Yard Scraps = Future Compost

The lawn is infested with weeds.  But Mom and Dad are too old to want to weed, and I don't particularly care about dandelions, clover, bird vetch, peppergrass, or most of the "weeds" we have.

However, I strongly care about sow thistle!!

Right: I stole this picture of a sow thistle leaf from the Internet.

It looks something like dandelions, but the leaves are hairy and pokey.  When mature, it has small dandelion-like flowers.  I hate accidentally walking through or sitting on it, and getting pricked.


When we got our topsoil delivered, Dad decided it would be a great idea to dump some soil around our spruce tree.  I understand that topsoil has nutrients in it, but this grade of soil also came with a bunch of weeds.  Also, seeds will germinate in it.  It is so embarrassing to have weeds growing in spruce-needle mulch in your front lawn.


So I decided to get rid of as much thistle as I could find, and add them to my compost bin!

Right:  Thistles and some humongously overgrown dandelions that I found here and there.  Also, gloves from Canadian Tire, a Fiskars weeder and my shameless Cutco scissors.

Dad is paranoid about weed roots growing back, so I cut the roots up into tiny pieces about 1cm long.

Leaves and roots:

Bucket of leaves:

We also have these stupid tree-weeds.  I can't stand them, they're so hard to get rid of.  So I raged on them a little today, and managed to pull some roots out.  Score!  These will go into my new leaf mold, into which I'm also adding wooden wastes, since I'm going to let it sit for a year or two anyway.

Corn was on sale at the store, so I got to add lots of kitchen scraps to my compost heap!  This is the second bucket:

Cutting it up to speed up the process:

I dug a hole down the sort-of middle of the heap.  Near the centre, you can really feel the heat coming out of here.  In my arbitrary rummagings, I came across a big juicy centipede and about five earthworms.  I'm proud!

To my surprise, I discovered a patch of grass that was still dry and hard!  In the picture, it's the pale patch near the centre.  I quickly pulled up as much dry grass as I could find, and wetted it down with water before pouring in the corn husks.

I'm so excited for the compost to be ready!

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