Composting - we LOVE it

Sunday saw the completion of the trinity of compost bins on our plot! We brought round the 3rd one from the back garden, which hadn't been used since we got the lottie anyway.

We visited Mamma G before we started to fill up this one. There is a very large, huge tree in her back garden which drops a tonne of leaves every autumn. This is the last year of its life - it's really not well at all any more and the wall beside it is falling down too. I got to gather up the fallen leaves and was enjoying doing it, but the excitement went up a major notch when i was presented with the leaf sucker-upper/shredder machine! I love boys toys so much. I gathered up 2 big black bags of shredded leaves for the plot.

Back at the lottie, Andrew got straight to work - he was rather excited, how cute. He had lots of leaves, garden/kitchen waste, cow poo and that bag of shredded paper. Remember the last time I spoke about 'Grow Our Own' compost? - well it was the same idea. Layers of each material were put on top of one another in a vast sponge cake type fashion. Leaves - g/k waste -paper -cow-poo, and repeat until bin is full. Eh Viola! another bin of (soon-to-be) Black Gold.

While Andrew finished that up I took more pictures - this is my favourite one and one of the main reasons why I'd like lots of sunflowers next year. The birds obviously love this!

By the way - you know this - now's a great time to look after our little bug and birdie friends. Nuts and seeds for the birds (just think of poor, starving Robin Red Breasts) and hidey-holes for ladybirds etc - piles of bamboo canes and old logs etc are the way to go.