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So. Much. Compost

As we reach the end of the year it's time to look to 2025, which means expanding our growing area and setting up new beds to grow our herbs in. Regenerative farming is a key part of our approach, which means that we don't plough or heavily disturb the soil as we plant out crops. This means that over time our soil should be healthier, support more biodiversity and lock in carbon rather than release it. We also don't use any artificial herbicides, so it's important that we remove all of the unwanted weeds and grass as we establish the new growing areas and we do this by using compost and woodchip.


We use the compost that is a by-product of the Council's garden waste scheme as it acts as a perfect cover material to plant through, so just our herbs can get established. It also means that we're making the most of a local, recycled material - all of the organic matter from the region's garden cuttings and waste are composted down at a custom-facility before we add it to our beds.


Our paths and some of the beds use locally-produced woodchip that is another by-product, this time from local tree works. It's hard work getting it in place but we love that we can use these local materials to grow herbs and sequester carbon into our soil.


As a regenerative farm, using compost or woodchip is a great way of adding organic matter to our soil. It also keeps you in good shape - our deliveries only come a few miles to reach us, but once here we manually make up our beds with 10 tons at a time. Each bed is first lined with a biodegradeable or compostable layer (e.g. cardboard or biofilm) before we use our bed sled to level out and straighten our rows of compost.


I'm still looking forward to the day that we make up a new row and both feel that we've got it exactly straight for the full 40m length - it's not happened yet but this winter we'll be adding another 400m of linear beds to accommodate our expansion so maybe, just maybe, we'll get one spot on before spring...




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