Monday, July 11, 2011

The Joy of Compost at City Hall Community Garden

Compost: Oh joy, oh bliss. I must admit I really need reminding how wonderful compost is, especially when it involves a hella good composter which needs to be completely and utterly vermin proof, not to mention lots of back breaking labor and chemistry. Sigh. Compost is really important to the future of the planet, but let's face it, it's not the most glamorous part of gardening. That's why it's better to compost and dig out troublesome weeds (see above) with friends.

This Sunday folks at Evergreen held a compost-themed work party and workshop at the City Hall Community Garden. We needed to fortify the bottom of the three-stage compost bins just in case we had unwanted visitors. Max had the plans, the tools, the engineering know-how and we provided the muscle.

This is the all-important brown matter one must layer in between the green matter which has been cut into small pieces and watered to keep moist.

Straw and leaves only please and thanks.

Here's some stage 2 and 3. Stage two being somewhat broken down and stage three being the nice rich compost that you sieve and put on your garden. We had to empty all the bins to do the carpentry and then put it back into the appropriate bins.


In the meantime, I watered the school garden and picked us a wee snack to supplement the nosh put out by Evergreen.

The baby zukes are growing.

There was a nice little crop of snow peas.

Our borage was a big hit with the volunteers and the bees. I was a bit alarmed at how big the plant has become, overshadowing the strawberry plants. I'll have to trim it back or move the berry plants.

Borage does like to sprawl out and make itself at home. On the other side of the garden is a plant called Cerinthe which the bees also love and soon there will be some sunflower heads for our buzzy friends, (fingers crossed). Thanks to Helen and Max at Evergreen for a fun and informative compost hoe down.

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