The Answer Lies In The Soil:

If ever there was a truism, this is the truism of truisms. I h gardened on a variety of soils including soot, grl, clay, sand and loam. Without a doubt, loam is the best for high production tasty vegetable and fruit. question is, can you make soot, grl, clay & sand more like loam and can you make loam bet? answer is undoubtedly YES and the METHOD is ADD COMPOST.

Sometimes you may be able to get well rotted horse manure from a nby stable. I was once lucky enough to get ten cubic yards of four plus y old horse dung and rotted straw. It was as black as the Ace of Spades and very crumbly. I dug it into a cled sandy border which I then planted up. plants absolutely bombed away. Unfortunately I did not keep up the treatm and each y the plants became weaker as the goodness was leached away.

You can become independ of luck and good fortune and make your comt. You can then regularly add your "top up" to your soil, whatever type it is.

first source of comt maial is your garden. Grass cuttings, annual weeds, prunings, autumn les can be collected & recycled. Pernicious weeds should be set to one side and burned.

second source is your kitchen & home. Vegetable waste, old flowers (cut & potted) and shredded news papers can help.

But m important of is METHOD. It has taken me thirty (untutored) ys to discover these "secrets".

first requirem is to control your MIX of potial comt maial between Green & Br. How many of us h piled grass clippings in a heap to be encouraged by ly heat and comting activity only to end with a half rotted & layered sludge?
You need to aim for a mix of maials with about 1/5th being Green and 4/5ths Br.

Green/ Nitrogen

Grass Cuttings
Kitchen Waste
Farm Manure

Br/Carbon

Dead Les
Straw/Wood shavings
Wood Ash/ Newsprint

I s my les in plastic bags to feed into my comt over the following y.

Secondly you need MOISTURE. Your pile should be neither too wet nor too dry. Br maial is often dry and needs to be waed in af mixing. If you take a handful of your mix and squeeze it you want it to b in your hand without a runoff of wa and not being flaky. In rainy periods it can pay to cover your comt to stop it getting sodden

Thirdly you need AERATION. Oxygen is essial as comting is a burning process. You need to turn your heap on a regular basis to ensure this happens. It is sible to achieve temperatures as high as 70 degrees cigrade and 60 degrees should be a minimum peak norm. Having two adjac bins makes this easier as you turn one into the other. It is also useful exercise for your ht!

Fourthly control particle SIZE. Breaking up, cutting d, shredding the potial comt is very helpful. grea the wounding and the smer the particle size, the grea the surface area and the quicker the rotting.

Finy you need VOLUME. more the merrier. Given the above four steps you will find that 2 cubic yards rots bet than 1, 3 cubic yards bet than 2 and so on.

So get out there, get on with it and GOOD COMPOSTING.