BEST SUPPLIER OF COMPOST - 2017

The point being in this case Amandii is that it is a successful "peat free compost" which according to all accounts there is no such thing.
Nobody pays that for peat added compost as we know.
So is this a breakthrough........?
Note for self........the RHS and Monty Don are peat free.

 

Last year I bought many bags of peat free compost from B&M at £1.49/40l (reduced price). Being organic matter they can't be too bad as soil conditioners I guess. They were all dug into my raised beds. I don't think I will use them in pots or seed trays.

 

Wyevale MPC + John Innes
Last years was lovely this year.... well see for your self

One sieving

One bowl full + sieve full = what i sieved out of one 50L bag of compost

Lots of ?????


After being sieved

 

Put it through your kitchen blender and add it back to the sieved stuff.

 

I had a good deal on them so it's not worth taking them back, £1a bag the lumps are hard bits of fiber so i spreaded it over the garden, they're work in

 

@Jiffy that's what I do with any lumpy bits too

 

I dont require much each year but the council here give compost away for free, you only have to collect it. I get several buckets of it and supplement it with 3 x 25 litre bags of bought stuff.

 

Gosh that's good of your council! Luckily we have a large compost area in the corner of our garden, so only tend to buy when seed sowing as I find its sieves to a finer texture.
Our compost has been excellent this year...our best yet, and its teeming with worms

 

When I used to sieve compost , I used the lumpy bits in the bottom of containers. Just a couple inches in the bottom helped the drainage. I presume when the plant roots got down that far they would feed of them as well ? Fortunately the MPC I use now "Clover" has no lumpy bits, the quality is identical year on year

 

Our local garden centre has Jack's Magic on BOGOF at the moment - so I get two bags (60 litres each) for £6.99. However I find it too fine on its own. It compacts, so I open it up with perlite or alpine grit, and add well rotted horse manure. I have found the quality of the JI composts just too variable. I sometimes mix contents of compost heap with garden soil and then microwave it to get rid of nasties. Works for small pots (though a fairly smelly process!)

 

I use Perlite with the MPC in baskets to give it a more open texture for watering and feeding . Baskets can become very dense and very dry over the season . During high summer I soak some of my baskets in a water filled Trug , for half an hour , to fully wet the compost.
For my containers I normally mix 25% sharp sand into the MPC to keep texture more open .

 

I've just been adding JI #2 to open textured MPC for filling small cell trays to transplant seedlings, because if using it neat it'd dry out in no time killing the seedlings before they get their roots re-established.