🍁🍃🍂Making Compost 🍂🍃🍁

                 Today you find me sweeping leaves . Replenishing the good Earth  .

So Ricardo has been bombing around on his ride on lawn mower and has had orders to please put the grass clippings onto the old Runner-bean bed .

My job -  sweeping up leaves .

Brown and green -  is what makes the most perfect compost .

                                      The leaves smell so good !

I prefer to just spread this straight onto my vegetable beds and let the worms do the digging over Autumn and Winter .

I am no longer adding manure from horses/cows - due to the risk of Aminopyralid poisoning - from a weed killer- which apparently some farmers have been spraying on to their fields -  horses / cows eat the grass and hay and the manure that they then produce , if put on our vegetable beds , causes all plants to become twisted and deformed .  AND   it stays in the ground for years .  

The French Bean bed is next . I have been putting fruit and vegetable peelings , spent compost ,a little wood chippings , grass clippings , sea weed and cardboard ....which needs to be flattened and something put on top to stop it blowing away . It very quickly breaks down when the rain comes .

I quickly sorted that cardboard out , tearing it into shreds and more grass clippings put on top . It's going to rain again later on , so it will soon break down . Looking a bit smarter now I've done that !

Hopefully tomorrow , I will gather more leaves to go on top .

🌧️The worms , the toadstools , the wind and the rain , will get to work on it all 🍄🪱⛈️

                                            🧡Loving Autumn ! 🧡

Meanwhile up in the shed 🥬🥬

  What a night worrying about friends and family out in Florida . Not sure what they will be coming back to , but they all got away and were safe . I guess the big clean up operations will now get under way .

I've been up in the shed this morning , pricking out and potting on more lettuce seedlings .

Picked a nice bowlful of Winter Density Lettuce for lunch .

These teeny tiny lettuce seedlings are more than ready to be pricked out and potted on .

    My second batch of Kale needs to go out now .Also a few P.S.B. and also a few cabbages .

Not happy with this strange compost but it 'll have to do . 

I try not to use too much of it as it is so expensive . I seem to be able to get away with only filling the pots .... hmm... just a little bit over half way . I think with lettuces it is more important to keep them cool and well watered .

Then out into the vegetable garden to pull off the wretched net cover again .

                              Here we go .

I couldn't fit them all in . I'll put some in another bed ...but not today ..I am tired and aching now .

Not just from gardening , but from having had my Flu jab last Saturday and then the Covid jab yesterday . I don't usually get any reaction to them , other than a sore arm . ...but I am really aching ,tired and sneezing today , as if I have a cold coming on . It will pass .

  I'm so glad to have got these vaccines done to give us protection over the coming winter months .

So the job I hate the most when I'm feeling tired , is pulling the net cover over again and rearranging all the bricks around it .... but it has to be done !

    Sunshine and showers today and I think improving over the next couple of days  .

                         Having a restful afternoon 🍁🍃🍂

Hurricane Milton

 

                          Thinking of you all over the sea in Florida .