Where There’s Muck, There’s Brassicas: A Yorkshire Love Affair with Compost
By Kevin Pilley
I don’t know any green-fingered gardeners. But I know a lot of brown- and black-fingered ones. The kind who really like to get down and dirty, and are not happy unless their hands are wrist-deep in their vegetable patch. Or they’re urinating over their compost heap.
“Normal”, everyday people for whom opening a packet of seeds pales in comparison to the ecstatic pleasure of ripping open a two-litre bag of Westland potting compost or a tub of chicken pellets. Part-time soil biologists and amateur soil ecologists who don’t see dirt or “the ground” as just dirt or “the ground”, but as a complex, mutually supportive biogeochemical, socialist wonderland of micro-organisms, predators, decomposers, macrofauna, and fungi.
People who don’t just see earth – they see soil biota: an amazing, energy-transferring microbial biomass of trophic interactions and a matrix of varying temperatures, moisture levels, and nutrients that, with regular trips back and forth to the BBQ and Homebase, can lead to paradise.
In other words, people who don’t take nematodes for granted and appreciate the work worms do.
“Microbial activity”
People like my wife.
She is a Dunghead. She loves it when the “Free Black Manure” signs appear along the roadside and, packing the boot as if she’s off on a gold rush, she returns with the car weighed down with bulky, well-rotted animal waste to spread on her beds and feed to her crops. She gets high on the smell of ordure. She can’t get enough of it. Although she never abuses it.
For her, there is nothing to beat the smell of slurry in the morning.
My wife can’t live without manure. She is an addict – and will never be a reforming one. She has a serious nitrogen fixation. She makes her own comfrey liquid feed. Some people play golf. Some paint. My wife’s chief passion is encouraging soil microbial activity which promotes the soil’s trace mineral supply, improves plant nutrition, enhances flower blooms, and guarantees a good yield of fruit and veg every year.
“Horticultural hoarder”
My wife doesn’t hug trees. She hugs her Green Johanna compost bin instead. She “does” fish and bone and the occasional line of seaweed. And I’m not embarrassed to tell people that my wife is someone who is interested in putrefaction and fascinated by decomposition. Because I am just the same. I haven’t been clean for years. I have the same humus habit. I’m a leaf mould junkie too. And a bit of a bonemeal fiend. I love the buzz I get from buying it.
I’m an obsessive-compulsive horticultural hoarder. I don’t let a single teabag or kitchen scrap go to waste. Every banana skin is earmarked for my floribundas, to improve their growing medium.
I feel the same way about John Innes. I know what an illness magnesium deficiency can be, and I’ve seen what potassium deficiency can do to a plant.
My wife and I are both mulchheads. We’re hooked on humus. We both like to take a trip down to the kitchen midden. Craving. Enslavement. Call it what you will. We co-finance our compost dependency. We are both Strulch users. And functioning Strulcholics.
“Plants remain happy”
Strulch is the new Baby Bio and Growmore. It’s the latest cool thing for organic people – and the organically certifiable.
A mineralised straw mulch, Strulch is made from renewably sourced milled wheat straw mixed with naturally occurring soil minerals. This ensures that nutrients are released into the soil rather than taken from it – so plants remain happy. Sometimes euphoric.
Lasting up to two years, it reduces weeds by up to 95% by blocking out light and prevents moisture loss by evaporation from the soil. It’s great for pest control and improves soil structure. It can be delivered to your door via Amazon or click-and-collected from garden centres.
We have a dealer. We go to Waitrose.
But if they’re out, there’s always B&Q. Dungheads always find a supplier.
Fertiliser withdrawal – you wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
To purchase visit: crocus.co.uk
