Compost ain't what it used to be!

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I grew up on a small family run Garden Centre where we made a small amount of compost on site from the traditional green waste materials, the good stuff however, the guaranteed anything you sow or stick in it will grow stuff, well that was delivered on 20 pallets around November by a very nice man in a lorry from Fisons.

Now I should add that at the age of eleven, the sight of 20 pallets of neatly stacked taller than me 100 litre bags of compost would fill me with dread as I knew that come Boxing Day, my little sister and I would be standing in front of the huge benches in the unheated uninsulated Potting Shed and be presented with a bag of compost each, a compacted frozen unyielding solid (did I mention frozen) bag of compost. It was the same shape out of the bag as it was in it! In fact, it was so cold in that Potting Shed the compost would probably have kept its bag shape until the thaw set in around about March!

Which is where me and my little sister came in. Breaking a small lump of compost off the mother lode, we would rub it between our bare hands until it was broken up, unfrozen and aerated, when we had a large enough pile of usable compost in front of us, it was bucketed up and passed to my mother for sowing, planting or whatever Oh and woe betide any child sending lumpy compost down the line! I’m not fishing for sympathy folks however I think Victorian kids made far too much fuss about being sent up chimneys, if given the choice of a pre-warmed flue or that Potting Shed in January, I would have settled for the chimney every time and returning to school after the Christmas holiday with unstained hands!

The reason for that preamble was to explain that I’ve had an intimate exposure to lots of different types and qualities of compost since I was little and apart from a near miss in 2010 with a 20ltr bag of Tesco (own brand) Multi-purpose which was nearly all chopped straw, I have been pretty lucky.

But (and you just knew there was a BUT coming) this year’s annual compost purchase of 10 bags of J Arthur Bowers Multi-Purpose turned out to be a load of actual rubbish. Plastic bits of all colours & shades, foam rubber, glass, terracotta pot pieces and chopped up drink can shards were sieved out, bagged up and forwarded with a strongly worded letter of complaint to the Managing Director of Sinclair Horticulture. The Technical Director was very apologetic, explained about the problems of cross contamination by hauliers and sent me £15 of compensatory J Arthur Bowers Gift Vouchers.

You would think I would be cock-a-hoop with their response and I was until having bought six of their Grow-Bags and planting out the tomatoes, I cut open the perforated hole and a Lego brick sat taunting me.

Now one of my late Grandpa’s many sayings was “the flavour’s in the soil”, I can only speculate as to what a Lego flavoured tomato will taste like?

• 29 Jun, 2013
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