Compost, leaf mould, bracken, wood chips, even grit… it’s time to sieve your way to gardening gold.
Blackcaps are serenading overhead. Spring sun warms my cheeks. A cool, light breeze gets the bluebells shimmying – and I’m joining them. My arms and upper body are moving to a steady, repeating motion, left-right, left-right, as I methodically, meditatively sift and refine. Earthly riches rain down into my trug; fine, crumbly, irresistible. Out of all the gardening jobs I love doing – and there are plenty I don’t – riddling is the one that never fails to have me in rapture.
Given the chaotic, combustible nature of our world right now, where social and ecological change is colliding, my sanity-saving spring advice is to get out in your garden, grab your riddle and let some euphoria rip.
Spring, when I’m eyeing up how much potting compost I’m going to need to nurture my fast-growing dreams, is when I cast a thrifty eye around the garden. I’m constantly weighing up how much good-quality peat-free compost I might need to buy in (primarily for seed-sowing), against how much I can conjure up from my own cost-free – not to mention plastic bag- and garden centre mile-free – raw materials.
This spring I’ve hit the jackpot, and my trusty riddle, as witnessed by my aching abdominal muscles, has been on overdrive.
I have riddles in all shapes and sizes, from big and chunky, traditionally made from wood and galvanised wire (which sadly appear to be no longer available), to the commoner metal types, some with interchangeable galvanised mesh, which are especially useful; I can switch between 8mm, 5mm and 3mm gauge mesh, which riddles out everything I need for seed-sowing and the early potting-up stages. The smallest mesh also sifts out fine grit for covering seeds. A plea: avoid the cheap and nasty plastic pretenders; we don’t need any more microplastics in our gardens, or in our world.
Big-time DIY riddlers can easily make a wooden frame holding a large sheet of galvanised mesh that fits perfectly over their wheelbarrow. This is especially useful if you have a lot of garden compost to riddle down and a lot of containers to fill, and is quite a shimmy-fest. For finer refining, decant some to your hand-held riddle and let the bliss begin.
A riddle (or sieve, if you prefer) turns big and lumpy into fine and crumbly. Riddling separates and divides, sifts the rough from the smooth. Riddles transform the results of our basic gardening efforts – such as building a compost heap or mounding up autumn leaves to moulder – into something rich, multipurpose and priceless (have you ever seen a price tag on a bag of leaf mould?).
But riddling isn’t just transformative of the raw materials passing through its mesh; it’s transformative for us. I can’t find the words to truly describe the feeling of deep, focused satisfaction that swirling and separating the rough and lumpy from the fine and granular brings. There’s a rhythm to it, a flow, a motion, resulting in handfuls, bucketfuls, barrowfuls of gardening riches.
The joy of watching dark, five-year-old leafmould slip effortlessly through my riddle is rivalled only by the cool, soft and spongy feel of it in my fingers. This sweet-smelling gardening gold will become a mainstay of my DIY mix, used for greenhouse tomatoes and other vegetables. Its vintage means that most passes through the riddle’s mesh with ease; any rough riddlings become mulch or are added to my compost heap.
If you thought oak leaf mould was a softie, wait until you squeeze what I’ve christened ‘fern mould’ – the result of passing a two-year-old mound of decayed fern fronds (stripped from the wild banks to let the snowdrops shine) through my riddle. The result is handfuls of soft, light, rusty-brown mould, rivalling leaf mould, but with the added oomph of being rich – like composted bracken – in plant foods, but sparse on weed seeds. The big riddled-out bits make superb mulch.
My ecstasy after riddling fern mould set me off in search of ‘bracken mould’. I only add pulled/cut bracken to my compost heap occasionally, so I tried to riddle it from the rotted fronds in a nearby bracken patch, by scooping them into my riddle and giving it a swirl. Manna for growing was the result, but it took an age to gather any quantity (I’ll build a dedicated bracken heap this year, which will be quicker and easier to mine for mould). I know this will be rich in nutrients, especially potash (Dalefoot Composts sells composted bracken as comfrey-boosted Lakeland Gold), so I’ll blend it into my greenhouse tomato potting mix.
A key ingredient in my homemade blends are composted wood chips – the best, most reliable and professional-grade peat-free composts (think SylvaGrow) have fine composted bark in their mix. Riddle at the ready, I soon turned a heap of faded, decaying wood chips (left from clearance under power lines), which had already been worked through by feasting fungi (the toadstools were long gone), into fistfuls of fine, dark chips. They smell divine.
These tougher chips aren’t strictly ‘mould’, but they’re pre-inoculated with vital microbial life, especially fungi, which they infuse into my DIY mixes; I add some chips to every blend. I know they’re doing their stuff when mini toadstools sprout in pots (the fungi are breaking down organic matter and releasing plant foods). Riddled-out coarser chips are mulch magic.
I have one final stop to make on my round of therapeutic riddling – the slate waste heap. The grit we buy for gardening all comes from somewhere (sometimes it’s more smooth gravel than sharp grit), and it’s heavy to transport, so I’m weaning myself off bought grit by letting my riddle rip and transform 100-year-old industrial waste into a free, wheelbarrow-delivered gardening asset. Once I’ve sifted out the finer waste, I can grade the ‘grit’ as needed. It works a treat for seed-covering, for aiding drainage in homemade mixes, or as a neat pot-top mulch.
Get riddling when your raw materials are relatively dry; anything that is wet and lumpy will blunt your magic-making euphoria. And keep an eye out for wild life; if there are lots of small critters in your decantings, spread them out on a sheet overnight so they can make their exit.
The wood warbler is singing now. The sky’s blue. Grab your riddle, shimmy – and embrace the rapture.
Words and images © John Walker
Find John on X @earthFgardener