Which comes first, plant or compost? In biodynamic garden, it's all the one.
Gardening is about circles. The most obvious is the one that all gardeners are familiar with: the circle or cycle of life, where you grow the plant, compost it when you're finished with it, and return the compost to the soil to nourish the next plant that you grow, and so on, and so on, round and round. All of which is most satisfying.
But there's another, related circle that I'm quite keen on, and that is an invisible one that you might draw around the perimeter of the garden. The point of this isn't to exclude the outside world; it's more to help you think of the garden as a self-contained entity and to try to make it self-sustaining. I've borrowed this idea from biodynamics, a sort of extreme organic philosophy pioneered by Rudolf Steiner in 1924 and now refined and monitored by Demeter, an international governing body.
On a biodynamic farm - to simplify enormously - very little material is imported from outside: all the fertiliser for the plants is made right there, from compost and manure. Likewise, the food for the animals is also grown on the acreage. Each part of the operation supports another. The farm, in all its diversity, is managed as a single living organism.
I'm not suggesting that a domestic garden can be run along textbook biodynamic lines - most of us don't have the time or the space - but I like the idea of an imaginary circle that can be breached only with careful consideration. Take the business of repotting seasonal containers: the usual routine is to get our supplies from the garden centre - a couple of trays of plants, say, and an 80l bag (or two) of compost. But stop for a minute. Haven't we all been making our own organic compost since the introduction of bin charges? It's too rich to use on its own for potted plants (which just goes to show what great stuff it is), but if you sieve it, and mix it half-and-half with the bought-in stuff, you'll have a far superior potting medium. It feeds the plants for longer, helps retain water, and bolsters immunity from diseases.
Or you could go the whole hog and make your own potting compost from scratch, and grow the plants from seeds or cuttings - meaning that the circle would not have to be pierced at all. Not all gardeners have that kind of time, so it's inevitable that some stuff has to come in from outside, but it doesn't have to be as much as we've become accustomed to.
Many of us haul in fertilisers from outside the circle, but there is little need for them if a garden is a balanced entity. Compost, as I just mentioned, is hopping with nutrition and with invisible creatures that keep the soil alive and healthy. It can be added to borders and vegetable beds to boost fertility and plant health or even brushed over the lawn as a feed (after being finely sieved). Compost "tea" (soak in water for several days, strain, and dilute to colour of weak tea) can be used as a liquid supplement for plants that are looking peaky. It has also been shown to thwart fungal diseases. Other elixirs can be made from nettles, comfrey or even a bag of manure suspended in a barrel of water (which is known as black jack). Wood ash is high in potash, and it can be sprinkled around fruit-bearing trees and plants.
Biodynamic farms ideally include animals, just the right number to provide manure for crops. The home gardener is unlikely to be keeping a cow behind the alpine bed, but if you do have vegetarian pets (rabbits or guinea pigs, for example), you can add their litter to the compost heap. Chickens are mighty birds to have inside the garden circle (if you ban them from the vegetable and herbaceous areas); they eat small snails, vine weevils and many other pests. Their manure is dynamite in the compost bin. Their diet can include scraps from the kitchen that are unsuitable for composting, such as bread, pasta, rice and other cooked foods. They repay you with eggs, and you feed them back the shells (crushed, so that they are unrecognisable, to prevent your hens from taking up the disturbing practice of eating their own eggs).
Much of the waste that emanates from the house can be reused in the garden. Compostable materials - besides the obvious vegetable peelings - include tea bags, coffee grounds, paper towels, the contents of the vacuum-cleaner bag, floor sweepings, animal and human hair, and newspapers (when you need to rebalance an overly slushy compost heap). Water, of course, should be recycled whenever possible.
Plastic containers, such as those that are used for meat, ready meals and some bought-in vegetables, are the perfect depth (five to eight centimetres) for seed trays. Large polyethylene water bottles can be sliced into protective collars for use around young plants. Toilet roll and paper towel cores are used by some gardeners for starting beans and peas, including sweet peas. Wire coat hangers can be fashioned into "hair pins" to plunge into the soil as anchors for string or netting, or they can serve as miniature flag poles for plant labels (invaluable after you've planted groups of bulbs).
There are hundreds of other household items that can be given a second chance in the garden, and, equally, the garden is full of things that can go on being useful in new guises. Just to mention a few: trees and shrub prunings can be turned into plant supports or kindling; branches from evergreens are often used to shield the blossom of wall-grown fruit from frost; strips torn from phormium leaves or willow twigs have traditionally been used as plant ties in some gardens; in woodland gardens, borders and paths can be edged with fallen or cut timber; in stony patches, the best way of getting rid of rocks is to use them as edgings.
But let's not turn this into a list of all the second and third uses for things we already have, entertaining as that might be (new water features from old toilets, anyone?). Right now I'm more concerned with championing the notions of keeping things closer to home and of making our gardens more self-reliant - with each part cycling into and sustaining the others. In other words, I just want to plug the idea that gardening is about circles.