Happy New Year, Composters ….and Hi-de-hi, if you can remember that far back.
First – warm thanks to monitors and Trish, without whom we would have got nowhere….instead, we look forward to an interesting New Year.
Now hear the news:
You may have noticed that it’s been raining. Quite a lot. Not exactly news, but the weather has exposed a flaw in the design of our otherwise delightful boxes: they let in the rain. As a result, the compost in all three boxes is very wet. Anticipating this, we had left our supply of plastic rubble bags on top of the compost in boxes 2 and 3 (counting from north). This morning I decanted several litres of water (and that’s just what the bags caught, most of it ended up inside).
Bad news: it will delay our next delivery of compost to Middle Street School… while our boxes are getting full! So emergency measures, as follows:
Box 3 (we hoped it would be ready by now) is 3/4 full of wet compost; as an experiment, I filled two bags with compost and left them on the south side ready for delivery (assuming the experiment works – it there is a spell of frost it will fail); this gave me a little more room more or less to turn the contents; plastic bags (under the tools) now provide cover.
Box 2 is just over half full of immature and very wet compost; I turned it as far as I could adding our remaining supply of cardboard – this will now be the ‘active’ box till further notice.
Box 1 is now full and locked; a few rubble bags provide protection against rain – let’s pray for good weather (or join in a go-away rain dance around the village pump).
Immediate Actions:
All cardboard is gone – come on, you must have some left over from Xmas!
I’ll buy plastic sheeting at Wickes to see if I can make better raincoats.
Longer Term Actions:
Susie – we may have to ask our gardeners to take some wet compost off our hands.
Adam – we should discuss how best to improve the boxes.
See you next year, and many thanks.
PS. We all hope Adam has made a full recovery after the operation on his shoulder.