Compost Bins

My compost bins aren't pretty. They don't get filled that scientifically either. But the bins I fill in the autumn have broken down in the spring to dark sweet smelling stuff that has a huge number of earth worms in it.
A few days ago I emptied two of the three bins and started filling one back up again with all the weeds etc that I have been pulling from the garden beds the last few weeks.

 

There are hundreds of worms, though by the time I got the camera ready, they had already burrowed under the surface.

 

One of the reasons that I cleaned the compost from the bins was to mound over the newly planted potatoes. It didn't take much to do that, and I still have lots to go in the garden beds that weren't turned into compost bins for the winter.

 

The potatoes are planted a little early, but with a little luck and no frosts, they'll be on their way by the time I get back in December.

As well as the three compost bins out by the garden, I also have a worm farm. The kitchen scraps go to feed them. A friend worm-sits them when I am away. If I have a surplus of worms in the worm farm I usually dose the regular compost bins with them to help get them going. 

It seems there is never enough compost to go around, but I always have some on the go. There are always a few of the raised vege beds that are resting, with a ring of chicken wire around them, and garden waste filling them up. I rotate the beds that are treated this way every change of season, so about every 3 years each bed will go through this regenerating rest.

In with the new - mulch that is.

My friend Michael has mountains of wood chips/saw dust as a by-product of his wood biz. Each year I get as many bags of these wood chips as will fit in my car, to spread on the paths of my small enclosed vege garden.

The old chips that have been on the paths since the previous year have started to break down and, mixed with the weeds and soil dropped on the paths, have started to produce a sort of rough compost.

 

Scraping this mix, helps clean the pathway of fresh weeds, and I find I have a great mulch to spread on the garden beds around the existing plants.

For a few weeks, all looks weed free and well cared for. The "path compost" can continue to break down on the beds, adding a little bit more humus and some more nutrients to the soil.

At one end of the vege garden I have a couple of old crates that I use as compost makers. But not too much of this compost ends up on the garden beds.

 

The reason for this is that because the garden is quite small, and we've only been using it as our primary vege garden space for the last few years, I am still in the process of expanding it.

How I do this in a way that requires almost no work on my part, is to move the compost bins each spring and use the resulting compost pile from the previous year as part of the new garden space. This way I increase the vege garden beds by about 3 square metres each year, and the new bed is weed free and well composted for a new season.

I do dream about having more compost to spread around the rest of the garden. But I make do with planting green manures, using the "path compost" and buying worm poo each spring.