Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Compost update!!

It's been a while, but there's been no green news to report...Still enjoying our veg box deliveries (fantastic seasonal squash recently which go very well with sausages), and using our new kerbside collection (our plastics box is mostly filled with stuff saved by colleagues at work, as there's no such thing as kerbside recycling for offices!).

However, I did get rather (over?!) excited last weekend when it was time to take out the summer bedding plants in our garden pots and replace them with winter pansies and spring flowering bulbs. To give them all a head start (although the bulbs are the National Trust's finest so I have high hopes for them) I thought I should give them a bit of fresh compost around their roots when planting.

With some trepidation I prised away the little 'door' at the bottom of our huge compost bin and I think I actually whooped with delight at what I saw! In front of my eyes was plenty of brown, crumbly stuff that looked like actual compost that you would buy in a shop!!! I scooped some out into a bucket to take a closer look - I can't believe that our old veg peelings, tea bags etc have, with no attention whatsoever (save a warm spot in the garden and a drop of water when it got too hot) have, thanks to some worms and bugs and heat from the sun, mulched down into this marvellous nourishing stuff! I scattered a good deal into the pots and beds as I was planting the pansies and bulbs - time will tell what difference it makes but there are two flowers and more buds on some of the pansies already - fab!

Why don't more people have compost bins?! So easy to do, puts less in your bin/landfill, and yields goodies if you're patient (ours has taken about 15 months to get to this stage).

Now, I quite fancy the idea of a wormery with all those cute wriggles chewing away...wonder if I can persuade Mr Going Greener...

See www.recyclenow.org.uk for more home composting info.