The Story of Crumbs - Part IV - Gross Stuff

Don't worry, it's just apple juice. I thought it best not to include pictures in this post. (You thought it was beer didn't you...)

We know that if it is organic, it will rot, flowing through the cycle of life begetting life but most of us have a dirty, little secret: we think our own input is disgusting. Pee, poop, blood, body, hair, skin cells and spit cause us to cringe. There is good reason for this, as we are vectors for disease. We have created sanitation systems, hygiene products and burial rituals to limit the risk. Clearly caution is warranted. With that warning out of the way, let's look at the hierarchy of fear regarding the body.

Nails and Hair: These are mostly made of the tough protein keratin. If you have ever observed the decomposition of a dead animal, you will see the hair lasts, along with the bones, for quite some time. The most commonly recommended use of human hair is to scare away pests but its protein origins mean that it is also a good source of nitrogen. I even stumbled on this article in Science Daily: Human Hair Combined With Compost Is Good Fertilizer For Plants.* I wouldn't hesitate to add my family's hair and nail clippings to the pile and add the resultant well finished compost to the garden.

Urine: Also known as liquid gold, it is oft quoted that fresh urine is sterile** except in the case of an infection or, I would argue, after it has touched your flesh when it would be innoculated with the usual skin crawlies. Being high in soluble wastes, which include nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, many people piss into compost piles to get them cooking. They also dilute it and use it as a fertilizer for plants. In fact, urine use in the garden is so mainstream, even regular papers publish articles on it. Common suggestions include applying it the ground, not the plant, and creating a buffer between last use and harvest if you are eating the plant to avoid transmitting disease. You get answers as to whether you can store urine. I wouldn't use it if you had typhoid fever...

Puke: Yuck! I suppose it probably composts but I draw the line! Okay, I tend to prefer spirals, and zigzags to lines so I'll address it but only for a second. Fresh, it probably can transmit whatever disgusting thing made you eject it in the first place. After some time in the wider ecosystem, it almost certainly is rendered harmless. I don't want to discuss it further.

Blood: Since I hope that most people don't have access to any appreciable amount of person blood, I'll restrict this to a talk to menstrual blood. Like blood meal, it is rich in plant nutrients and people do use it to fertilize plants. Most mentions are about non edibles. Because of the possibility of transmitting blood born diseases, it is probably safest to thoroughly compost this product before use. The Humanure Handbook handles the subject of composting bathroom waste which would include menstrual blood if you had a lady in her fertile years in your residence. Thankfully most of the diseases that freak us out do not last long in the hostile environment outside our cozy bodies. There is a reason that some diseases are only transmitted by intimate contact. Most woman collect their monthlies in non compostable products but biodegradable tampons are available as are alternatives such as washable pads and the menstrual cups. I'll let these people carry on the discussion.

Poop: Known as manure in polite circles, the solid waste of animals is often applied to fields either raw (more likely to cause disease) or after composting (less likely). As humans carry the highest level of human pathogens, it would make sense that it would have a high disease causing potential if not properly handled but that is not to say you should be poo phobic. Our current sewage system is all about waste: wasting water, electricity, work and so on. Historically (and presently), in many areas, its value as a soil builder is recognized. Just like with animal manure, it is applied raw or after composting and just like with animal manure, applying it raw has a higher risk. Composting toilets are a viable alternative to conventional sewage treatment. You can also do the composting yourself. I refer you again to the Humanure Handbook (Yes I like this book. It's an enlightening read).

Body: When it comes time to rejoin the earth, instead of being cremated or buried in a conventional casket, it is now possible to get a compostable coffin for your green funeral. As the subject of our own demise opens a whole other can of phobia worms, outside of my gardening jurisdiction, I"ll refer you to Natural and Green Burial page of the Pagan Pastoral Outreach site, with Ontario specific links.

The Story of Crumbs

Part I - Baby Flies
Part II - How to Guide (to Composting)
Part III - Will it Rot the Right Way?

-&-

* Original Article
** Even Wiki agrees (Wiki being the ultimate 'they' so they say it and if they are currently in consensus about it and I occupy the territory of they for others then I suppose they are probably right.)

