Making Compost and Woodchip Paths

Compost

Dropped down to the plot around 5pm after spending a bit of time feeding my greenhouse plants and the tomatoes. Bit of a disaster with the sweet peppers in that a couple of plants had collapsed under the weight of fruit! In re-staking them, I managed to break off some branches, but not the end of the earth because we’ll eat green peppers instead of leaving them to change colour.

Tasted one of my chilli peppers as well – as the song says, “hot, hot, hot”, which was nice. It added some zing to tonight’s meal.

Anyway, back to the plot where I finished emptying one compost bin on plot 5 to where the potatoes have come out and then emptied the adjoining bin into it. This really helps things rot down as you mix them up and introduce air, allowing the bacteria to work, I watered the heap as I went as well because it was so dry and you do need moisture for a compost heap to work

Tomatoes

Fed the tomatoes on plot 5 as well. I think each of the 5 plum Roma plants got about a gallon from the comfrey tea barrel so that should help them along. They’re carrying a fair amount of fruit so I’m hopeful of a decent crop as long as we get some sunlight to ripen them.

Chippings and the Path

Some of the wood chip path by the bins has really rotted down so that went into the base of the bin before it was filled. The council chaps have dropped a small mountain on the site so a couple of barrow loads re-made the path. I like these wood chip paths because they do rot down and add humus eventually and are easily moved if you decide to re-shape your beds. There is one drawback; they suck nitrogen out of the soil so you need to add extra fertiliser by them when planting.

Weather

Recently we’ve had some pretty grey days with heavy cloud but very little rain. I was just thinking, “I bet it won’t rain again and I need to get the hose out” when it started to rain. As I write this at about midnight, we seem to have had about 3mm, which equates to just over five pints per square metre. That’s not going to do us a whole lot of good.