Flower Bounty
Minty Compost
As I write this, it is hot! My garden is, well, out there, and I am in here and that is fine with me. Up north here we are not used to this kind of heat and it shuts me down. I was up early this morning picking black raspberries for breakfast and came into the house drenched in sweat before 8 am. My hope is that my garden likes it better than I, that my cukes, tomatoes and peppers are using this heat for some good production and I am sure my compost is cooking.
About a week ago I filled the tumbler with mint clippings. Which tells you how much mint I have. I am slowly learning the importance of cutting back, thinning out and pruning. It is a hard lesson to learn. Lush, succulent growth for which we mostly strive in the garden is really hard to cut down and compost mid summer, but the benefits are almost always enormous. One example is the mint that grows so tall it obscures the view of the Green Mountains from my garden chairs. I hacked off a foot and a half and threw it in the tumbler. My composter smelled like delicious mint for a few days and there is already new growth around the edges for sun tea. And then there are the asters that are lovely in the fall. They grow so tall they fill my living room windows with every shade of purple and pink and then become speckled with orange and yellow maple leaves as they fall from the trees. But this time of year they are just green growth hiding my roses, phlox, and hydrangea from view. So, the top foot and a half of these went into the tumbler this year as well.
I couldn’t be more pleased with the result. The proliferation of flowers has never been more beautiful and filling the tumbler has never been easier. But with all that green material, my compost started to get a little slimy. This time of year it is challenging finding brown dead material for the tumbler. Daily I have been adding wood shavings from the ducklings night time shelter, but that was not enough. Honestly, without a shredder, I don’t have time or patience to shred newspaper by hand, so I ended up dumping in a bunch of fresh wood shavings. It took care of the sliminess in no time and I should have a good batch of compost soon. This heat can’t last much longer and I will be out there again amongst the summer bounty spreading it, but for now the garden is looking lovely from my windows.
Tags: asters, brown material, Compost, green material, heat, mint, wood shavings