Pee Facts: a website expouses its use as a fertilizer (always guard against the copy crazies and internet experts by cross checking facts and looking for not only the original source but it's validity)

Not exactly related but for the womb blood curious, a link to the Museum of Menstruation.

Night Soil - Wiki writers paint a unpretty picture

Waste Not, Want Not - The Story of Crumbs - Part IIIWill it Rot the Right Way?

Why the coat oil? Do you have something non compostable to hide?

Let's just jump in and grab this bull by the horns and then attempt to toss it in the compost pile. Wait that's against the cardinal rule of composting: No animal parts and by that we mean no milk, meat, or oil.

Otherwise, you could risk attracting pests, introducing disease or just smelling up the place.

I've never been very comfortable with this rule. Afterall, life is starting and ending in my yard all the time from the tiny microbes to the more visible vertebrates. Languishing in corners are the carcasses of bird and rodent. These have only caused a temporary smell and no one has mentioned that I should treat them as hazzardous waste. However, they are not in my compost pile and I have yet to introduce road kill into my corn patch so let's disect the problem and see what parts of it should induce panic and which parts can safely turn into humus.


The problem: pests, disease, oil and bones.

Many sources will say that you can get away with adding some dairy and a few will even allow a bit of meat such as the odd dead mouse (really) or flecks of oil assuming you bury it in the hot part of your pile.

Seen from a digestable perspective, the problem with meat and milk is the oils contained. Oil is both hydrophobic (scared of water - watch oil run screaming when you add water) and smothering, excluding two important components for aerobic (with oxygen) composting. Adding great dollops of lard or vats of olive oil is therefore not a good idea but a hot compost pile should have no problem consuming the left over roast duck in orange sauce or that yoghurt forgotten in the back of the fridge as long as carbon to nitrogen ratios are respected.

Disease organisms, for the most part, won't stand a chance in the inferno of hungry organisms and heat, but life is tenacious so I won't make a blanket statement that everything pathogenic will be eliminated. This is also true for plant diseases.(1) For more on this subject, I highly recommend reading the Humanure Handbook.(2) Some diseases, not only require direct host to host transmission but they only survive a narrow range of pH, temperature and moisture. Some, do not. If your beef could have prion disease, for example, I wouldn't compost it. I also wouldn't eat it. Not a bad idea to wash off some of that dirt from your carrot before chowing down too. (Kids did you here that?)

The aroma of free food will attract scavengers. It doesn't matter if it is a rotting apple or a left over t-bone steak. There are enough omnivorous pests that I would argue any decaying food can get the rats, squirrels, ants, racoons, bears, dogs, crows, etc... all excited. I have never had a problem with this in the city. Sure there were squirrels running away with their apple core bounties but I never had my compost strew about. Not everyone has such luck and quite frankily do you want a bear to think of your backyard compost as its fast food rest stop?

Those of us that do have an issue with truly scary magnificent animals visiting their piles may want to use other forms of human food to soil/plant food conversion.

Covering up the Problem

You may have seen composters on the market that claim that they will allow you to compost anything from dog doo doo(3) to meat. These normally use sealed, anerobic composting. They will contain the guck and the smell (hopefully). Alternatively, if you have just come home from a successful day fishing mackeral and want to have all your friends over for a fry up, you can do some shallow grave composting to cover up the allur of fish heads. A good topdress of dirt will cover some pretty ungodly smells(4). You could build a garden bed by progressively digging and covering an enrichment trench.

In The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Pleasant and Martin, they take care of the problems of smell and pests by digging a pit with an animal proof lid. Keeps a potentially unsightly pile out of sight too.


Transforming the Problem...

Composting is all about transformation so instead of lamenting that you have to toss away some perfectly good bones, why not make stock. Boiling bones and meat scraps to get the last of the goodness out of them helps kill potentially harmful organisms, gives you a base for delicious meals and reduces the bone of contention (I'm laughing) into a partially demineralized product that you can leave to dry. Crush the brittle remains to make something akin to bonemeal. I've read of people charcoaling then grinding the bones too.

