All posts by Sylvia Szucs

About Sylvia Szucs

Victorian Eclectic blogs on our changing lives, toward a useful mindset for those who would like to conserve, use less, save. It is a given that we will keep technology. We need to have fun along the way.

August Garden, Compost Eighteen Days Later

Garden, Weeds,

Here is the rotatable composter on August 8.

DSC07401

DSC07545Here is the same compost, plus a little more, eighteen days later.  You can see that it has settled a lot.

DSC07543 I moved it into a place where the weeds in the unplanted garden are grass.  This indicates a sunnier spot, because grass requires quite a bit of sun.

For this composter, I am trying to implement a hot compost method, where sun is helpful to reduce cooling.  The hot compost method produces faster decomposition, and better kills weed seeds (along with killing some of the beneficial things) than the cool compost method.   The heat is caused by bacteria which function well at a higher temperature, about 140 degrees Fahrenheit.   Since I have not gotten compost from this rotating  composter, yet, I would like to see if I can spur it on!

Another source says to keep your hot compost in the shade, and that the temperature spikes up and cools down to maintain a hotter temperature according to the ability of the special bacteria to grow, we need to give it more material and continue suitable moisture and nitrogen conditions.

One day after doing this, I put my hand into the middle of the compost, and it felt like it was only slightly warmer than body temperature, maybe 100 degrees.  Two days after doing this,  the compost was cool in the morning, so now I will try to increase the compost volume to see if I can improve the growth of the heat producing bacteria.

 

Taking Dust Out Of the House

Cleaning, Kitchen

My friend came back from her trip, told me she unpacked, and that she had hired somebody to, “Take the dust out” of her house.  I always liked that concept.  It focuses me on a more limited, approachable task at hand.  For example, sweeping the kitchen floor becomes just taking the dust off of the kitchen floor.

DSC07547 But then, the dust on the island open shelving became more evident, and so I emptied it and cleaned everything on it.DSC07549 Put back, it looks better with no dust!

I like the idea of taking dust out of the house, even if the idea grows!

 

A Compost Corner for Branches

Garden, Sustainability, , , ,

DSC07392 There is a little nook in the fence where we planted a crepe myrtle, overgrown here.  It conceals the nook.

DSC07445I had stored shrub trimmings from several months ago  in this little nook, and the leaves fell off.  I put most of the bare sticks on the other side of the fence, where I am saving them to chip into mulch for other plants.   DSC07428  I trimmed up the crepe myrtle and  other walk-side vegetation.  Before I could save it into this compost corner, for another round of composting, and mulch making,  the city hauled it away as brush pick-up a week and a half later.

DSC07444 Some sticksare left to toss to the other side.

DSC07527 Done, you can see a residue of the thick leaf compost or mulch, which fell off the branches.

DSC07526 The soil is actually getting thicker from this process.  As we read and write, more greenery and shrubs continue to grow.  Dead leaves and branches continue to decay back into the soil, releasing their life-giving  nutrients.

This mulched crepe myrtle has grown better than its sibling crepe myrtle planted at the same time.  It may be because of this mulch,  or due to that fact that the roots of a tree that had lived here, are decaying and releasing their nutrients as well, or both that this crepe myrtle grew faster than its sibling.  The smaller crepe myrtle is also growing well.  (No photo vantage point permits this comparison.)

Nearly two weeks after the city picked up  most of the brush, most of the leaves were dry on any remaining freshly cut sticks, and, after pulling off the dried leaves,  I carried those sticks to the back yard, along with the aged sticks from my pile, where I will chip them up to use elsewhere as vegetation sustaining mulch.

I learned three things here:

  1. Leaves make a compost mulch
  2. Branches can be reserved for chipping
  3. Mulch and compost make vegetation grow well
  4. The leaves dry and fall off the branches in about one month, so the branches do not have to be stored for  many months before chipping