Monday 29th January
Today I planned to do a bit more digging out of the oldest first stage compost bin and shovelling it over into the central second stage bin to mature. I had taken the shovel home and filed off the edge to sharpen it as I last time I found it hard work pushing it into the heap. While at home I gave the blade a good coating of motorcycle chain oil after cleaning it. The oil is designed to stick around in all the road muck on a motorbike so should stay a bit longer on the shovel blade. I also got the teak oil out and gave the shaft a rub over with it. In the end all my garden tools within reach got a service!
However I still found shovelling up the compost was difficult and discovered the fork was much easier, just using the shovel to scrape up the last dregs.
It was so much easier I soon found I was shovelling up the last slice and finished with all the compost transferred. I then spent a little while dismantling the bin itself to do some maintenance and scrape some lovely compost out from between the two bins.
The net result was the middle bin full of well mixed compost which will compact down and mature over the next few months. The reassembled empty bin awaits some coarse material to line the bottom before being the receptical for all my green waste.
I then harvested a good picking of my marvellous Brussel Sprouts (the first time I've managed to get them to heart up and grow to a decent size!), some leeks and some 'Hungry Gap' kale.
For some reason the whitefly is not as bad this year. It has not been cold enough to kill them off - perhaps replacing part of the butterfly netting with 2" square netting and letting in the small birds is doing some good!
Today I planned to do a bit more digging out of the oldest first stage compost bin and shovelling it over into the central second stage bin to mature. I had taken the shovel home and filed off the edge to sharpen it as I last time I found it hard work pushing it into the heap. While at home I gave the blade a good coating of motorcycle chain oil after cleaning it. The oil is designed to stick around in all the road muck on a motorbike so should stay a bit longer on the shovel blade. I also got the teak oil out and gave the shaft a rub over with it. In the end all my garden tools within reach got a service!
However I still found shovelling up the compost was difficult and discovered the fork was much easier, just using the shovel to scrape up the last dregs.
It was so much easier I soon found I was shovelling up the last slice and finished with all the compost transferred. I then spent a little while dismantling the bin itself to do some maintenance and scrape some lovely compost out from between the two bins.
The net result was the middle bin full of well mixed compost which will compact down and mature over the next few months. The reassembled empty bin awaits some coarse material to line the bottom before being the receptical for all my green waste.
I then harvested a good picking of my marvellous Brussel Sprouts (the first time I've managed to get them to heart up and grow to a decent size!), some leeks and some 'Hungry Gap' kale.
For some reason the whitefly is not as bad this year. It has not been cold enough to kill them off - perhaps replacing part of the butterfly netting with 2" square netting and letting in the small birds is doing some good!
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