Egg shells can also be saved and broken into smaller pieces that are more evenly spread around the garden. You could also boil these if you were worried about the little bits of raw egg clinging to them and pour them water and all into your pile. I wonder what would happen if you disolved the egg shell in vinegar first then added it?


... a little more radically

Speaking of chemistry experiments, Bokashi is a composting system that can be done inside using any food scraps by fermentation. This is essentially predigestion of your food into something more immediatley useable in the garden.

Indoor worm bins do pretty much the same thing leaving you with a wonderful crumbly soil at the end for soil ammendment or a pot medium for things like seed starting. I was quite surprised to read what people feed their worms since I had been lead to believe that their delicate systems handled only the most strictly orthodox compost ingredients.

On the internet however, there are people who have set the worm bins (which are communities fo various organisms not just red wigglers) the challenge of consuming a steak or a Tim Horton's coffee cup. I guess once you get to be a master worm wrangler, you could easily give them the last crumbs of your pork pie.(5)

A creature that definitely would have no problem with most table scrap are chickens. When I asked the question on my favourite gardening forum - Homegrown Goodness - what people composted and how, many said that they dealt with the issue of oil by adding it to their feed. Heck, you can buy chicken poop 'all natural' fertilizer in the stores. Someone else said the oil just helped their Terra Preta pile burn.

It sounds drastic but burning in areas where it is legal is another way to deal with problematic organic waste. One hunter makes sure that no big creatures raid his compost by cremating left over carcasses. This potash is then sprinkled onto the garden.

So there you go, deal with dairy, meat and oil by: burying, boiling, pre-digestion and burning.


* I would avoid adding diseased plant material into a compost pile, especially a cold one. Instead, it would be better to cook it in a plastic bag, burn it or dispose of it by some other means to avoid spread. In the literature, minor disease issues are often dealt with by clean up, or tilling under the diseased residue.

** Go on, read it, it's all available online, or buy it as a reference. Yes, it talks about poop.

*** Cat waste is spoken about as more of an issue as it carries toxoplasmosis which is harmful to fetuses and people with compromised immune systems. Other carnivorous animal waste can also transmit disease. I'll talk about possible composting methods in another post. To tide you over, Compost Guy gets the link of the day with a third reference to his site on this page.

**** If your slow burn pile has taken on an anerobic odour and the stirring the slurry seems impossible, cap it off with a couple inches of soil. This has worked for me.

***** I know if you look up feeding red worms meat, you will get the endless repeating of the same thing to avoid meat and dairy. The Copy Crazies, hereforth known as C.C. is an issue on the internet. I assure you there are also people who say otherwise such as this amusingly written article at Earth Worms Galore. The problem seems to be more with keeping the bin user friendly rather than the worm ecologies (more than worms will reside in your bin) not actually being able to deal with these byproducts.

Waste Not, Want Not - The Story of Crumbs Part I - baby flies

Waste Not, Want Not - The Story of Crumbs Part II - the how to guide

Now that we covered the easy bits, let's move on to more contraversial waste:

Waste Not Want Not - The Story of Crumbs Part IV - pee, hair and other gross stuff.

Waste Not, Want Not - The story of crumbs - Part II

This imprisoned compost is my part of the Compost in a Box project where I am transforming a field into a garden bed by filling boxes with winter compostable waste set side by side. In the spring, I will layer on some more stuff and plant compost loving plants on top like squsah. I'll keep you updated to see if it works.

Everything you wanted to know about Compost but were afraid to ask*

Ah compost, much like making babies, the science of nourishing soil can be so easy you do it by accident or as difficult as a finely tuned experiment. Essentially compost is the byproduct of the breakdown of organic matter by a host of critters to produce the lightly textured, water retentive plant and soil fortifier that is humus.

