I am trying to make a different sort of compost at the moment. Like many allotment sites, we have free deliveries of wood chippings, mostly conifer and bay tree as befits the area, but I have been convinced for a some time that it should be possible to make a reasonable compost out of it.

Out of the blue came a video by Steve Richards about making compost from wood chippings so I am going to give his method a go. I have been making the chippings into compost but by putting them in a bin and leaving them there for over a year. Now, I am trying his way.

I had a dalek filled to the brim with wood chips about six months ago and another one that was a bit older so I tipped them both out.

This is the contents of the first bin, six months old. The leaves have rotted down but the wood chips are still there.

The next step is to put the chippings back into the dalek but this time layer with as many greens as possible about every 15cm or so. These should start the composting process off again, I used comfrey as I have a lot, and then hopefully they will start to rot down a bit more. I have a temperature guage stuck in the pile to measure the heat coming off it.

I am also about to start off a normal (for me) pallet bin to make compost this way. The first step is to fill it, layered every now and then with a spadeful or two of my compost and leave it for some time – February perhaps.

I’ll let you know how I get on.