I made a mistake. It's a mistake I'm not proud to admit, but for completeness, I should probably mention it on this blog.
After having a bunch of friends over on Saturday, I got zealous and started planting seeds in my raised beds. Then I watered the soil. I then realised the soil consistency was NOT what I wanted! (I think it's too sandy; when I watered it, everything sank and compacted and when I came out the next day, all the water had evaporated and left cracks in the soil. Not sure if this means too sandy or too clay-ey).
The next day, I put down a grid on the beds, still pretending everything was hunky-dory. I became aware that there wasn't enough soil in the beds!
So I've been working since Tuesday trying to repair this. I bought a few packs of Coco Peat and Perlite to provide better water retention and airflow. It's been hard work incorporating everything into the raised beds!
While I'm on the topic of soil amendments, I'll mention that I'm using two other ingredients in my raised beds: blood meal and bone meal. I'm using bone meal to add calcium to the soil for my broccoli and tomatoes; and I've heard that the smell of blood meal can repel rabbits (we have a family living in our yard somewhere, we suspect it's under the deck or under the trailer).
I will re-grid the beds later.
Composting
So I went to Myro's and helped rake the lawn a few days ago. In return, I got to keep the dry grass for my compost bin! THREE BAGS of the good stuff. Yeah! And that was just the front lawn!
After some more plant-thinning today, I raked out the materials already in the composter. The old stuff is mostly wet, and since the new grass is dry, I want the wet stuff on top so the water can soak downwards.
After raking out the old stuff:
Dumped in the THREE BAGS of dry grass:
Put the old stuff back on top and watered the whole pile lightly. Tada!
Just lookit all that delicious organic material! I can't wait to have all that compost!!
(Actually, I'll have about half that much compost; most of that pile is air, and it will reduce as the organic matter "cooks".)
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