My little compost in the city

As I am a busy homeschooling mom who works causally as a landscaper and all around Jill of the garden, I tend to prefer the methods with the least amount of input for the highest quality output which makes me favour lump it and leave it composting techniques. In my urban home, I dumped all vegetable scraps, and safe plant waste into a big enclosed pile at the far corner of my yard. By safe, I mean plant waste that was not diseased, and did not contain other spready seeds, roots or other propagating plant parts. I only had room to hide one pile of rotting vegetation so it was used continually all year round. If the pile started to smell, I would shovel on some dirt or add loosely packed dry material. It (almost) never dries out in our climate so that wasn't a problem. In late fall, I would push aside the uncomposted top layer and shovel out the composted bottom half. Some of it was usually half finished in that there were some recognizable remains. This would be used to topdress intensively cultivated areas, or to level off areas where plants were dug out.


Oak Leaves cuddling up to late fall brassicas.

Fall leaves I would leave where they lay on the gardens and collect up with my lawn mower if they fell on my shrinking lawn. They were then used to mulch my garden bed. This is probably close to the laziest way you can compost with the exception of tossing vegetable scraps out the window into the yard.

Compost In Place

However, even the compost pile is optional. Organic matter can be used to help build new garden beds in the topdressing style made popular by folks such as Patricia Lanza of Lasagna Gardening or her predecessor Ruth Stout's straw heavy 'No work, Garden Book.' Generally these gardens are topped with something that can act as a mulch. I've read of several sources than add continually to the garden by tucking vegetable scraps under the mulch. If you have a light fluffy top layer like straw I could see this working.

The Complete Compost gardening guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin opens up in situ rotting by describing methods of pit composting. Creating an accessible underground pit solves lots of problems for urban composters such as moderating the temperature and moisture, cutting back on smells, frustrating some pests and hiding the pile from view. They also write about planting around buried compost which acts as a reserve for moisture and nutritients. Concentrating your organic resources is by no means a new idea as putting the good stuff where you want to grow more good stuff is a time honoured tradition. Steve Solomon in his book Gardening When it Counts suggests if you have few resources but a urgent need to convert sod into a garden then dig and bury compostables just where you are going to plant. I have used this technique with success many times when I had plants to put in a new bed that was not yet prepared. Planting in half finished compost is another commonly recommended technique. More than one person has seen the benefit of growing squash or potatoes in the pile by accident.

Finally you can trench compostables by digging them in a 'shallow grave.' Just before moving, the city forgot my overly full green bin so instead of leaving it for the new people to deal with, I just dug it into the ground. Great way of getting rid of smelly waste.

Composting serious style

For some compost is an art. They have three (or more) bins side by side and store browns separately to combine with their greens in just the right balance for problem-free breakdown. Once a pile is built, it must be kept aerated by mixing, tumbling, piping or some other technique and properly watered which may mean exclusion of water as much as it might mean watering the pile. Some of these artists have a hot pile that can make sweet compost in a matter of weeks. It is argued, that to properly kill disease organisms and weed seeds that you want a compost that steams. True, true but if you don't have the energy, time or interest in becoming a dirt artisan, don't despair as cold compost is lovely too. In fact, most humus is produced from mellow rot that isn't so hot. Imagine walking along the forest floor if leaf litter sizzled.

Organic matter is made up of the so called CHON(SP) formula of life: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen with lesser amounts of Sulfur, Phosphorous, along with various odds and end atoms. For the purpose of understanding compost, we focus in on carbon and nitrogen at a ratio 30:1 which produces a quick, smell free buffet for aerobic microrganisms and friends. Nitrogen is what proteins are made of so you won't be surprised to hear that it is higher in things like meat, bloodmeal, and fresh greens. However, too much of it can make an ammonia scented, slimy mess. You have to cut it with carbon. As students of organic chemistry and Trekkers will tell you - life on earth is carbon based, and so are the sugars that fuel that life. Here enter the browns such as dried plant matter like straw, fall leaves and tree based materials like sawdust or paper. Being too heavy handed with carbon though can significantly slow down decomposition. Just out of interest, did you know that purslane contains a C:N ratio of 8:1? That's pretty high when you compare it to blood which is 3:1. In contrast, cardboard has a ratio of approximately 450:1.**

If you manage to achieve the golden ratio of 30:1, have adequate aeration and moisture then you could have quite the party of critters squeezing the goodness out of your scraps, along with all the critters consuming them. This will create the kind of heat that causes my friend in Northern Europe to joke about going out on snowy winter evenings to walk barefoot on top of his cozy compost pile.

