Like the word “organic” the meaning of the word “compost” is hard to pin down. Where we don’t have soil, we mainly use commercially available full-growing-medium-compost to grow our plants. Smallholder readers are hopefully making more use of their kitchen, garden, grass cutting and tree leaf waste to make a lower-grade-compost and use it for improving / bulking up their soil. Composting helps capture Carbon into the soil rather than letting the waste material decay and release greenhouse gas, CO2, carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. Ensure that your compost is well rotted before you add it, or it could steal nutrients to complete the composting process and so inhibit the growth of your crops.

The good news is that REMIN volcanic rock dust is found to both improve full growing medium composts and speed up the composting process to produce more mineral rich compost.

In 2017 REMIN did a trial at Banchory’s Inchmarlo Retirement Village. Head gardener Jim Wilkie added the recommended 1kg REMIN/ 50litre bag of full growing medium compost to three of the planters outside the big house. He filled the other three planters with just the full growing medium compost. By the end of the season Jim was in no doubt that the bedding plants in the planters with the REMIN faired far better with regards to growth, vigour, flowering and health. He was able to use several of the bedding plants for a second year from the planters where he had added the REMIN, but would be discarding, as he normally did, all the plants in the planters where the REMIN had not been used. A tip for mixing REMIN into compost is to empty the bag out into a wheelbarrow or large trug and mix in the REMIN as manually as you wish. If potting on mature plants the REMIN dose can be doubled up to 2kg per 50litre bag. This applies equally to vegetables, fruit bushes and tomatoes.

During composting living organisms break down decaying plant material to turn it into compost. REMIN boosts the living organisms to help the millions of wee critters multiply faster and fulfil their role of digestion even better. When adding contents of your compost caddy (see photo) or adding grass cuttings or autumn leaves to your compost heap, scatter in a few handfuls of REMIN volcanic rock dust and leave the rain and living organisms to do their bit for you.

Champions Blend Compost, containing REMIN volcanic rock dust is now available by the pallet on REMIN website or individual bags can be bought from Elixir Garden Supplies as listed in the catalogues section on REMIN’s website.

Smallholder readers are welcomed to add the CODE “SH Spring 2018” to their order in the REMIN Website Shop to receive 10% discount until the end of April.