Today is Buy Nothing Day here in the UK, the day when we’re encouraged to see past consumerism to the finer things in life. Doing rather than buying.
I want to avoid buying in a lot of potting compost next year. It’s expensive, has a high carbon footprint (all that transporting it around) and is heavy to shift. My homemade compost may be lumpy and a little weedy, but it’s free and available on site.
But that means I need to make as much compost as possible. Over the summer it pretty much makes itself as I garden, but in the winter it’s a bit more of an effort. (Check out episode 75 of the AKG for more on composting in winter.)
On Thursday I started to make that effort. I’m composting more of the cardboard packaging that comes into the house, and using the liquid from my worm compost bins and my free compost activator to add the required nutrients to balance it out. If I pack the bins out now, there’s a good chance it will be compost by the spring.
I’m still considering what to do when the bins are full – there might be a compost expansion plan in the offing. And I’m grateful to Allan Shepherd for posting his guide to turning leaf mould and comfrey leaves into potting compost – I will be doing that with my year-old leaf mould in spring when the comfrey leafs up again.