Down To Earth

The shortening days are a good time to develop new garden habits. Sue Bradley builds a compost heap and gets her bulbs in

- Sue Bradley

A dark, rich, crumbly compost is a wonderful thing. There’s something magical about a process that transforms a diverse assortment of garden and kitchen detritus, whether it’s banana skins, hedge trimmings, lawn cuttings or potato peelings, into a substance that introduces extra nutrients for plants, improves the structure of the soil and feeds the worms.

Autumn, a time when our thoughts turn to tidying up the garden, is the perfect season to start a compost habit, which will hopefully go on to become part of a daily or weekly routine.

There are lots of different ways to make compost: some swear by dalek-shaped plastic bins, while others are devotees of joining together wooden pallets to contain their rotting vegetation or simply piling everything into a heap and letting nature do the rest.