Compost

Lots of it underneath the shade of the mulberry tree, but a surprising amount gets used up filling the veggie tyre garden, now up to nearly 100 tyres.

Two areas, side by side. The original, on the right, was set up as part of the vibracrete wall and has a volume of perhaps 2 m^3. The extension on the left was set up many years later.

 It's cheaper to use stacked concrete blocks than to make enclosures out of timber. The volume of the extension is quite a bit less than the vibracrete structure.

The lower layers here are very old, so the compost is ready to use, even though there's a lot of pebbles and other rubbish to pick out of it once it's in place in the garden. There's a big square of framed netting to sieve through if required, but I seldom bother,

This needs to be chopped up a bit as it gets added to, but will be ready in a couple of months after getting turned once or twice.I'm going to have lots of little Leonotis plants springing up...

I've never managed to do compost the textbook way, where everything gets hot and quickly decomposes and kills any seeds. But in the end, given enough time, everything seems to work out. The trick seems to be to get the red wrigglers going in the pile.

All my tyres and black plastic bags are filled with straight compost. Downside is there's lots of weed seeds that come up, but they're fairly easy to control if you're paying attention. The one weed that's sometimes welcome is the Cape Gooseberry - once you have a plant in your garden, it's going to come up everywhere.

The compost set out into the containers continues decomposing as the plants grow in it, and the ground level slowly falls. Once a year or so it gets topped up. Moisture retention in the tyres is pretty good.

Update 2015/11/01: