Compost therapy

 19 - 25 November 2020

The weather is turning into a drought.  We are having to water the garden.  In November!  

Daisies are running rampant in the garden. looking very lovely.

Dave resting between straw-strewing activities.

This straw has spent two weeks in the chicken enclosure, being scrabbled and pecked about to get rid of seeds and add a few 'nutrients'.  We are using it on the mostly dormant veg beds as a winter dressing.

Maybe it is the unseasonally warm weather, but we are having a late rash of cabbage white caterpillars.  They are on everything - hundreds of them.  I wish the butterflies all the best, but we are losing all our kale, so Dave is taking them off when he can.  The chickens refuse to eat them.

We hear that at last the boat has been hauled into a yard for the winter, so Dave loads a ladder on the car and goes to make sure all is well.

I tackle the compost, which hasn't had any attention for a while.  This bin is full of stalks which need chopping up.

So I used the hedge trimmer on them.  This worked quite well, cutting them down to two-inch chunks so they'll rot down faster.

After the chopping - I moved the heap into the left-hand bed, which can be covered, and left to brood.

Our little nettle plants, just surviving the occasional wellie boot on the head.

Underneath all three beds - some fabulous soil, which I gathered into the newly empty right-hand bed, for distribution into the wiggly and heart beds.