What is the thing that excites you most in the garden? Is it roses, with their all-embracing scent and sensual petals sending your whole body into a spin? Or is it a collection of rare and tricky alpines, their pert blossoms opening magically with a gemstone gleam in the slanting, spring sunshine? Or is it a flawless lawn, lovingly nourished and cossetted to billiard-table smoothness ?
Well, for me, it's something far more basic and down to earth, literally. The thing that thrills me to the bone and makes my soul soar is compost. And I don't mean the stuff that comes in 80-litre bags from the garden centre. I mean the stuff that sits cooking at the end of my garden in its none-too-beautiful wooden bin. "Cooking" is the right word, because a well-made compost heap can heat up to 60 degrees Centigrade - too hot to leave your hand in for more than a brief investigatory, gratifying probe. Every bit of garden waste - except for woody branches, diseased plant-parts and bindweed roots - goes into our compost. So also does all the vegetable debris from our kitchen, along with paper towels, egg shells and the odd clump of dog hair. When I'm feeling particularly zealous I add the contents of our vacuum-cleaner bag. We don't have a hamster, rabbit or other herbivorous pet, but if we did, its waste products would not be squandered. (Fresh animal manure acts as an activator in the composting process, helping to kick-start soil microbes into life.)
Other compost devotees will recognise the burning desire to turn all available matter into "brown gold", a nutrient-rich crumbly soil-conditioner for the garden. "You heap what you grow!" is our motto. Non-composting folk may read this with some bemusement - but the thing is, once you have felt the godlike power of turning old dross into new fuel, you can't stop. This season' s lawn mowings, prunings, weeds and other herbage become the foundation for next year's crops, and next year's for the following, and so on, in an endless, satisfying circle of growth, decay and regrowth. To my mind, a garden without a composting facility is an incomplete garden.
Garden compost is a multipurpose elixir of life. It gives bulk to light soils, moisture to dry soils and drainage to cloggy soils. It keeps beneficial soil-creatures busy (from mighty worms to tiny bacteria), making for a healthy, living soil. A bucket or more added during any planting operation gives a congenial start to the new plant, while a mulch applied to the soil surface when damp locks in moisture and keeps down weeds. Research in several countries has shown that "compost tea", an infusion of compost and water (left to brew for about 10 days), is effective in combating certain kinds of mildew, mould, blight and wilt. By composting garden and kitchen waste, you are doing your bit to stop this island turning into an enormous landfill. You also buy fewer bags of mulch, conditioner and potting compost - a saving on both the pocket and the environment (many are based on peat, a fast-diminishing resource).
And the best thing of all is that it's easy. It is almost impossible to fail: even the most casual and half-hearted heap eventually rots down to usable compost. Nature, after all, starts to reclaim her vegetation as soon as it is severed from the earth. All we are doing by building a compost pile is harnessing and accelerating Nature's marvellous potential.
Bigger is definitely better, when it comes to compost heaps: more heat is generated with a greater volume of material. If possible, aim for a size of a square metre, or larger (but even if you can manage only a little space, do it anyway). My own wooden "New Zealand box" has two adjacent square-metre units - one for building the heap, the other for turning it out into after a couple of weeks of decomposition (which helps introduce a fresh booster of air to hasten the decaying process).
In my experience, a home-made, square, wooden bin with no gaps between the boards (easily fabricated from recycled timber such as dismantled pallets or floorboards) makes compost more quickly than the barrel-like, plastic composters now on the market - but these are useful if your DIY capabilities are negligible. Some ready-made containers come with a detachable, perforated base. Jettison it immediately, as the compostable material should sit directly on the soil, allowing worms and other creepy-crawlies to work their way through it. Instead, lay a foundation layer of twigs and other fibrous stuff to create a cushion of air that can flow through the heap.
Along with air, heat and moisture are the catalysts that speed up the decaying process. If possible, site your compost depot in sunlight and hose the mound well while you stack it. Ideally, there should be room for wheelbarrow access and a place for stockpiling pre-composted material. The best heaps are those that are built in one go, rather than added to piecemeal.
But all heaps are good heaps, so please, start yours now. The website of the organic organisation, the Henry Doubleday Research Association, has useful factsheets on making compost and on building a moveable wooden compost box (www.hdra.org.uk).
Diary dates: Next Saturday, May 6th, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m., Irish Garden Plant Society (Munster Group) Plant Sale. S.M.A. Hall, Wilton, Cork.