Make you own amazing seedling potting compost

It's compost Django headache because I haven't basically I haven't got enough storage bins. In the next month I'll be gathering loads of leaves to make leaf mold for the year after. I haven't got enough storage bins to do that so I'm essentially going to have to empty this bin at the moment. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this through the big sieve which anything that doesn't go through the sieve will be put onto a bed as compost and that will be lumps of leaves like this which although they're not 100% broken down you can see that when you put them in your hand they just turn to dust so that will go onto the beds everything else is more or less decomposed and that will be put into a tum builders bag on the front where it can continue to break down now until let's say February or March next year when I actually come to use it. Now this is the absolute best seedling or potting mixture you can get use there because it's packed full of microbes and fungi bacteria all kinds of really beneficial thing for your seedlings and your young plants. There should be very little weed seed in it because it's basically just leaves that have broken down so you're not going to get a massive influx of leaves from it when you consider that good seedling and potting compost now is costing I've seen it up to 16 18 pounds a bag there's going to be six or seven eight ten bags of compost in here so you can see the savings you make but it's not about the savings for me it's giving my plants the best start my seedlings the best start. By the way there's three sieves I'm going to use this is the first course sieve that will get all these big lumps out and any sticks that are in here the second sieve will take out any of the smaller pieces and further more any more unbroken leaves and that sieve will be for the potting on mixture I will then put a batch of it through an even finer sieve about an eight millimeter sieve and that will be the mixture I probably need two bags for seedlings maybe three to four bags for potting on mixture so six bags in total will easily get that from here the seedling mixture will have 10% worm castings in it just worm castings and leaf mold the potting on mixture will have 20% compost my homemade compost and 80% leaf mold and that is it the potting on mixture will probably also have a couple of handfuls of volcanic rock dust put in it as well just to add some minerals to it so I've got to start this process off now I'll show you the other two sievings but first of all I've got to get all this out of this bin and into the tum bag and I'm just going to use the big mesh I'll just show you one of them right so there's a couple of forkfuls in there and this just takes this just helps take out any branching materials now you can see these some of these bits of leaves are still kind of intact but like I say once you run them through your hand they just fall apart it's also this is the best time to take out any bits of rubbish like that silver paper any little bits of plastic any thicker branches things like that can come out there'll actually be very little left in the sieve once this has run through and that's it things like that and that that goes into the barrow now and that goes straight onto one of the beds and I'll carry on guys I'll get these I'll get this bin emptied and then I will show you the next sievings right that is three sieves three sievels run into the barrow it's going to be loads and loads of compost here guys that's uh that's at least two to three bags of compost there as I say this is still quite lumpy really for mixture but it's going to go through two more sieves yet and ideally I would have left it in that bin just to break down until February like I said it gives it gives it another four months of decomposition but it'll just have to do it in this bag instead but I think doing this now into this bag it it puts a big influx of oxygen into this mixture which has sunk down over the last sort of 11 months so that extra oxygen will help the fungi break down these leaves now let's do another I'll actually show you the way I stack these leaves up in that bin because it really does speed up the process of breaking down the leaves I'll show you that in a sec guys when when I've got the rest of this in the bag I've finished for sieving my compost I've finished sieving for actual compost because there's uh there's six wheelbarrows full there which will equate to about 12 bags maybe a bit more I'm not going to use that as is that's going to go through the 12 mil sieve next so I'll probably lose another barrow full of material from that sieving so I've got actually going to have five barrows in there and this barrow here is the material that didn't go through the big sieve so that's six barrows it's not quite fill that wheelbarrow so it probably was going to be six it's probably going to be seven to eight sieved barrowfuls to fill up that barrel so that's like a seven to eight loss now I've put some more of the material in here same material just so as I know how much of that I'm going to lose when I sieve it albeit in four months when arguably it's going to be broken down a little bit more so let's see what's left in this sieve right well it's yeah it's certainly not 50% that's for sure so what do you think maybe 20% I'm going to lose again when I sieve that bag full so yeah there's probably still going to be five and a half barrow full of material there now if you notice there's more wood in this overall that's really nice stuff now I will go and get the next sieve that will be used as a potting mixture I'll go and get the next sieve to show you what will make the seedling mixture so this material has gone through the 12 millimeter sieve and that will be used as a potting mix there's two reasons why I've stopped taking material out this bin now one reason is that I've got enough the second reason is the stuff at the bottom of this bin has got quite a bit of wood chip in it so I think when I filled it I mustn't have had enough composted wood chip so I put kind of fresh wood chip in so there's more wood chip that hasn't broken down to as further down your bin you go but I'm just going to show you how much of this is left in the sieve now this really wood chippy stuff the most worms are in the bottom of the bin as well so I finally found out where all the worms are moving to the worms have moved out of this bin now that's why they've all been all over the composting area they've moved out this bin because they've eaten all the compost all that's left is this wood chippy material it's actually easier to sieve a half-filled sieve like that so there are all the woody bits that won't go through the sieve but what's left is probably the leaves and that is beautiful as a seedling mixture so yeah as I say very woody at the bottom the leaves have completely decomposed and left all this wood behind so you see I've nearly got to the bottom of the bin there's probably eight ten inches left in the bottom like I say it's really woody and I do remember that I did put probably six or seven eight inches of wood chip in the bottom of the bin and that was purely for drainage and to hold a bit of air so that material is not as good as a potting and seedling mixture because it's more wood than leaves right that will just get finely scattered on the beds now that that material so I put a fine scattering on the beds I'll actually just put that in that stuff into plastic bags once I've run it through the sieve and then that will just be scattered on the bed and mixed in with the compost. Oh I forgot to tell you how I fill the bin didn't I right so I remember when I did this bin I put about six seven inches of wood chip in the bottom of the bin just to trap some air basically and allow for a little bit of drainage I then put a 12 inch layer of freshly fallen leaves onto that I then added roughly an inch of partially broken down compost and then a very fine scattering of fine wood chip on that and then another 12 inches of leaves and I did that and I kept continuing to fill the bin all the way to the top I overfilled it by about 12 to 15 inches and then put a sheet on so what you're seeing there the dark line in the bin is actually how much material I've lost or it's sunk about 50 percent really as it's broken down and the reasoning behind it is the worms if the worms move into the compost so there's probably possibly already worms in the compost so the worms move in and as they break down that compost they move between the leaf layers into the next layer of compost so they can kind of work in the way through the bin through the layers of leaves and further helping the leaves to break down as they move bacteria and fungi about in the bodies pooping it out and it really does speed up the decomposition of the leaves and the compost brings in extra bacteria and extra fungi into the layers and it's a magical process that is one of and we have an empty bin so now when that is ready in a couple of weeks I can turn it into here and I can put the leaves in there and as I put the leaves in I may even use some of this sieve stuff to layer up with the leaves along with compost because I'll have some lovely fungi in hi guys see on the next one on this beautiful sunny day I've got my hoodie on because when it bursts through the cloud it's red hot but then it goes cold when the cloud comes over so I'm hot I'm going for a brew and I will catch you on the next one bye for now oh and I gave a barrel full of that to Judith as well she's just been for a barrel full so yeah there was six seven eight nine there's going to be 10 wheelbarrows full of compost out of that bin which is brilliant