Green ways of boosting soil

Expert praises homemade compost and green waste

- Ruth Hayes

AS the peat-free debate rumbles on, many gardeners are looking for ways of improving their soil and raising plants in a planet-friendly ways.

AG spoke to Dr Anton Rosenfeld, the knowledge officer at the horticultural charity Garden Organic who is an authority on how to make your own peatfree compost and how to successfully grow different plants in peat-free soil including watering and feeding regimes.

He agrees that many gardeners have neither the space nor capacity to make enough of their own compost to enrich all their garden, but can offer solutions to the ‘peat-free compost gap’.

“Homemade compost is the ideal, and the more you can make on site the better,” he said, “because it is made where you want to use it so there are no ‘compost miles’ involved transporting it to your house.

“Your next best bet is green waste, the garden waste collected from the curb and often sold by local authorities at their recycling centre.

“This will have been composted to a high temperature so weed seeds shouldn’t be a problem, as they can be with homemade compost.”

He added that green waste compost has to meet the PAS100 benchmark, set by the British Standards Institution to make sure the product is fit for purpose.

Leaf mould and compost enrich soil