Easy peasy compost #1: Reduce your compost needs
Homemade compost is the ultimate soil food - safe from herbicide/ pesticide/ fungicide residue and full of life!
It may seem daunting to make all your own, but with a good setup you totally can. The trick is to incorporate fertility into your garden design. Team that with a good compost making set up plus a few simple habits and you'll be running off your own compost before you know it.
5 fertile design strategies
- Choose really good spots for your food growing gardens
- Cosy all your fertile spaces together - the chooks, vegies, greenhouse, citrus + compost heaps - a huge reduction in fertility needs, weeding and your energy too!
- Plant loads of perennial companions around your annual crops, especially mineral rich herbs.
- Plant crops that suit your soil + climate to a T - they need a lot less feeding + fussing.
- Go diverse - in all your plantings. Diversity is the cornerstone of fertility.
5 fertile garden habits
- Stay in touch with your soil
- Water properly
- Keep soil covered at all times - mostly with living mulch, otherwise with homemade mulch.
- Recycle foodscraps with worm farms or bokashi
- Maintain several stashes of OM(organic matter) so that you can quickly make a compost or mulch at anytime.