allotments and gardens provided around 10% of food consumed in the UK, despite covering less than 1% of the area of arable cultivation.

Recent research also shows that gardens and allotments produce yields between 4 and 11 times greater than conventional agricultural crops.

In fact soil organic matter is now so low beneath many agricultural soils that it makes it increasingly hard to maintain high crop yields.

These results are not unique to allotments: soils in private gardens were pretty good too.  In fact, garden soils beneath trees and shrubs were best of all, presumably because they are undisturbed and also benefit from the organic matter added by fallen leaves.

Nevertheless, allotments are unique in the way they manage to combine a productive 'agricultural' function (ie growing food) with healthy soils.


So, encouraging people to grow their own food simultaneously targets food security, bolsters the well-known health benefits of gardening, and helps reduce climate change, flooding, pollution and erosion.  

* from an article by Ken Thompson in the Telegraph

See also: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/allotments-could-be-key-sustainable-farming-1.370522

Interesting reading from the past:  http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3997/#b

Some advice from the RHS: http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own/allotments

Why do we need to feed our plants?

A letter sent in from one of the readers ran thus:

I seem to spend my life scattering things around my garden (chicken pellets one year, blood fish and bone the next, together with the contents, as far as it will stretch, of the compost bin), while acquiring a shed full of bags of partly used fertilisers because, we are told, different plants need different fertilisers.  But what am I actually achieving?  Is it all a plot on the part of the marketing people? could you explain simply what we need to do - and what you do, for instance?

To which Helen replied:

Oh what a loaded question!  Answering this has the potential to upset just about everyone - from white-coated scientists and the makes of Day-Glo inorganic soluble feeds right through to serried ranks of organic allotmenters.

In theory, we shouldn't need to feed our plants.  After all, the natural world looks after itself.  

A garden, however, is an unnatural environment.  We cram a small patch of earth full of plants that in their natural habitat might have very differing needs, and expect super performance year after year: fabulous flowers from roses, huge leaves from hostas, endless flowering from annuals, a perfect lawn ...  

Plants crowded together suffer from drought, which encourages disease, weakening them further.  To make things worse, we clear up every bits of debris from our gardens that would otherwise go back into the soil, eventually to create vital humus without which plants can't grow.  So we need first and foremost to feed the soil, putting back as much moisture-retaining, humus-creating organic stuff as we can - invariably more than those of us with average-sized gardens can make in our compost bin.


Whatever we choose or don't choose to do, we should all feed our plants. Certain plants will perform better - and importantly show more disease resistance - given certain nutrients, each of which has a different 'function': flowering plants (and tomatoes) like extra potash, summer lawns benefit from nitrogen that encourages green leaves, while the roots of autumn grass are strengthened by phosphates etc. And lime-haters don't like animal manure.

It is a big subject if you want it to be.  I try to keep it simple.

I give my garden masses of manure-based organic matter each year (which I buy, to supplment my own compost), adding it to the soil when I plant, and mulching around individual plants in spring.  I make oak-leaf mould for lime-haters and woodlands.  

In addition I spread a general, balanced fertiliser on my flower borders once a year (for 'balanced' nutrients look at the NPK ratio on the packaging - beware, you won't find precise information on chicken manure pellets, which are nitrogen-rich).  

I also give high potash rose food to my flowering shrubs and I use seaweed-based liquid fertiliser as a pick-me-up (for ailing plants, that is, not me, silly).

From an article by Helen Yemm in the Telegraph Gardening section



Time Lapse: Watching Flowers Grow  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQYjZRuAay0).  Remember watching the beginning of 'Watch with Mother'? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE9dsOu3oE8)

manure - compost - dung

Busy day today: we collected a car-load of horse manure from near by.  I know it's good stuff - but now what to do with it?

Apparently the best poo to use is from chickens (or other birds) as their poo contains both solid and liquid parts.  The liquid part is high in nitrogen, potassium and sulphur, so as horses' poo is only the solid bit it's likely to be deficient, unless the manure's from a stable, when it's likely to have both.


