Compost heap, Step Two

Today I took the last of the soil from the right side, it was another five full barrows, bringing the total on the new garden bed so far to nineteen. Once I was satisfied that I was at ground level, I started dragging the upper loose material, using a rake, from the left side. It was hard work on a hot day, there was a lot to go in the empty space and from time to time I would compact the compost down by stomping on it and wet the right side down with a hose, to keep dust down, but also to help with the composting process.

Apparently it is good to urinate on a compost heap to add nitrogen and other goodness, I tend not to do that though, you know, neighbours and all that.

We now have the right side filled up, new material will go on top of that until I have excavated the left side down to the ground level, then any new stuff will go to the bottom of that side. In the process of digging the left side, some of the upper material will be retained and moved to the top of the right side on a temporary basis, this is because that material is partially decomposed, not quite ready as soil for our beds, so I will drag it back into the left side at the end.

If you want a technical explanation, a three-stage composting system is essentially a biological conveyor belt driven by time and microbes. At the top layer, fresh organic inputs like kitchen scraps, weeds and yard clippings are introduced; this raw material is highly energetic, recognizable, and rapidly consumed by initial bacteria. As these materials break down and sink, they enter the middle layer—often called active or semi-mature compost—where the intense heat of initial decomposition has subsided, leaving behind a fibrous, dark transition zone where fungi and actinomycetes slowly break down tougher fibers. Finally, at the very bottom layer, the process reaches completion, resulting in finished humus: a rich, stable, and dark, crumbly soil-like material that is completely unrecognizable from its original forms and fully ready to nourish the garden.

In the late 1960s, my grandfather, John Edward Edwards, or Jack to those that knew him, understood all of that, no need for google or AI, he knew stuff without the internet, how could that be possible?

It also helps to have worms and other insects in the compost heap, worms consume and pass the composted material through themselves as they bore through it, they tend to live at the lower levels of the heap, creating tunnels and aerating the pile, every time I walked away from the heap with those nineteen wheel barrows of soil, our local robins would swoop in to snatch a worm or two, which is why when we are digging in other areas of the garden, if we find a worm, it is abducted by "aliens" and moved through time and space to the new planet called the compost heap. 

The yearly cycle. Compost heap.

It is more like every two years that the compost heap gets really full and in the last couple of days we have been moving some of the excellent soil out of the bottom layer of the heap, it is being moved to the front yard where we are creating a new shrub bed for the planting phase in September.

The process is hard labour, basically moving material about, the exposed lower level, on the right, has very good soil and it is being transported to the new bed, when I hit solid ground and empty all the corners, the newish upper layers of the left hand side will be moved over to the right hand side, exposing the great soil underneath. In just two days, during our half-hour sessions, I have moved fourteen very full barrows of good soil from the right which I estimate to be one and a half cubic yards, that would be about twenty-four 50L bags.

The cost is zero, besides physical labour, and we have had many lots of good soil out of this compost heap since we built it back in March 2017. 

As they say Aardvark never killed anyone.

In the days to come I will continue the cycle, it means that the upper material on the left is moved to the lower of the excavated side, then if needed, I will remove the good soil from the bottom of the left hand side and we will start adding new compostable plants and peelings to that side first then both sides, in about two years time, we will have more good soil to use, the only problem being is, where will we use it?

Photos of the newly constructed bed will follow in the next week I expect.

Princess Auto

I have a buddy out in Nova Scotia, he notices that when something breaks or is needed, Canadian Tire often have it on sale that same weekend, in a similar fashion, after the wheel blew up a few days ago, I was browsing the vastness of the interwebs and noticed that Princess Auto had a 13 x 2-1/2 in. Solid Rubber Wheel Assembly with 32% off, usually $21.99 and on sale for $14.99 and it was a stars aligned moment as we were down in Victoria on a mini break, so a visit to the smelly place was required, a warehouse full of forever chemicals and foreign goods, to hopefully buy one, and we were not disappointed!

So, the old wheelbarrow is now back in business, all I needed to do was cut the spacers to the correct dimensions, apply lashings of grease to all the old bolts, add bigger washers to the bed connections (the bed is split in four places, this old "spare" wheelbarrow will live the rest of it's life on light duty) and I oiled the wood, which is in surprising condition for the age of a "lower shelf" unit.

In the next few days, three more yards of alder mulch will be delivered, moved and spread, which fundamentally gives us a break from gardening for the rest of the year.

Wheelbarrow, sort of...