Much is said about the biological progression from microbes that live in moderate temps to thermophiles that work in the middle of the action to the return of the temperate folk as the pile mellows. You might even hear about the difference between aerobic composting - that's in the prescence of oxygen and generally doesn't smell and anerobic decomposition - think swamp. When oxygen is not available, rot can still go on, but the class of creatures that do the job release stinkier byproducts so most composters avoid this situation. I have encountered an anerobic layer at the bottom of the compost pile which is soggy, slimy and smelly. Oft quoted is the fact that anerobs require less nitrogen to do their buisiness so the qualities of the produced compost is caused by the excess of N.

Anerobic composting generally takes place in sealed compost systems or in still water such as when making compost tea either on purpose or by accident as my mother does whenever her roof collecting water cistern also collects leaves. Great for the plants, she tells me, but smells terrible. By the way, some people will say that proper compost tea is made using aeration and some other stuff like molasses which cuts down on the aroma.

What we don't tend to read too much about are all the other organisms that reside in your pile from invertebrates like millipedes to earthworms, fungi of all sorts, plants that make it through the trial by fire and the odd mammal or two that's usually just passing through. No one wants to pass up on this bonaza.


This brings me back. Here's a picture from my old gardening blog from my old compost bin of old compost that has long since turned into humus.

Feeding the Beast

In order to properly explore what goes into compost, another post is needed but the most conservative rules are: raw vegetable matter that is not diseased, water, air and whatever enters on its own. That's all.

Actually anything that was once alive has a good chance of becoming humus given the right conditions from paper to pee which brings us to Part III - Will it Rot the Right Way?

Part I - Baby flies

***

* It's true, I didn't really answer every question about compost. Perhaps a better title would have been Holy crap, there's a lot written about decay! but it wasn't as catchy.

** Numbers from the Humanure Handbook

*** The middle section feels like it lacks sufficient internet induced referencing. These are when you swipe someone's idea, quote someone or otherwise feel karma compelled to refer to their website/book. In this case, I was mostly dusting off the part of my brain that remembers things but similar information can be found in another good book: The Real Dirt by Mark Cullen and Lorraine Johnson.

***

A lot of other home scale composting styles in no particular order:

Vermicomposting - using worms
1. Manual from the Organic Agricultural Centre of Canada
2. The Worm Factory - local supplier of red wrigglers

Bokashi composting - kind of like sourdough bread but not.
Make your own bokashi starter or Extreme Bokashi

Hugelkultur - wood berms based beds. Lots especially useful if you live in a wooded area with shallow/poor soil. Permaculture Forum talks wood based dirt

Compost Tea - brewing your compost, sometimes tisanes of particular leaf crops are used like comfrey, yarrow or nettle for a nutrient boast or foliar spray. Definitions seem to differ in exactly what should be called compost tea and what should be called stinky greens or smelly brown goo juice. I suppose this is rather like composting itself with the sophisticated aerated, molasses added method and the more basic sticking organic stuff in a bucket of water and straining.

Leaf Mold - What forests (and you can) make.

Waste not, Want not - the story of crumbs - prt 1

Thank you to Colin Purrington on Creative Commons for this lovely shot.

Part 1 - Baby Flies

I have always been an avid composter - the kind that offers to mow neighbours fall lawns if I can take home the rich mix of grass clippings and shredded tree leaves in trade. Despite approving of the city's green waste recycling program, I didn't actually add much to it as I needed my compost for my own garden. That said, as we were preparing the house for moving, I did start to use it so that our composter wouldn't be too full for the new owners. And on several occasions I noticed a mass exodus of adorable fat, baby flies. Apparently, the appearance of these young insects has caused some of my friends to quit the green bin program because they were too grossed out. Signs have gone up around the city of a little child's hands holding some dirt and a seedling to encourage participation.