Horse dung has also received a bad press as it often contains weed seeds.  One way to avoid this problem is to leave it in a big pile until it 'cooks', thus destroying the weed seeds, and by big, the optimum size is about a metre cube.


To make a horse manure heap: layer of dung 6" deep, water it, then add a layer or general purpose fertiliser, followed by a green layer (leaves, food scraps, hay etc). Repeat until about a metre high.  Create ventilation holes, using crowbar or similar. Turn the heap about every three weeks and this should be ready in a couple of months.

If you don't want to use it yet, keep it slightly damp and covered.


See: http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/features/horsedung.shtml

Water is a precious commodity - this year we're facing hosepipe ban earlier than ever before and we can no longer take it for granted that there'll always be plenty of water.
Each of us uses about 145 litres each day, but the average household roof could harvest 85,000 litres of rainwater a year - pure, chemical-free, soft water - perfect for crops and plants in the garden and ideal to wash the car of clean the terrace.  Here are lots of good ideas to help so we'll need to water less:

• mulch the plants
• remove any weeds 
• improving the soil so it retains water better
• space plants densely 
• put in plants with low water requirements (see below).
• harvest rainwater and reuse household water 
• limit lawn space
• use drought-tolerant grasses and allow them to grow longer
• leave cut grass on the lawn as a mulch
• use permeable surfacing like gravel for hard landscaping;
• fill containers with peat-free compost (green waste, loam or coir-based composts retain water better) 
• water efficiently by thoroughly soaking the base of each plant in need of water (at a rate of at least 10 litres per square metre) - in the early morning or evening - to avoid transpiration.

The best way for householders to harvest rainwater for garden purposes is to place a container under a downpipe with a diverter which directs any overflow to a ground drain.
House roofs are obvious candidates, but don't forget greenhouses, garages, conservators, even sheds.


If a water butt isn't enough, go for an above-the-ground tank in agricultural corrugated metal; a complete underground system with pumps and filters; or a self-build system to purify household and grey water.


A drip-watering system, delivering moisture direct to the root zones is especially useful in vegetable gardens. when they can be hidden along the raised beds.  

If you're really committed you can establish a garden wetland to purify grey water, mimicking a natural wetland where plants, microbes and animals convert pollutants to biomass, leaving clean water.


Most vegetables need water to establish but these must be kept watered throughout the season:

• salad leaves and lettuces
• spinach
• summer cabbage
• cauliflower
• celery
• celeriac
• fennel
• runner beans
• anything which grows in the greenhouse, especially cucumbers and tomatoes

Plants which need less water include:

• Ones with silver grey leaves: cistus, santolina and artemesia
• Plants with aromatic oils: lavender, rosemary and thyme.
• Plants which store water: succulents and agaves.
• Plants with long tap roots: verbascums, hoilyhocks and umbellifers.
• Plants with hairy leaves: salvias, verbascums and comfreys.
• Sword-like leaved plants: yucca, cordylines and phormiums.
• Native plants suited to local conditions.
• Perennials need less watering than annuals and bedding plants.

DIY GARDENING BOOKS

• A Guide to Waterwise Gardening by Michael Littlewood
• The Resilient Garden by Marilyn Abbot
• Gardening in a Changing Climate by Ambra Edwards
• Waterwise Gardening by Ian Cooke

Wood Ash

In the Saturday Telegraph Gardening Section today there was a question about wood ash.  
Wood ash is a useful source of potash and also lime.  It is recommended that wood ash be put around fruit for the potash   Also it's good put around many plants and shrubs, whilst being careful to avoid acid-loving plants, such as pieris and azaleas.

a glorious pieris

However, it was suggested that if a great deal of wood ash is produced it might be better to put aside and add to the compost heap.  This would be especially useful in the summer when the ash can help wet compost, such as grass clippings, rot down better.


On GQT this week, Bob Flowerdew was quoted as suggesting that wood ash is good for gooseberries, which bears this out.

From the site: http://bobflowerdew.co.uk/

(I don't know how much he charges these days for his talks but many years ago (well about 15) he was asking £3,000 for an hour!  He must be good!)