🍁🍃🍂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 ! 🧡

Collecting Seaweed for the New Pumpkin Patch

So I,ll start again . Here we are down at Gunwalloe . There's rain coming in , but who cares ? !

The tide is going out and has washed up some lovely fresh clumps of seaweed .

I usually bring a black bin sack for us to sit on , but today it is coming in really useful ,  to gather some seaweed for the veg garden .

I filled it to about half way , since it is quite heavy and we had quite a walk uphill to the carpark . I can always come and  get some more another day .

Back home I empty it into my wheelbarrow and wheel it up to the veg garden .

              Seaweed is great in the veg garden , it really makes things grow !

I,m busy getting the new Pumpkin patch ready for next year , layering up newspaper , grass clippings , cardboard , horse manure ,  hoover bag contents , Autumn leaves , spent compost , shredded branches and seaweed  . The more effort that is put into the garden now during the Autumn , the bigger the pay off next year ....but this is no effort really , since it is our friends the worms that will do the work , chomping through it all .
 No hard , back breaking digging for me ..except just to gently turn it all over and rake it in the Spring .

                                                 Beautiful Cornish seaweed .

So the next  layer will be more cardboard ,then green stuff grass clippings, newspaper , I try to alternate it;  green stuff followed by brown stuff is how it really works and the air trapped within it keeps it all  beautifully light and smell free.....so no walking all over it !
     The worms love it !

It hard to see from my pics , but it is a fairly large circular bed ,but not so large that I cant reach easily into the middle of it without treading on the earth .
Not treading on the earth is very important , because in doing  so the earth  becomes compacted and the worms get squashed : (
   So there you are , my new Pumpkin Patch for next year . Hope I haven't put you off your tea ! : )

Earth Day 2016 - An Earth Day Meditation

                                I wish everyone a more thoughtful Earth Day .
This is a picture that I took a couple of years ago of one of my veg garden beds which  had layered up with veg peelings , horse manure , a mixture of green leafy stuff, grass cuttings and brown sticks and Autumn leaves and cardboard .
    The weeds are deprived of light, so no weeding and no digging , other than just lightly stirring it all together in the Spring .
 The worms , wriggled and munched their way through it , all through the rainy Autumn and Winter , creating a beautiful , rich and warm compost in which to sow and plant .
   I had the best veg harvest ever after doing this .

 Note to self ....." I must work harder to eliminate plastic from my life " .
 So I have a horrible orange plastic wheelbarrow and nasty plastic bean net . I have to think  of alternatives .
                                     IT ALL ENDS UP IN THE SEA !

                                                           Shameful !

                                         Where on Earth has that come from  ? !

   It all eventually breaks up and is ground down in to tiny granules in the same way that the sand is made .  Here is a line of this " plastic sand " washed up in a line on the beach .

 Here's a close up of it .....and in time it gets ground down even finer still and the fish and creatures of the sea digest it as they feed from the seabed ....and we in turn eat the fish .

                     The Sea vomits this vile mess up onto the beaches for us to see !
                                    We cant go on ignoring Mother Earth !

                                I wish everyone a more thoughtful Earth Day  .