Planet Savers blog

I can’t think of a better way to spend a Bank Holiday than by building a composting area. Seriously!  I’ve been itching to get this part of the garden sorted out, compost being close to my heart:>) I had been creating piles of ’stuff’ all over the garden ready for the day I had a compost area. And it just arrived!

We were lucky enough to get hold of some palletts, so we have been recycling into the bargain. Since we are so close to the chalk on this hillside, driving anything into the ground is a lot of hard graft for Bobbie. We needed eight support posts and this meant that the sledge hammer had another outing to push the metposts into the ground.

Thanks to the stalwart work of Sally and Mark’s bunnies, Delilah and Harry (see Sally’s blog for pictures of said bunnies), the first heap is almost complete.

This also means that we are able to conduct something of an experiment on the cornstarch bag front. Sally is collecting all the bunny droppings along with the rest of the bedding and putting it into cornstarch compostable bags which she brings over once a week. Having just moved a pile of them, we found that the bottom of the pile was rotting down rather nicely. However, it is obvious that the bags need to be wet in order to break down into good compost.

The heap is a layered platter of bunny muck, mown grass, and wet cardboard interspersed with kitchen and garden waste as available. Delicious! I’m looking forward to seeing the results:>)

Just a bit of sun and those sharp, hard bullets of blackberries turn into sweet, lushious, melt-in-your-mouth packets of juice. Fortunately, blackberries seem to have evolved alongside our ability to eat them and have a way of spreading their fruiting period over several weeks. We can still see flowers alongside ripe fruit.

This is just as well because six pounds of blackberries takes some managing. Three pounds became jam, two were bottled or dry frozen (bite into one of these and it’s like eating blackberry sorbet – hmmm, there’s an idea…). The last pound was also preservedwith the help of sugar – and brandy! I think I’ll do another batch in vodka so that we can have fun at the comparison stage:>)

Before the Autumn takes hold, I wanted to get our polytunnel constructed. Hopefully, this means I will be able to get some seeds up and ready for planting next year but, most of all, I’ll stand a good chance of having some tomatoes that turn red before the weather turns. England must be the home of green tomato chutney!
All we had to do(!) was bury six poles into the ground a couple of feet, connect the frame parts together, and push them into the pole supports. If you have a nice flat garden with a good layer of soil this is probably not too much to ask. When you have a garden on a slope with topsoil of about twelve inches before hitting the chalk bedrock, this is a little more tricky.
Bobbie had spent a couple of days creating the level base before the weather broke. So, with good weather this weekend, he wanted to make the frame.
This involved sledge-hammering an iron spike into the ground in order to make a hole that he stood a chance of sledge-hammering the support into. It was a hard day’s work but he was well chuffed at the end to find that the frame was pretty much level.
I think the least I can do is imortalise his efforts in this blog :>)