Composting

COMPOST :Natures ultimate recycling

Want to make your plants thrive and help the planet at the same time?? Then composting is the way to go.  

It is the ultimate in recycling-- nature’s way of breaking down food and garden waste into a crumbly pile full of goodness. Once added back into our gardens it creates a rich, friable soil that provides loads of nutrients and micro-organisms for healthy growth of our plants, trees and veges. It helps to retain moisture in the soil, can improve aeration in cloggy soils and will suppress weeds when added as a layer of mulch. Your plants will love it!!

Things you will need

-A container to compost in. All sorts of options here, ranging from a dedicated composting bin or tumbler purchased from a store, to building your own using pallets or recycled wood. Have a look online for some creative options, limited only by imagination (and materials, budget and skill of course!)

-Sunny position in the garden. Composting requires some heat from the sun to keep the process going. A cold, wet heap will take much longer to break down. Make sure there is easy access to put material into, turn the heap if you need and of course to get the finished compost out.

-Composting material. An ideal compost pile is made by building up layers of brown (dry) material such as dry leaves, twigs, cardboard, newspaper, and green (fresh) material such as fruit and vege scraps, lawn clippings, coffee grounds, egg shells and teabags.

Start with a layer of sticks on the ground, and if you have some finished compost then add a few handfuls to help get the process started. Then simply add layers of green and brown material until the bin is full. Ideally add more brown material than green. This allows air within the layers, which helps breakdown the material. The compost pile can get stinky if too much green is added.

You can also add in pet fur or fleece, untreated sawdust or wood shavings, and chopped up seaweed. Don’t forget those autumn leaves that gather in the local park, they are a great addition to compost.

Avoid adding meat, bones, or dairy products, as these will attract pests.

Make sure it is kept damp, and you can turn the pile from time to time if you like. This will speed up the decomposition.

Your compost should be ready to use within a few months.

It is best dug into the garden or added around the dripline of your trees and shrubs. Avoid piling it up against the trunks of trees and shrubs as it will risk rotting them.

Your plants and the planet will love you for it!!

Planting in coastal areas

Soils in coastal areas are variable. They are more likely to be sandy light soils, but can also be clay. An advantage of being near the coast is the abundance of seaweed to help improve poor soils.

The best time to plant is in autumn to capture as much of the winter rain as possible so plants are established before summer.

We recommend that you soak the plant in a bucket of water before planting. Make sure the root ball is loose. Planting into a hole twice as wide and deep as the root ball is ideal if possible. Add sheep pellets to the base of the planting hole. Compost added to the soil mix will also help improve its structure and moisture-retaining properties. Water well.

Mulching around coastal plants is ideal. Best times of the year to add mulch around your plants is in late winter or early spring and again in mid-summer. Mulching keeps weeds down, retains soil moisture and improves the soil structure.

For plants that need regular watering over summer, this is best done as deep watering once a week as it is more effective than light watering every day.

Maintaining ground covers

A ground cover plant is typically a plant that grows not much higher than 40cm in height. It can certainly help reduce the amounts of weeds you have in your garden as they can provide a thick ground cover, which can also provides a living mulch for your garden. That has to be a great defence over dry summer months.

Here at Fabflora we have a number of ground cover plants, with certainly some favourites we would recommend you try.

Baby tears have become a very popular ground cover plant, that can also can be successfully planted in pots. Just remember they do like a misty spray.

A gorgeous ground cover for part shade would have to be the liriope. A particular favourite is the white-flowering variety as it is a good complement to other plants. This plant is a tough evergreen that also makes a great edging plant for pathways and driveways. It is drought tolerant and blooms in summer with either purple or white flowers.

The coprosmas are one of our hardiest native ground covers. The many varieties include those that will scramble over banks and difficult to reach areas, along with those more suitable for home gardens.

Check out our range of ground cover plants in our shop.