Don't Throw Autumn Away — Turn Garden Waste Into Next Year's Free Fertiliser
Don’t Throw Autumn Away — Turn Garden Waste Into Next Year’s Free Fertiliser Every autumn we throw away material in one bin—and buy something remarkably similar in a plastic bag six months later. Leaves, lawn mowings, faded flowers and hedge trimmings leave the garden. Then spring arrives, and we visit the garden centre for bags of compost, mulch and soil improver. There are good reasons to buy specialist growing materials. But some of what we purchase could be made from material already growing outside our back door. Autumn offers an opportunity to keep that value at home. With a compost bin, a few reused sacks and a little sorting, much of the seasonal clear-up can become a resource for future gardening. There is one qualification to the promise of “free fertiliser”: garden compost, leaf mould and woodchip do different jobs. Understanding those differences makes them far more useful. Feed the Soil—and Understand What You Are Making “Compost” can mean several things on a garden-centr...
