Black Gold

By Selena Randall

This weekend, I put in some sweat equity in my garden, and was rewarded with a large pile of ‘black gold’ – compost, about a yard of it. What’s more, it was free!

Free, I hear you ask, yes free!

My black gold came from vegetable peelings and trimmings, weeds, leaves (some of which were collected from neighbours yards), grass-clippings, and vegetable plants from the end of the season.

I am not very accomplished at creating compost, and other projects, the weather, back injuries, and time have meant I have dedicated very little time to doing it ‘right’. I haven’t paid much attention to the materials going in, or whether it was dry or wet. I haven’t measured the temperature, and it hasn’t had much turning. In fact over the past 2 years, the pile has had very little attention from me at all.

Despite my ineptitude, the microbes have done their job, and I have this fantastic pile of rich, dark, healthy smelling material to use in my garden.

All it required was space round the back of our garage – we just piled the organic material on, and the microbes just did their thing. We collected all our kitchen waste over winter, in convenient compostable bags, and froze it in a garbage can outside, then transported it to the pile in spring.

Why did we do this?

We like free stuff.

We are too lazy to take our garden waste to the landfill.

It’s easier to pile it up behind our garage than it is to bag it up and leave it at the Kerbside.

And there is a certain pride in having made it myself.

Why don’t you try it?