Compost time again

Today saw the first serious investigation of the compost heap at the back of the garden for not far short of a year, with the bin being fairly full in consequence.

Took off the front panels - there being no lid these days - to reveal maybe 8 inches of well rotted compost below the top 8 inches of rotting compost. Virtually no red worms in the lower layer; presumably they have done their stuff there and have moved on up to the upper layer where there were plenty of them.

Three barrow loads behind the accessible wing of the new daffodil bed, where there are daffodils in bud and where, hopefully, there are to be rather more of them before the daffodil season is over. Just think of all the compost and TLC which was poured into their planting.

One barrow load of sieved compost for BH purposes, sieved using what must be the fairly ancient paternal sieve, at least sixty years old anyway - an ancient sieve which I am sure I have mentioned before, but it is lost in all the chatter about sieving bread flour. Cylindrical wooden rim with sturdy wire mesh, maybe 18 inches across, same sort of general idea as the much smaller (although both relatively and absolutely deeper) maternal flour sieve, but this last is long gone. It is a bit of a mystery why the rim has not got woodworm over the years, being stored untreated in a garage where we do get the odd woodworm. That aside, the thing is very like the illustration, courtesy of http://www.notonthehighstreet.com.

Sieved compost looked very nice, but it is probably the last compost to get the benefit of full on kitchen waste. Current practice is that anything meaty or fishy goes into the council bin, and from there hopefully onto and into a council fermentor, mainly because meat and fish in the compost attracts rats and foxes. Make up the weight with confidential paper from our one way shredder (we take our privacy very seriously, but not seriously enough to get a hard core two way shredder) and with dead leaves. But I suspect that the compost-lite will not push up the daisies as well as the full strength stuff. Will the red worms be as busy and grow as fat?

Replaced the front panels, hoping that they will last for another year. Half inch chipboard faced with some hard white stuff, presumably originally intended for kitchen or bedroom furniture, but with exposed cut edges the stuff starts to swell and break up fairly quickly.