“One acre composted is worth acres three

At harvest thy barns shall declare it to thee”

Lawrence Hill 1963

Compost and the making of it is something that is quite new in the scheme of things. For gardens of the past had plenty of good manure, even in the centres of cities.

Then every car was a carriage and pair and every lorry a dray. Therefore, horse manure was a by-product of transport and the towns and villages through out the land were full of it.

Gardeners could get their hands on animal manure, with ease and had no need to make compost. The animal manure was very highly prized and natural. The same is not truth today.

Our farms are factories and use many unnatural products that do not do the soil or us any good at all. Manure contractors today will often sell battery or beef lot manure, which has been stacked with just enough straw to allow mechanized loading. This method excludes air, so it cannot decay to the ‘ well-rotted manure’ recommended by gardeners and growers of the past. What you are getting is a sort of ‘ manure silage’ which is a sour-smelling mess, very unpleasant to dig in and that may stay un-decayed for a year or more.

The answer is to rely on home made compost, which is a far better balanced source of humus and plant food than the very best farmyard manure. Compost is a much more stable ‘meal’ for your raised beds then anything else that you could get your hands on.

Many thousands of very successful gardeners use this system of feeding their raised beds, thereby improving on the output of the past when only farmyard manure, lime, and the emptying of ‘night soil’ were used.

Compost has many physical properties that you cannot gain by buying inorganic manures or fertilizers. Compost is rich moisture-holding humus that will over time produce results out of all proportion to the chemical analysis. The sooner you start making you own compost and using it the better.

Compost is very easy to make, all you need is: a space to make it, materials to make it with and time. If you start now, today in a years time you will have your supply that if done proply and constantly will give you compost to use when every you need it.

Never waste any energy. Most organic material can be composted. Compost making is not magic or mystery. Merely a bacterial bonfire, cooking weed seeds like grains of rice, simmering roots like lone and narrow potatoes and killing spores of plant diseases with temperatures of 130 degrees to 160 degrees.

The ability to make good compost is a very important garden skill, though those who master it find the process very simple, much like bread making in a way. You just have to go out and give it a go.