We decided to test out Monty Don’s composting method which we watched on Gardener’s World. We then used some of the compost to plant four self-seeding Hawthorn trees. Tim as usual is full of encouragement and making me laugh…and suffered a demotion…..!
one of the latest gardeners world said to try two things with your compost heat one dig in the middle and there’ll be uh some good quality compost so I think there is in ours if you move the camera around you can see H there i think in here there’s probably some good stuff to be had and then the second trick was to mow stuff before it goes on for the compost heat so we have before us our ancient prehistoric Aldi mower we got two of these we had this one probably eight nine years and it uh has done a brilliant job for us but eventually the self-propelion propulsion mechanism broke uh but it will be perfect for mowing compost so we’ll give it a go oh gosh does look quite nice looks all right doesn’t it can you [Music] manage heat heat [Music] so this is uh the end result of the first tip from Monty which was dig out the heart of your compost heap so here you go have a look at that heap there that’s what seven eight barrows of of gorgeous potting compost for us to uh use when we get use when we get our next lot of little saplings in cuz we get them in and we leave them about a year before we plant them out in the wild don’t we so this will be perfect for them so that’s uh that was tip number one so if you look over here you’ll see the great big trench that we just dug and that’s where that compost came from over here um and so the next step is to fill it back in uh so what we’re going to do first of all is put in a bit of this more recent green kitchen waste and then behind us here we’ve got the results of Monty’s second tip which is to lawn mower your bits before you put them into the compost heap so this is a load of old grass from actually from last year when we had an overgrown meadow we had to strim uh and we’ve just mowed it now really fine and that will go on top of the the the green grass so of the green veg so let’s see what happens so what we’ve got here is a mix of some ash from the log burner in the house or one of the log burners in the house and then a load of green waste from the kitchen that we’re just trying to bring into the pile want that that we do need that bit plastic there which we’ll put in the bin good okay and what we’ll then do going forwards now is we will fill this with this will be the contemporary trench now that we’ll fill with more kitchen waste and green stuff um and then in a week or two’s time we’ll dig out this bit and do the same procedure again so this is the barrow of of mowed compost bits now that we’re just going to put into the trench like so and what I will do is I’ll jump in there and spread it out a bit excuse me darling thank you right and that will just bed down but actually mowing it h has really compressed it hasn’t it in terms of packing it nicely we don’t want to pack it too much because we do want a bit of air and water to get through it so we’ve got more to um got a bit more to mow as well that look all right okie do right okay so we’ve got three selfs setting hawthorns here that are in the wrong place over the delphiniums um so I’m going to dig them out and we’re going to use our newly discovered compost to them up there’s one from um I think the dolphin has a loopin in there there’s Nigella as well hell there’s loads of Nigella flour is it corn flour or Nigella yeah it’s Nigella but we’ve also got cornflour okay this could be more of a whopper you might need to go around them a bit put you back into have any garden left after you dug that one okay got a good root network hopefully hoping for a bit of a soil foil around there but never mind there’s a third one oh gosh okay pop that down there there’s four then in total isn’t it if there a small one no that’s good i think the third one okie do one from the roots yeah popping down there and then where was the fourth one yeah over here a bit wasn’t it yeah there we go do you want the T for that darling won’t take too much effort to get out that one will it yeah that’s it you got it there it comes head gardener’s got some help someone pushing the wheelbarrow for her what do you mean the head gardener you mean the underguard’s carrying the camera the head gardener’s pushing the barrerow i was aware of my demotion i am a bit restructured darling right yes say nothing right so where are we going Tim going to go to the compost heap ah look at this we got a mole hill we’ve got few no right i have to get the mole catcher in right going to the compost heat where we’re going to use some of the compost we rescued from the pile to pot these on this is this stuff we dug out about a week ago in fact yes but it is a week ago lovely really nice homemade compost can’t beat it lovely on toast okay so um got a reasonable size pot it’ll grow quite nicely over the next few months into this one so as the under gardener I’ve been demoted to not being able to have the skill to pot up i’m just operating the camera