Tuesday, March 19, 2019

The Blossom is Out. So are the Contents of my Compost Bin






Photo1 Emptying the compost
Photo 2 . Salix caprea 'Kilmarnock'

I half emptied one of my two compost bins this week. I’ve been putting it off all winter but after walking around the garden with a bowl of kitchen scraps and nowhere to put them I thought it was time. 

Compost Bin
The two plastic bins were so full the lids wouldn’t fit on, and the small hatch at the bottom had burst open and given the dogs something else smelly to roll in as it cascaded onto the path. 
Last year it was just emptied by tipping the whole thing up spreading around the immediate area. This did work and we grew some lovely, healthy courgettes and broccoli in it. It would of course be easier if I moved the bin around the garden every year as it was emptied so I could just tip it over in a new patch, but I don’t like emptying the bin totally as it means building up the worm population again.

The rest of the garden needs a bit of fortification this season so instead of throwing it around, I have got the spade in and put the black gold in old composts bags. 

Lovely Stuff
The material I got from the bin is a lovely colour and texture. Because it’s well-rotted there are very few worms in it as they have moved higher up the pile to fresher things to digest so there’s very little disturbance to their colony. 

It’s not that easy getting a spade into the bins as you really have to stretch to get to the back of the pile and twist the edges free. There comes a time when all the less rotted material decides to drop down, hopefully not trapping the spade in the process. This is OK as this tells me that I have extracted all of the usable compost for now. The worms will now do their work to give me another batch later in the year. Things move at a far greater rate in summer as the pile gets a lot hotter.
So for the time being I have one bin empty enough to add the weekly vegetable kitchen scraps into without the need for digging a trench and burying it to grow peas and beans on. In the big clear out I was lucky enough not to come across any mice in the bin. For some reason they decided not to take up residence this winter. 

They are probably in the garage, but clearing that out is for another day.

Blossom
The blossom is out and a lovely sight it is too. Some seems to have come early after that warm spell a couple of weeks ago.

Hazel or Lamb’s tails, gives us a good show from January to April, especially in hedges. They appear on bare twigs in spring. Old coppices, cut on a 7-10 year rotation for harvesting small wood, produce fine catkins displays.

Blackthorn. Another hedgerow favourite from March to April. Blackthorn flowers are densely clustered, so hedges covered in its blossom sometimes seem from a distance to be covered in a light fall of snow. It often blooms at the time when northerly winds bring bitterly cold weather with real snow, a period known as a ‘blackthorn winter’. 

Silver birch. Female trees have spiky green catkins but both sexes produce nectar, attracting bees, butterflies and blue tits. In early Celtic mythology, the birch symbolised renewal and purification. Bundles of birch twigs were used to drive out the spirits of the old year, and gardeners still use the birch besom, or broom, to 'purify' their gardens. It is also used as a symbol of love and fertility.

Wild pears. Not as common as other trees but worth a mention. Probably introduced by the Romans, wild pear has small, inedible fruits. Its fragrant blossom opens before the leaves expand and is carried in upright clusters, attracting bee pollinators. Ash See it: March to May

Wild cherry. Wild cherry is thought to be the most ornamental of our native broadleaf woodland trees.The spring flowers provide an early source of nectar and pollen for bees, while the cherries are eaten by birds including the blackbird and song thrush, as well as mammals such as the badger, wood mouse, yellow necked mouse and dormouse.

Hawthorn . Prolific in hedgerows which have formed enclosure boundaries since Roman times and the species has gathered millennia of folklore and superstition. Winter-flowering Glastonbury Thorn is said to be descended from Joseph of Arimathea’s staff, which rooted and burst into flower on the Isle of Avalon. 

Goat Willow: goat willow is dioecious, meaning male and female flowers grow on separate trees, in early spring. Male catkins are grey, stout and oval, which become yellow when ripe with pollen. Female catkins are longer and green.

Rowan. Few trees are so richly endowed with folklore. Flowering rowans were planted beside cottage doors on May Day to prevent visits by witches, while crosses made from twigs were hung over doors on the Isle of Man.

No comments:

More stories

Related Posts with Thumbnails