Time to make mess into mud
There's no doubt my garden at home has been neglected this year, while the new allotment swallowed up my limited time and effort.
But the return of the mini rugby season on Sunday mornings has seen little Billy and I given a couple of hours to ourselves in the back garden while dad and the elder boys go and throw funny-shaped balls about.
Last weekend, while four year old Billy shouted instructions at me ("No mummy, not like that!"), I managed to mow the lawn and cut back a lot of the dead and diseased growth that is adding to my garden's unkempt appearance.
The compost bin was filled with layers of clippings and green cuttings – which need to be cut up small or run over with the mower – something I learned early on when my first attempts at compost took three years to rot.
Autumn is a great time to start composting if you haven't already done so, as you empty your borders and tubs of bedding, start raking up leaves and other garden debris and think about the year ahead.
I'm not sure I could manage my small urban plot without composting, and while I'm not as rigourous as I probably should be about it, it gives me a place to stick all my waste and get a load of free compost each year.
There's the added bonus of being able to get rid of all our household veg peelings, fruit skins and cores, tea bags, coffee grounds and general non-cooked yuk that a family kitchen accumulates.
Sending Bloke up to the compost bin with the sludge bucket as he sneaks out for a fag means I don't even have to empty the bin myself.
I started off with one of the super-cheap recycled plastic bins that you can get from the council for a discount.
(I think they start at 8 with free delivery, and you can add a compost caddy for kitchen waste for 2 from recyclenow.com).
They are very useful for a small garden but you must make sure you shred stuff up or it just doesn't heat up enough to break down.
I've one on the allotment that is already full.
When we moved four years ago I bought one of the wooden slated ones that slot together into a cube.
You must put the bin on soil so the worms and micro-organisms that break down the waste can get to it, and add a couple of spadefuls of soil from your borders every now and then to keep things topped up with beasties.
I compost all my green and woody waste (anything too big gets burned), kitchen waste, grass clippings, perennial weeds that have been left to shrivel and dry, shredded bank statements and old newspaper.
Keep chucking stuff in, give it an occasional turn with a fork, and in a year or so you'll find crombly compost appears at the bottom as if by magic.
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Weather for Northampton
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -6 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -5 C to -0 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South east