The end of the month of April brought lots of weeding, as usual, and a delivery from Sooke Soils of some alder mulch, a dark, almost black mulch that we lay an inch or two on top of our weeded areas, it has been a fun week and of course, the old wheelbarrow was dusted down again, the tire was inflated and another year in the long life was to be started.

It was today that I was moving the last of the first lot of mulch about that I felt the inner tube go, I found that out afterwards, when it happened I just thought I had hit a bump. It was another issue in the life of a garden object, originally bought from Gibsons Building Supply, and I considered I would repair it again, so taking it apart I noticed that indeed, the inner tube was breached at the root of the valve, the tire and wheel seemed good except for the rusted out bearing, time to consider options.

Usually, taking my time and repairing things, while saving money, is the approved approach but at the moment, we are on a timetable with the mulching and need to finish phase one (more mulch arriving soon) so I replaced the old wheel with an "in stock" smaller diameter one which was sufficient but made the wheelbarrow a little more unstable and difficult to tip up over the larger rocks. In addition, overall the entire thing was in need of triage as the old bed of the barrow had previously split in four places, the handles needed attention and of course, now the tiny wheel, so perhaps it was time to replace the whole thing, although of course, logically I would keep the old one for a future repair or even if it is destined to be a planter.

The research online took no time, a new inner tube would be $20, a new wheel would be $30 which included an inner tube, no contest there, and then a whole new barrow, with two pneumatic tires would be $80 and after a little thought we had a trip to Home Hardware and a new sparkling one was bought and assembled over the period of an hour or so.

It is more of a garden cart type of wheelbarrow, more suited for bringing all the items to various job zones in the yard :

It is always a strange thing to move on from something so familiar, as I have said, the old 'true" single wheel barrow will not be discarded, I will bide my time and take it apart, maybe repair the split bed, oil the handles and brackets and keep my eye out for a full size replacement wheel or inner tube.

After all, storing useless stuff, that's what garden sheds are for. 

Nine Years, give or take.

There are almost nine years between these two photos, the one with the deer was taken around the 24th November, 2016 and we had been in Sooke for about a month. I think we had just got into the car to go to the Prestige Hotel for happy hour, nine years today.

This second one was taken about June this year, quite amazing how the trees and shrubs have grown. Well, the only one that was planted then is the town maple tree, looks to be perhaps seven foot tall in the first photo and now probably five times as tall. A great proportion of the shrubs planted were obtained from Russell Nursery, up in Sidney, bought with a gift card from the mother in law. 

The garden is quite a tracker of time going by, many planning jobs, the delivery of rocks for borders, multiple loads of mulch and gravel, stepping stones and, along the way, some plants failed, or were eaten, or as with the douglas Fir tree, broken at the header by another roving bunch of deer when it was just three foot tall.

It too has become a little monster.

Vittles

The years go by and the Panasonic breadmaker still does a great job of banging out a whole wheat loaf while we are outside in the garden. 

Here we are a decade or more later and the price of a seven hundred gram loaf is still about fifty cents to make at home, but in the supermarkets, despite all the outcry about "bread price fixing" between the big companies, bread is more expensive than it ever has been, yet strangely, the cost of bulk flour is only about ten percent more than it was back when we lived in Gibsons.

The jar is a rescue effort for some mixed peppers that were in the fridge, we do our utmost to conserve all types of food and the bell peppers were chopped and blanched in our proprietary pickle juice (water, vinegar, sugar) and they will now be fine to be consumed over the next few weeks.  

The appliance in the background is the new air fryer which, despite doubts, has become an excellent alternative to heating up the big oven and actually makes food tastier by not stripping all the moisture out.

We have been converted, resistance is futile.

The yearly pilgrimage

This year we took a two night break up to Sidney, which is about an hours drive from where we live, usually we just go for a single night, but we wanted to enjoy Sidney more this time and explore the area.

The reason we go there in September, usually after labour day, is to visit Russell Nursery for more plants and shrubs, financed by Karen's mum and brother, it is a tradition, a yearly pilgrimage and we attempt to maximise the bang for the buck by saving some "orphans" along the way.

All mixed up, we bought a total of 18 plants at the nursery, which are going to keep us busy over the next week in the garden, in the photo above there are also 5 other orphans from Canadian Tire, so I believe we have 23 plants to find spots for.

The trip to Sidney was quite wonderful, we went to see the second location of "The West Coast Grill" and chatted to the owner, Val, who bought us a pint, we had a great long walk along the coastline and visited several pubs (of course) and on the Thursday evening it was the street market which was interesting, as usual, nothing to buy but plenty of happy dogs to distract us from the overpriced scones.