Friday 6 July 2007

Worms at the Bottom of the Garden

There's a worm at the bottom of my garden
And his name is Wiggly Woo
There's a worm at the bottom of my garden
And all that he can do -
Is wiggle all night...
And wiggle all day...
Whatever else the people do say;
There's a worm at the bottom of my garden
And his name is Wiggly Wooo-ooo!

When YoungerSon was at nursery school, he learnt about composting, and since then all the veggie waste and the garden waste ended up in huge pile of "stuff", but we never really did much with it.
Then The Space Cadet took over and built a compost bay two years ago. (The bricks came from the building site next door.... shhhh!) But it got really messy looking and he needed to clean it up. On the right is the original pile, on the left is the current year.

Then he decided that a second bay was needed.... each pile takes 2 years to mature into useable compost..... so.... more bricks.


And now it's so smart, it could be a gold medal winner in the compost stakes. All the grass clippings, veggie peelings, dead flowers etc go into the right hand bay. The left hand bay has been "fermenting" for two years and will be ready to sift and use by next spring. In fact, I have tomato plants there now.... taking advantage of the rich soil and of course, the worms!

In September 2007, a weekly curbside "Green Bin" collection will start. This programme will accept all organic waste including meat, paper, pet refuse, basically anything that is biodegradeable. What a great idea! We'll continue to compost all the veggie material, and we already recycle glass, plastic, cardboard in the "Blue Box", but this should cut down the amount of garbage that goes to the dump or landfill every week.
Every little helps.

15 comments:

  1. sounds like a great system, a lot of work though!

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  2. Yes we did the composting thing as well. But we ended up buying one of the plastic kind. I got pretty tired of dealing with the mess after a few yrs. But its a great idea specially if one has bad soil, which here in Bend we do,, mostley volcanic ash for what they call dirt.

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  3. You are doing your part to help the world. I'm doing my part too, though my compost pile is nowhere near as nice as yours.

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  4. Great for you and great for the earth. Your hubby is doing a fab. job.

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  5. Great job! I'm happy to hear that Canada is now also doing more for the ecology. It's so important.

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  6. Well done old Rook!! A compost heap is part of every good garden. The neighbourhood worms will love you for this.

    Ms Soup

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  7. Wonderful compost heap. I love composting and have been doing it for donkey's years. I never buy any chemicals for the garden and rely on my own compost.
    I haven't anything as posh as yours though. I make heaps at the bottom of the garden and work my way through them.
    We now have a green wheelie bin and I put all the hedge and shrub trimmings in it as it saves having a bonfire.
    Newspaper is ok for the heap too, but not in too thick wodges. Recently my daughter persuaded me to buy a paper shredder and the shredded paper decomposes a treat!
    Trying to make up my mind whether it is worth buying a wood shredder to make that lovely shredded wood mulch. Good ones are very expensive though.
    Keep on recycling. We've got to do something about this horrible climate change.

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  8. Well done you, I wish I had room for a compost bin. Our green bins are used for paper and recylable items. We have to take the glass to bottle banks ourselves, and not having a car makes means we rely on my dad to do that.
    recyling more was one of our more successful new years resolutions.

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  9. Nice reading!! It seems really that Space Cadet is a very active guy!

    Are you now starting the alphabet backwards?

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  10. We compost, but the curbside business is awesome.

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  11. compost is magic!

    (but you SIFT yours? wow)

    we should be getting curbside compost pick-up before long, i hope.... in fact, time for me to hassle the council again methinks

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  12. Your nice photographs and story reminded me of our compost bins. One two and three. Instead of turning, we used to transfer from one to another. But it began senseless when the material was breaking down so we just used each one as a separate bin.

    My daughter, Melinda, has a picture she took on my blog. It is a stunning macro.
    Brookville Daily Photo

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  13. Nice job composting and a good series of shots showing how.
    Hope you have a super week and i will save a koosh ball for you.

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  14. That is so cool, Ex-S! You and your Space Cadet get lots of worms...er, I mean Stars in your Crown for that!

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  15. I have two composting bins, but absolutely no clue about what I'm doing with them. Thank the Lord for Google!

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