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Every garden should have one

A compost bin. Every garden should have one, preferably two, even better three. Garden compost is the basis of all good gardens. It is essential to any organic garden. Well made garden compost provides a balanced diet for plants; it improves the soil structure, retaining moisture in dry periods and at the same time opens up a heavy soil to prevent water logging. It makes wonderful mulch, suppressing weeds whilst releasing nutrients into the soil; recycles the minerals and trace elements taken up and used by plants during active growth and releases goodness into the soil as it is broken down by bacteria. Best of all it's free. That pile of slowly rotting vegetation, home to wood lice and hidden away in a dank and sunless part of your garden is not a compost heap it's a rubbish tip. A garden compost heap is a living entity. It needs to be nurtured and cosseted.

Why do we compost? Why not just dig that garden waste, hedge trimmings etc, those vegetable peelings and those grass mowings straight into the soil? Well, the answer is quite complicated and has to do with carbon/nitrogen ratios, the life cycle of bacteria, temperature and a whole host of other variables, none of which I have the space to discuss in this article. But to give an example, take chick weed. Just about every well tended garden will have some chick weed growing somewhere. It's a soft sappy weed made up of proteins, water and carbohydrates. If we were to dig that into our soil the effect would be similar to putting a side of beef into a tank full of alligators. There would be a short lived frenzy of activity then absolutely nothing. Conversely, if we were to dig in sawdust or paper, commonly used as bedding for horses and other stock the effect would be the exact opposite. Bacteria in the soil would set to work to break down the sawdust which is mainly cellulose. Now cellulose is a challenge for soil bacteria. Instead of releasing nutrients the bacteria will actually use all available nutrients already in the soil as fuel to get to work. The soil will become impoverished and the plants will suffer as a result. As gardeners we have to make sure that anything we add to the soil will be broken down by bacteria in a controlled manner so that there is a steady release of nutrients and trace elements which are available throughout the growing season. This will give us healthy plants which are able to shrug of disease and insect attack.
Making good compost is not

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