The Compost Conversation

The answer to the question of whether adding seaweed to our compost will enhance it, is a simple yes. Seaweed is a rich source of nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and phosphate, which are essential for plant growth. It also contains vitamins, amino acids and trace elements like manganese, zinc, copper and boron, which are often…

I was chatting to new YIMBY composter Laura Jade about things that make it through our compost piles virtually unscathed. Laura started composting with her partner Lesley back in June as part of the West End Compost Cluster, a rapidly growing YIMBY area, in West Castlemaine. Laura and Lesley have already composted over 700kg of…

In last week’s conversation we looked at synthetic auxins, a group of persistent herbicides that can have devastating impacts on broad-leafed plants like beans and peas, tomatoes and eggplants and pumpkins and cucumbers, causing stunting, curled leaf tips and in some cases death. Synthetic auxins are coming into our food systems in commercial composts, garden…

‘Synthetic auxins’ are a group of herbicides that have been quietly killing off backyard and market gardens in our region for some time now. ‘Aminopyralid’ is a type of synthetic auxin, but is commonly used as a name for the whole class of these herbicides. I have seen dozens of gardens devastated by synthetic auxins,…

YIMBY composters teamed up with ‘Dig It’ MainFM program and Growing Abundance and took to the streets in the Castlemaine Show Parade last week to make some noise! These three down-to-earth institutions in Mount Alexander Shire highlight the fun and serious business of composting and gardening. By all accounts, much fun was had in the…

Occasionally we get a distressed call at YIMBY informing us someone has fruit fly in their compost…Common names can be a bit misleading, and it turns out quite a few flying insects get the name ‘fruit fly’. Although Queensland ‘fruit fly’ (Bactrocera tryoni) is a serious agricultural pest, the fly that people are seeing in…

‘Gallus gallus’, the red junglefowl, once roamed wild in the forests of South Asia, but has, through long years of selective breeding, become quite a different creature. Despite this, ‘chooks’ – as we like to call them in Australia – still love to scratch and forage for their food, roll in the dust out in…

This week the Compost Conversation has enlisted the help of local vet and large animal specialist, Dr Paul O’Connor, to better understand horse health and what that means for our compost. Paul grew up on a farm, has a long-term affinity with large farm animals and is a partner at Kangaroo Flat Vet Clinic. In…

Animal manures can be fantastic additions to our compost recipe, in fact their use pre-dates deliberate compost making in the Western tradition. In traditional English and European agriculture, animal manures, rather than compost, were the main form for returning fertility to the soil. Farms almost always included a diversity of animals; horses, ‘house’ cows or…

Back in the early 20th century, Sir Albert Howard (often called the father of modern organic agriculture) brought the Indore method of hot composting from the farms of India and China to a ‘western’ audience. Hot composting, as we now practise it, is a direct descendant of that work. Howard was born in Shropshire, England,…

Can I put wood ash from my fire in the compost? It’s a question we are often asked here at YIMBY. As with anything involving living systems, the answer is never an easy ‘yes’ or ‘no’. So, let’s have a little dive into ash and its potential uses. Ash is the non-combustible residue that is…