THE MODERN MINT BLOG
“Compost-making doesn’t need to be hard work, costs almost nothing, and the only secret ingredient you need is patience.”
Ken Thompson, botanist and author of Compost.
Run by Garden Organic, International Compost Awareness Week aims to help people who don’t compost learn how to do it.
Join a compost group for International Compost Awareness Week.
For a really quick guide on how to compost, here it is:
Take something that can rot. Put it into a pile outside with other materials that have the ability to rot. Leave it there (as Ken Thompson said in the quote above, ‘patience is the secret ingredient!) Eventually, if you leave it long enough, you will have compost.
Not so hard to do, is it?
Why is it fantastic to make compost?
It is great for your garden. Compost is made from the plant material that you take away from the garden in the form of prunings, grass clippings, flowers and leaves.
By recycling them on a compost heap you are turning them from material you don’t want into something that a plant can make use of. It will give plants valuable nutrients to help them grow, help retain moisture and warmth in the ground and will reduce weed growth by covering bare soil, so stopping weeds germinating.
That is why compost is known as ‘black gold’ because it is so precious in the garden. The best gardener will tell you she never has enough!
Three actions you can take to reduce your impact on the world are the following:
- Compost
- Grow vegetables (for which you will need compost!)
- Plant a tree
Notice what is top of the list?
We hope you will support International Compost Awareness Week. If you have more questions about compost and how to do it, there are some fantastic resources out there. Do check out the following links…
More On How To Make Compost
Garden Organic – What Can I Compost?
Modern Mint – Compost = Place Together
Green Action Centre – Why Should I Compost?
Garden Organic – Composting Myths (highly recommended!)
Ken Thompson – Compost
Modern Mint – Seed Sowing Compost
International Compost Awareness week runs until this weekend. If you have further questions on how to compost, please contact Modern Mint and we will be happy to help.
EBTS Boxwood Growers Forum
Through the European Boxwood and Topiary Society I worked with Chris Poole and Sue Mesher, members of the EBTS board, and we set up a Boxwood Growers Forum. This was to discuss how to make sure this wonderful topiary plant stays in the public conscioussness – we know many growers, suppliers and distributors have stopped selling it as the cost of replacing boxwood that has blight, or is nibbled by the boxwood caterpillar, makes it unviable to offer to clients and gardeners. But Boxwood is a phoenix plant, and there are ways to deal with the problems associated with Buxus. …
Modern Topiarist @ Garden Masterclass Poland
My video on Modern Topiary for Garden Masterclass has been translated into Polish, for the keen gardeners (and happy pruners!) of Garedn Masterclass in Poland. Tickets for the first showing and q and a were available here. But it will become available on the Garden Masterclass Poland website at some point in the near future – so if you are a keen clipper and want to know more, but speak Polish and not English, then I suggest you visit the website and get watching. (Of course, if you don’t speak English, you may not be able to read this…. hmmm… …
Topiary Hotline
The European Boxwood & Topiary Society are to run a Topiary Hotline for keen gardeners and people who love to clip. Date is tomorrow, April 16th 2024, and you can get a ticket for the Zoom meeting here – Topiary Hotline. Run by Chris Poole and myself, we set this up as an antidote to the huge amount of questions we have to answer about topiary throughout the summer. The plus is that their is an excitement around topiary and pruning. The problem is we need to help people in a better way… … so we will be giving people …