now everyone oh dear that’s a bit dodgy is it dear me so I’m just pressing down or jealous or anything i’m just pressing down to make sure there’s uh no way of pockets around it give it some well woman push it give one get in there just leaving enough so that when we when this the sub gardener waters it Yes it doesn’t splash out so to my Am I sufficiently skilled as the undergard to to I’m I’m trusted enough to water am I okay next one uh next it’s painful to watch a little bit of a face got to get in the act go on sorry darling look at that okay perfect number two number two getting quicker at this now well the one that we we tried it’s interesting though that’s the first time we’ve had um three self seeders in all the years we’ve been here yeah push that down yeah yes and obviously the hawthornne’s quite good at seeding itself isn’t it well it does in the big field yeah it does yeah but we’ve known we’ve never seen it no but I suppose the back of the cut flower where we found them is actually very close to one of the big hedges isn’t it excellent right and now we’ve got number four the big E try that in there yeah just trying to free up a bit of There we go i think that’d be okay do you want Do you want me Do you want me to fit Would you like me to fill it while you hold it there just Just give it a bit of a up and down up and down that’s it here senior assistant deputy underhead whatever understudy underscored under underrated underpaid and underappreciated gardener it has some uses right right look at that give them a water monty Donna be pleased to see that one well let’s get rid of that in the tree nursery right okay am I watering them now then i think it’s easier if we water them in the tree nursery and then they’re not so heavy to lift and Right transfer all joking apart that compost’s pretty good isn’t it it looks good yeah yeah it’s all free as well if you discount the hundreds of hours it’s taken to get the stuff to the peak keep it mixed up and then to dig it out again but other than that Yeah after you thank you so this is our tree nursery so all the trees you can see here there’s a whole load of horse chestnuts yeah these are all horse chestnuts some courtesy of the squirrel that we found planted around the fish patch actually yeah then there’s what a load of ash next to it these are ash oh excuse me these are all self setters and there’s a little sycamore right at the back isn’t there yeah up here plus there’s three or Yeah three um weeping willows coming yes they do really well we weren’t sure whether the weeping willow would work in the same way as the the weevy willow and it does that’s brilliant yeah it has lift up really cheaply no roots yet but I didn’t really expect it it won’t be we’ll we’ll plant those out this autumn probably h won’t those three cuz we got a massive weeping willow but yeah we can plant those three out this autumn or maybe even late earlier than that we’ll see how they do there we go right let’s get some water right right a cup of tea time welld deserved we’ve had a busy uh busy time actually so what we’ve been up to H well we watched Monty Dunn and were particularly taken with his composting tip so we gave it a try and it was remarkably easy well you did the heavy lifting bit but good results wasn’t it yeah i was really impressed it worked yeah well first tip was dig out the the heart of the compost heap so we did and um yeah we got seven barrows of really nice potting compost um uh and actually there’s a load more to come isn’t there cuz that was only about a third of the pile actually so that was good and then what did we do uh and then we we filled it back in um but with uh having first mowed with our lawn mower some of the the hay and some of the bits that were mowable so it really topped it finer so that will literally compost down quicker yeah um takes up less space doesn’t it as well really compresses it down so yeah we’ll see um Yeah and then um we used the compost a bit didn’t we yes we found a couple of um selfseeding horse in the cut flower patch so um I dug them up uh under a hail of comments um helpful comments I should add um well the only thing that happened to me was I got demoted from head gardener to underguard i’m still smarting from that um I’m going to go on strike I think um but we got four didn’t we actually four little hawthorns so yeah they’ll grow on really well so um they’re now in our tree nursery with all the horse chestnuts and sycamore and ash um so we’ll grow the horse on for a year well we might see what they’re like in the autumn and if they’re showing some strong roots we’ll we’ll we will plant them somewhere better because they have lovely blossom in the spring really nice um we got a couple of massive hawthornne hedges up the side of the field haven’t we which is where these little babs are coming from but yeah brilliant yeah i mean those horsehorns are about 20 plus years old oh easy yeah yeah yeah but as you say when they blossom it’s just amazing yeah yeah so um so thank you Monty Don yeah really good yeah that was a real success for us yeah really good tips