Tag Archives: Mark and Abbie Jury

Make your own compost hot mix, step-by-step (part two of three)

Compost part one, saw us looking at low tech, low input ways of dealing with green waste. Here we look at how to make hot compost which sterilises the mix.

1) Compost needs five ingredients:
a) nitrogen
b) carbon
c) oxygen
d) water
e) microbes.
You need to actively manage the process with a hot compost mix. The common failing of the black plastic drum as a compost bin is the lack of carbon and the lack of oxygen which means you get a soggy, sludgy mess. Carbon comes from dry, woody material – twigs (cut up small), newspaper (needs to be shredded or scrunched up), wood chips, sawdust (not tanalised), wood ash, dried leaves. As we make a lot of compost, we get much of our carbon content from the mulcher or wood chipper. Carbon content should comprise close to half the total volume of your compost and, as it is often bulkier, it creates air spaces in the mix.

2) The other half, or a little more than half, of your compost ingredients comes from the green waste (which is the nitrogen component). This includes all green leafy waste, animal manure, food scraps and lawn clippings. Compost microbes will come in with the grass clippings, or you can add some of your old compost mix (the old twiggy bits can go through again).

3) We simply pile it all in a heap until we get enough to work with. Wooden compost bins are a tidy option for the small garden. You need three – the first to accumulate the waste, the second to make it in and the third for compost which is ready to use. Make sure that you can remove all the boards from at least one side to make it easy to move the compost through the bin cycle. Each bin needs to be around a cubic metre at the least. A ring of chicken netting is the low tech method of keeping your growing compost pile contained and is probably easier to work with though less tidy.

4) When you have sufficient volume to work with, adding nitrogen in the form of fresh grass clippings, fresh animal manure, urea or blood and bone will give your compost a kick start to generate heat. Mix it all up. When done by hand, the garden fork is the usual tool to mix. We do the mixing with a baby tractor which is admittedly easier but a little excessive for small town gardens. Cover the heap from here on.

5) The heat should reach between 55 and 75 degrees Celsius within a few days. Turn the heap again – sides to middle – to get the whole lot working. You can see the clouds of steam pouring out of our heap which indicates heat. There will be no worms or insect life in hot compost mix. The heat should also kill off weed seeds and undesirable pathogens. Ideally, turn a third time a few weeks later.

6) Cover and leave the compost to cure for a couple of months or longer. The compost will now cool down and it should be light, friable (almost fluffy), clean and have no offensive odour. In our high rainfall climate, we recommend covering with something reasonably waterproof to prevent the goodness from being leached out. We use old weed mat weighted down at the base. You can also use heavy duty black polythene. Boards or corrugated iron are common on a tidy compost bin structure.

Part three – making cold compost mix.

A laissez-faire approach to summer care for apple trees

Step by step instructions for pruning apple trees in winter are available here.

1) Apple trees can survive and continue to crop despite total neglect, but you will get much better results if you give them some attention. This huge old Granny Smith apple tree has not been touched for many, many years and shows why it is better to start with grafted apples on dwarf root stock. This tree is destined to be cut out in favour of our smaller trees which are easier to care for.

2) Apple trees are currently sporting their new growth which shows as long leafy whips. It is this growth which will give replacement fruiting spurs next summer. Ideally, you should be replacing all fruiting spurs on a two to four year cycle – cutting out old clusters and allowing fresh ones to take their place.

3) Trim the long whips back to about half their length to encourage the fruiting spurs to develop. Surplus whips can be cut right back to a bunch of fruit. You want to keep the tree open and uncluttered to allow the fruit to ripen well.

4) If your apples are looking too bunched up, it is best to thin out the fruit so that those that remain will be better quality. The tree will drop some surplus fruit before it is ripe, but thinning ensures that you keep the best specimens and stops the weight from breaking branches. Cut off very small or deformed fruit, reducing bunches to between two and four fruit. Some people recommend taking out the centre apple from a bunch to give those around it room to develop fully.

5) Codling moth is the single biggest problem and the caterpillars can take out an entire crop if left unchecked. They burrow into the apple, leaving nasty black tunnels. It is too late this season to try organic controls (pheromone traps and collars on the trunk of the tree). You need to start earlier in spring. We are resorting to insecticide spray this year to try and break the cycle. December to February are the times for spraying. It is recommended that it be done fortnightly but we will only do it once or twice.

6) We do not carry out a rigorous spray programme so our trees show black spot, mildew, leaf curl and various other afflictions but we still get crops of apples. Traditional practice is to spray with both insecticide and fungicide every 10 to 14 days after the blossom petals have dropped until harvest – ask at your local garden centre for appropriate sprays. Spraying will give heavier crops of more attractive fruit but we are willing to trade that off by having additional trees and not spraying much at all. The leaf curl shown here is caused by a tiny orange midge and is easily dealt with by cutting off the tips of the branches and burning the leaves.

