Gardening without buying compost

[veggiechicken]

Soiless compost!

I found various recipes for Soil less compost online so I've made my own version out of stuff I had lying around.
The basic recipe seemed to be equal parts of
Peat moss or coir
Perlite or vermiculite
Sand
and some bonemeal or lime.

My version was
Half a block of coir which made 5 litres (50p)
5 litres of vermiculite (£1)
5 litres of builders sand (in the garage)
a mushroom punnet of woodash from the stove.

The finished product!!



I filled 2 sets of modules, one with this mix and the other with the Levingtons that I've been using this year. Sowed 2 saved Borlotti beans in each module. These beans had almost 100% germination when sown a few weeks ago.




Gave each tray a plastic pot of water and we'll see what happens next!

[toomanytommytoes]

Since you used coir you probably didn't need to add wood ash. Lime is only required to raise the pH of the mix if you use peat, since it is acidic. Personally I would probably add more coir. Also not many nutrients in there so you may have to feed if the seedlings are kept in there long enough.

EDIT: Wood ash apparently has an NPK of 0-1-3 so perhaps that may be sufficient if the beans can start making their own N quickly enough.

[veggiechicken]

I'm not worried about the lack of nutrients for beans as they have their own supply. Once they're up, they'll be planted out and will have to fend for themselves.
The Soilless potting compost mixes include some sort of feed that'll be my next experiment.

[cwmmawr]

I buy my compost now for next year
The supermarkets are heavily reducing around this time of year they assume that most people have bought their compost for the year and they don't want pallets of the stuff hanging around
I find it's virtually buy one get one free on the prices that they were a few weeks ago

[Cadalot]

How do make acidic compost?? I never knew this was possible.

I have apple trees that produce such acidic cooking apples that they make your hands black when you peel them and all the apples end up being composed in the acidic Daleks. The acid in the apples kills off plants so that the apple seeds have a chance or taking hold before anything else as the competition is wiped out by the decaying apple.

[Snadger]

Ive had a productive couple of hours sorting out some home made compost.
Have been turning and reorganising the daleks. I'm trying to be more organised in the was I'm composting as it's been a rather ad hoc affair before.
Anyway I turned one dalek and shuffled a load of stuff around and came away with 4 animal feed bags of this stuff (suitably sieved to get the big lumps of uncomposted browns out).

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Well done Jimmy, that looks to be really good stuff.

[burnie]

I've only bought 4 bags of mpc, though it's pretty much all gone and 3 bags of farmyard manure then what's in my big dalek. I do use FB&B as well.

[Jimny14]

Cheers snadger, it feels lovely, and doesn't even stick together like my rather clay soil. At this rate and adding plenty of this to my raised bed (2*3.5m) as often as I can ill have lovely friable loam in hhhmmmm another 20 years or so.

[chillithyme]

I have to confess, I went out and bought some mpc today, 300 litres, plus 4 extra large grow bags which I bought earlier in the season, lets see how long it lasts!

Bulk up composters with horse manure. I do have a stables that are not too far away, but others who have collected free manure from there have found it to not be of great quality, so it put me off from collecting it. In an ideal world I would collect for free or have delivered chemical free well rotted horse manure. Apparently Alpaca manure can be used straight away and doesn't burn plants, I've never used it myself.

[veggiechicken]

There's a Livery stables near my house and I've picked up manure from them in previous years. Even had a tractor trailer load delivered once.
I'm not having any more though - as they buy in hay and straw and I doubt that they'll know how its been grown. I've never seen them spraying their own fields but they're grazed down, not cut for hay.
Manure has been the gardener's standby for generations. Now, its been ruined by a chemical company.

[chillithyme]

I agree, its such a shame. When I got my plot of land it had been unused for a very long time, so hopefully its got a minimum amount of chemicals in the ground. I like growing organic, buts it's difficult as I don't really know whats in the compost that I buy in, so inadvertently I could introduce things which I would rather not have in the ground.
Too many people have had tomatoes plant leaves curling from chemical residue when using shop bought mpc. Very annoying, makes you wonder what sterilisation actually gets rid of, clearly not chemicals from hay consumed by horses.

[toomanytommytoes]

On the subject of worm castings, they are great for seed starting. Apparently they can protect seedlings from damping off. I mix them with coir and vermiculite. If you don't generate enough kitchen waste, perhaps you could feed them with something from the garden? They will eat pretty much any decaying organic material.

[Dalrimple]

talking about manure iv'e had a load of it over the last 2 days and its cost me £146 to get rid of it off my computer and I lost all my settings! so i'm back on here with my old log in name !

[rary]

I usually buy two 80 litre bags, around 9 euros apiece. I'm not sure that sand would work out cheaper, but I'm intrigued, Rary: do you sow seeds directly into sand? Or do you add MPC or homemade compost to it?

I have sowed some seeds directly into course sand, some into a mix of sand and vermicompost (worm compost) and some into my usual compost mix of MPC, course sand and vermiculite, I will let you know how each perform, I can buy 180 lts of MPC for £10. a 25kg bag of course sand is about £2. granted not the same voluum, but its great for rooting cuttings, I think I will be trying to avoid buying MPC, in future I will go with a soil sand mix or home made compost and sand, as, as I had posted earlier in the year I had some trays of marigold which didn't show, and after seeing a neighbour dumping his grass cuttings which was after he had put on some weed and feed into the council recycle bin, which could explain why I had problems, as I am sure he won't be the only one doing it and when you see some of the rubbish that's in some peat free compost it must come frome the same type of source

[Snoop Puss]

^Is this the mixture you're using in your soil blocker?