Gardening group - the compost mountain

Jackwood garden

This Friday half a dozen of our volunteers borrowed a barrow load of tools and puttered around to Jackwood garden. We were working in the thick patch of laurel between the flower beds and the council yard.

Stake selection

We've been weeding in the area for years and we've been tucking the weeds away under the laurels for just as long. The heap has gotten just a bit out of hand after so long and has been threatening to escape from the laurels. And with the recent work on the wisteria, we were feeling a bit short of space for next year.

During a session earlier in the autumn we started making a bigger hole a bit further back in the laurels. This session we carried on with thinning the laurel patch and turned lot of the cut laurel branches into stakes.

We set the stakes and used some of the thinner laurel branches to weave them together to make a back and side for our new heap.

Weaving our new compost spot

Then it was time to start shifting our old compost into our new heap. We're going to have to carry on with that another day, but we made a good dent in the mountains.

Moving compost

Moving compost

We also started laying out a second heap to fill up next year - finishing that job will have to wait for next time we can borrow the tools. Fingers crossed we can get that done before it's time to cut back the dead heads from the garden!