Making a bamboo support or obelisk for climbing plants, step-by-step with Abbie and Mark Jury

1) If you have access to a stand of giant bamboo, making an obelisk or stylish tepee to act as a frame for climbers such as clematis or runner beans is not difficult. With bamboo’s often wayward habits, owners of such stands may be willing to part with a stem or two. It needs to be freshly cut to split easily.

2) Cut to the required length – two to two and a half metres is about right. Tie a wire about 25cm from the top, just below a node, to prevent the length from splitting right to the end. Use pliers to secure the wire tightly and trim it off neatly.

3) Using a hammer and an old knife as a cutter-wedge, make a cut exactly in the centre of the bottom of the pole. Tapping on alternate sides, work the split up to just below the wire. The first cut is the most difficult but once started, you can pull apart the two sides. With bamboo, lift up one side and start splitting. Then turn it over and split from the other side, alternating so that it splits evenly. If you keep lifting from one side only, that side will keep getting narrower.

4) Repeat the previous step four times in total, so you have eight separate sections. Our sections are about 3cm wide. The difficult part is splitting the nodes on the length of bamboo which can take some strength.

5)Use flexible ties such as grape vine, wisteria or willow to weave between the struts at intervals. Inserting a bucket will hold the shape while you do this, along with a temporary tie of baling twine. It is the ties that will keep the splayed shaped and give the climbing plant something to cling to.

6) The tepee will need to be secured to stop it blowing over. We tie the bases to simple bamboo stakes in the ground. You could use longer lasting pegs but we usually bring our teepees under cover in winter to prolong their life expectancy so old bamboo stakes as pegs are all we need to last for eight months.

Propagating cordylines: step-by step guide

1) Most cordylines or cabbage trees grow a solid, fleshy tap root below the soil and it is easy to increase plants from sections of these roots, commonly called toes. This particular cordyline is an Australian species, stricta, but it shows similar structure below ground to our most common NZ cordyline which is confusingly named Cordyline australis.

2) Taking the toes off this cordyline will reduce the size of the root mass and allow me to replant it back to the same pot with fresh mix and fertiliser. Container plants are best repotted annually if possible and will generally deteriorate badly if you leave them any longer than three years without repotting.

3) Shake off the mix. Wash it off if necessary so you can see what is there. The same steps apply if you are lifting a cordyline out of the garden. We have never tried taking the toes off a large, established plant while leaving it in the ground although you can presumably do it without killing the plant because Maori used to harvest the toes as kauru – a form of starch similar to root vegetables. Try digging in from one side of the plant only if you plan to try this.

4) Because the toes can be very tough, a sharp spade or saw may be needed to cut the lower section off. We cut around 15cm off the bottom of the central root system of the plant.

5) If you wash the cut section, you are better able to see what you are doing. Cut the roots off the toes. They will die back anyway. If you want plenty of plants, cut the biggest toes into sections but don’t go much smaller than about 3cm in length.

6) Pot the toes fairly close to the surface, either flat or on end (cut side up on the whole toes because that is the top) in seed raising mix (low nutrient potting mix). Do not let them get too wet or they may rot. Within a few months, they will be sprouting afresh as shown on this toe of Cordyline Red Fountain.

Outdoor Classroom: Moving large plants, a step-by-step guide

1) This tree aloe (Aloe thraskii) is in the wrong place and has been for at least fifteen years. Large plants can be moved, but this involves taking a large enough root ball to support the top. It is best carried out between late autumn and early spring so that the plant has a chance to settle in and put out new roots before summer.

2) A large trench needs to be dug out, wide enough for you to stand in. This trench is around 60cm deep. Dig it with straight sides to start with. It allows you to look at the plant’s roots and to get access right underneath the plant. Keep it well out from the plant because you can make the root ball smaller but you can’t make it larger again.
3) Standing inside the trench, start digging to excavate right underneath the plant. We wanted to keep the root ball relatively whole to act as an anchor because this plant is very top heavy. Gradually reduce the size of the clump, removing excess dirt, keeping a close eye on the root system. If it has a huge root system, you don’t want to be cutting into it too much. If it has a smaller root system, you can reduce it to a size that is more easily managed. We were surprised at how small the root system was on this plant and they were mainly on the surface.
4) Get some heavy plastic, sacking or old weedmat underneath the plant. Do this by rocking the plant to one side and getting the wrapping right underneath it. This usually requires more than one person. Do not let the roots dry out at any stage. With very big plants, the plant can be raised out of the hole by tilting it to one side and backfilling that side. Then rock the plant back and put dirt in on the other side. Repeat the process until you have raised the plant to the level where you can lever it out of the hole more easily. We moved this plant on the front bucket of our baby tractor. You may need to do it by trailer.
5) In this process, we had an accident and the heavy top was knocked out so we were forced to cut the the poor aloe back but there is no reason why it should not recover. Get the planting level as close as possible to where was. Measure the depth of the root ball and the depth of the hole before planting by placing a board across the hole and measuring from that. Put the stake or stakes in before the plant so that you do not cause more damage to the roots by driving the stakes through them later. We have gone for one very strong stake and a flexible tie.
6) Two years later and the plant is recovering well although the foliage has yet to reach its former spread. It should now be safe to remove the stake.