UK: Meet gardener Mick Poultney aka The Compost King from Colley Gate, Halesowen

“Gardening keeps my brain and body active. I never sit down unless I’m doing paperwork. I’m always on the go. I like the fresh air and being outside.”

By Heather Large
Express and Star
June 2, 2021

Excerpt:

During lockdown Mick has also been busy perfecting his compost recipe and recently published a book to share his tips with other gardeners.

Compost Ready to Use Within A Month covers the entire process, ingredients, mind-set and method of producing compost from scratch. “It contains everything I have learned through trial and error. There’s nothing complicated about it and I use only natural products. It’s something anybody can do,” says Mick, who has become known as The Compost King.

He is hoping to publish a second book based on raised beds and no-dig cultivation before the end of this year.

Mick says he takes a ‘common sense’ approach to gardening and enjoys trying out different methods that may not follow conventional gardening ‘rules’.

“I’ve been planting out sweetcorn and they are supposed to be planted in a box formation so you get pollination,” says Mick. He explains that for this to occur, pollen from the male flowers, called the tassels, needs to fall on to the female flowers known as the silks.

“What I do is I just give them the occasional tap to shake out the pollen. I find this works very well. I’m just doing what nature does by giving it a tap,” says Mick, whose current crops include onions, leeks and gladioli. He is now hoping for some warmer weather to help his produce to thrive.

“Everything should start to pick up as it warms up. It should be time to plant everything out but we’ve had a frost in June before so we can never predict what the weather is going to do.”

Read the complete article here.