There is exceptional, good, average, and bad compost. What you get depends on what you put in, how you manage it and the time you allow for nature to breakdown organic matter into its constituent parts - all so it can be re-used again.

Entire books have been written on how to make composts.

Here we will outline what we do to make our compost, how it is used and why we don't sell it.

Firstly, at Vital Veggies we make compost because it is an essential part of the soil. Compost provides organic matter that is food for soil micro-organisms, organic acids that help make locked up minerals available, and to store water within the soil ecosystem for use by the entire soil food web-plants included. The processes involved in the transformation of organic matter to compost and the multitude of organic compounds that follow are so complex, science has not been able to map many of them as yet.

Needless to say, compost is a vital part of highly productive soils. An ideal range for soil organic matter is considered to be between 6 and 12 % of the soil and there are few agricultural soils that reach this today. One of the consequences of conventional agriculture is the depletion of soil organic matter because it was not considered important and secondly, the application of nitrogenous fertilizers causes an imbalance in the all important carbon to nitrogen ratio in the soil. This profusion of nitrogen causes an explosion of nitrogen loving bacteria which also depletes soil carbon. Our agricultural soils today have on average a 1 to 2% soil organic matter. This is in part, one of the crises of conventional agriculture from which a number of serious consequences follow.

Our intent at Vital Veggies is to make exceptional compost and have it available exclusively to those who use the Vital Veggie Visits service.

Our compost is a blend of animal manure, saw dust, straw, a diverse selection of waste vegetables, poultry and pigeon manure.  Additionally basalt rock dust is layered into the mix as is lime and kelp.

Moisture levels are maintained to ensure controlled breakdown of the materials.

After two weeks we add biodynamic compost preparations further enhancing the qualities of our compost.

The best compost is old. The least desirable is only months old. We age our compost for twelve months allowing it to develop the characteristic odour of good compost along with its light fluffy texture.

Additionally, if you are a Vital Veggies Visits client we recycle all the organic waste from your Vital Veggies garden.  This is closing the loop and allowing us to bring back to you even better compost and better vegetables in the future.

Vital Veggies sure is the way to grow!   Great compost and fantastic vegetables; another part of the Vital Veggies service.