This is another key area that I wanted to focus on in the first year. With already composting onsite, improving the existing composting methods would only need a little more thought and planning than usual. I didn’t get to where I wanted with the wormery but instead made excellent progress working with the main composting heaps.   

I’ve been looking forward to building my first summer compost heap in the new composting location. Before the build I was able to gather and store some of the materials ready for composting in the space next to the heap, other materials will be cut on the day. 

In the below photographs, I share the creation of the heap along with a few photographs of how the heap progressed through the summer. I’m enjoying finally having some space to work.     

The autumn compost heap will be colder and will take longer to compost down than the summer heap. For this heap, the materials used will be much dryer due to the time of year. The Chlorophyll will no longer be present in much of the plant leaves, layering again the dry high carbon materials with the contents from the plastic bin will help the composting process. I expect this heap to be ready for mulching the bed's early May ready for planting out.

In the photographs below taken 07/11/2021 you can see how very different the autumn heap is from the summer heap regarding the materials used.

In past years the compost I’ve made has been used to mulch the beds along with a mulch around the fruit bushes. With the sudden need for compost to fill the new raised beds, I’ve got a little more creative in how I use my compost.

The largest along with the two new raised beds next to the path, a similar process was used to the description below. Where they differ is in what I used to fill the bulk of the bed. For these three I had no compost from the main heap, so I used all the previous year's leaf-mould mixed with old compost from the raised bed that I removed. I also mixed biochar into these beds. When it came to planting, I used a few handfuls of bought-in compost to give the plants a boost to set them away growing in their new home.    

The below photographs taken 07/11/2021, are a step-through of the process I used when filling the latest raised bed. Unlike the other beds, I now had access to some partly composted material from the new main compost heap. This compost will be used as the bulk material and will have a further seven months to continue to compost before planting the bed up in late May next year.  Over time the woody materials in the bottom of the beds will slowly compost down giving the beds a continuous boost for years to come.  

In the idea section of this design, I gathered a few thoughts on additional ways to improve soil fertility.

With this year's comfrey crop I was able to follow the plan of using the first cut around the fruit trees and goji bushes. The second cut gave me a very large amount of material, most of this went into the mail compost heap leaving me enough to add to the tops of the raised beds in the front garden. The third cut gave plenty of material to go around all the fruit bushing along with the fruit trees in the back garden.

With regards to compost teas, these will be used next season. Keeping to this year, I also made more use of what I have plenty of, leaves. Below are a couple of sections, the first on improved use of leaves as a mulch with the second on using leaves as a mulch on the raised beds.  

As with previous years, I’ve once again mulched the back garden with fallen leaves gathered from the car park in front of the house. The major difference this year is the number of leaves that have gone into this garden, not that I have counted them all but there has been a substantial amount more than in past years. I’ve also coved nearly all the growing areas in the garden, the exception being the chamomile lawn inside the stone circle.

This year when I first put the leaves into the garden I covered most parts with a mulch of around 6 -12 inches deep, I also had large piles in places to enable me to keep spreading more leaves out as the leaves started to compost down.

The concept of this garden is for it to resemble a forest garden (See Forest Garden Design). The most sustainable and earth-friendly way to grow food is the way which is most like the natural vegetation of that area. In Britain it’s woodland. My logic here for the use of so many leaves is to give the soil what it once would have had a lot of when it was woodland. Gardening is just a big experiment learning from what works and what doesn’t, next year I might be using even more leaves, or I might delete this section altogether.  

Not having to look too far or think very creatively, the obvious material to give the raised beds a mulch over winter is you guessed it, leaves. With my endless supply of autumn leaves, I topped three of my raised beds with as many leaves as I could push down onto the tops of the beds. I quickly learned that on windless days I could use a much deeper mulch, this gave me time to fill the beds and spread the old compost bags to the top of the leaves, then using wood or stones to hold everything in place. On windy days I would press the leaves down on the beds, turn around, then watch the leaves blowing past me looking for their last taste of freedom.  

This will be when the design gets more fun. No more major groundwork, no major planning just a time to play and have some fun.

In year two I will complete the outstanding improvements I never got around to doing in year one.

These are

• Improve the wormery – Add additional trays, try feeding the worms with a more varied diet
• Improve the use of the compost – Be more observant in the garden, adding a few handfuls of compost mulch when plants look like they need a boost.
• Keep improving my use of comfrey – Use the extra cuts around different plants to see what happens, give the worms some to eat.
• Compost teas – Get the activated aerated compost tea system up and running.
• Improved planting methods – Probably my most fun one, look at what I’m going to be planting this next growing season and plan out using the companion planting chart in the Idea section to see which plants grow best next to each other and learn what plants may benefit from been moved in the garden that could be growing next to not so friendly plants.