We were visited by our guru this afternoon, aka Master Composter Martin Stott who came to cast his sage eye over OxGrow’s heap and give us guidance for the future. First, the good news: the state of our heap is none too bad. Martin had seen far worse, he said, with a knowing shake of the head.
But first things first – the basics of life, our compost needs feeding more. He’s looking a little hungry, despite the best efforts of local OxGrowers who habitually bring down their kitchen waste. We took a long hard look at Alex and Michael’s eating habits over the past few weeks and divined that they have been eating mostly peanuts and swedes. Left-over raw foods are much appreciated by Sir Compost, but need to be chopped up into little bits to aid his digestion process. If he’s having digestive troubles we can also feed him a little something to help it go down – an accelerator like used coffee grounds (up to 10% of the pile) or compost, which we have in good supply at the moment. But like all good diets, compost requires most fundamentally a good mix of different types of foodstuffs: of greens (raw food waste, grass, veg etc) and browns (woody stuff, straw, cardboard, egg boxes etc). A varied diet = good health. Take note.
But the outlook is good. Feed him a bit more, keep a close eye on the green/brown mix, and we’ll have good organic matter in no time. Master Composter will pay us another visit later in the year to check on our progress.
OxGrow 