THE first frosts will soon be upon us bringing to an end the dahlias and annuals still in flower and turning our thoughts to the autumn tidy up.

For some that can mean removing all dead and decaying matter and taking it to the tip. But let me give you some alternatives.

Living among the garden are a range of bugs and bacteria, some beneficial some not. Anything dead will in time collapse to the ground and the worms and bacteria will reduce it to humus, feeding the soil from which the plant took its nutrients.

Leaves and soft stalks take a few months but woody material takes much longer. This is fine in a wood or hedgerow but inappropriate for the managed garden.

Here the garden plants remain in situ until they collapse or if they stand all winter, they are removed in March when the new growth appears.

Plants provide habitat for wildlife and get another chance to show off their beauty when the frosts sit upon them.

If plants collapse, they are removed, reducing opportunities for disease to develop.

Soft material goes to the compost heap and woody material goes on a bonfire with the resulting ash going under fruit trees or spread evenly on the compost heap.

Home composting is known as cold composting. Waste material is added over time and even with turning will take a year or two to rot down as there is not the bulk to create much heat.

So when you put home compost down, you can end up with a rash of weeds as seeds in the compost have not been killed.

The waste in your wheelie bin is ‘hot composted’. Huge amounts of material is shredded, piled high and turned regularly with heavy machinery.

This allows bacteria in the heap to multiply rapidly, creating extremely high temperatures capable of killing off weed seed, pernicious weeds and disease.

You can improve home compost by reducing the size of the material you put into the compost bin: bacteria need a surface to nibble on. A sugar lump has six sides but when broken into individual grains it has a much larger surface area.

In turn, this means more bacteria, more heat, less weed seed, etc.

In the garden, we are looking at improving our composting by shredding the woody material. This would speed up the process, increasing heat to kill the nasties while maintaining fertility.

To get the same effect at home you need to store your waste separately until you have a minimum volume of a cubic metre, then mix it all together and turn regularly.

Our composting here at Helmsley is a closed system; no plant material leaves the garden. After composting or burning it is returned to the soil.

I’d like to think I could replicate this at home but the convenience of the wheelie bin means pernicious and woody material leave the garden. I cannot help but wish it didn’t.

Enjoy your gardening