I think we can all agree that we love the Earth. Right? There are only a few that are craving its wanton destruction, the rest of us have converted to latter day hippies. Who among us has not felt shame when they have to apologetically ask for plastic bags at the checkout counter because they left their reusuable ones at home? Unfortunately, too many of us have been taught to step on ants, and feel faint at the smell of manure. We clutch our hand santizers and avoid thoughts of death.

The thing is that the wonderful biological film covering our planet is a dynamic system with parts growing and others dying and being recycled. We are all part of this green program. The man that eats the steak and defecates what his body does not need. The sewage bacteria that turn this 'waste' into fuel. The fungi that live in symbiosis with the forest and equally consume its dead limbs. The plants that thrive on the lightly textured, water retentive soil rich in humus. The person that eats a salad made from those plants and well...

Insects of all sorts are involved in consumption of dead organic matter - both of the square and round cell type (plant and animal). Of course, we associate maggots with bloated dead bodies which is just freaky so when we see our green bins crawling with fat little grubs, some of us feel a bit woozy. The usual fix is to put your waste meat in the freezer until collection day. However, I have to disappoint people by pointing out that I have seen maggots on entirely vegan fair - my lawn mower blades got clogged with rotting grass and grew a fine crop of baby flies. Fruit fly maggots are just as gross cute but more dimunitive in size. You can guess what they eat. Of course freezing your meat will also mean less smell in the summer - it freezes naturally this time of year. You could even freeze all your compost in those handy little mashed up and dried tree bags that they sell for lining your indoor mini bin OR you can learn to love baby flies.

I might be unpopular here.

But, the visceral reaction to seeing these harbringers of death can be changed into a wonder how Earth herself wastes not. Just keep telling yourself "Awe, baby flies. How sweet. Look at them," as you gag and quickly turn around.

Other methods include:

1. Add dry material
2. Freeze your compost
3. Make your kids empty the compost in the bin
4. Wear rose coloured glasses and sing an earth loving folk song
5. Pressure wash your bin once in a while*

And my no. 1 tip: Ignore them. Really, they will either die of dehydration on your driveway, get eaten by something else or pupate into flies. Assuming you are like most North Americans and have both screened windows and air conditioning, you probably aren't too bothered by flies inside the house. Outside, the sky is big enough to share.

* It won't really help either but your bin will be sparkling for a whole half a day. Cuts down on that hard to scrape crust of goodness too.
** Only 1 picture? Yes, I apologize but I was too captivated by the beauty of nature to remember to take pictures of the maggots that have graced my garden.

***

What other people say:

cbc story about squirmy people and pressure washers
Ottawa Citizen's working mom encounters the adorable fly babies

***

Stay tuned for: Part 2 - Binning the green bin compost style

Big on Fall Leaves

The Urban Forest

When I think autumn, I think leaves. Crunching along beside curbs cluttered with the bounty of fall litter. These gold, orange, brown and red riches fall in the urban forest just like they do in the wild but instead of enriching the soil, they are carefully removed, bagged and placed at the curb for pick up.


Leaves litter a suburban street.

Now don't get me wrong, I love bagged leaves. When I get a chance, I haul them back to my property where they are transformed into leaf mulch for perennial beds, path material, compost browns, insulation for tender crops and leaf mould. However, I feel a bit guilty taking from others who have not learned to appreciate this harvest time bounty. Not only are they missing out on a great soil conditioner, but it is easier on the back too since as an adult, fall memories contain a fair amount of raking.

My leaves are left if they flitter to a mulched path, perennial bed or beneath the hedge where they act as weed surpressers. Since my veggie patch is made of raised beds, leaves naturally settle on the pathes, locking teeth and becoming an effective mulch. Those that litter the lawn are mulched by our lawn mower and either left there or collected in the lawn mower bag. This rich mixture of grass clippings and leaves is then spread on the perennial beds. What remains to rake is only our patio stones and the rock path. Any extra leaves are left in a pile by the composter to add as part of my 'brown' layer, or to decay into leaf mould, a wonderful topdressing for the garden. Of course, if I'm making a new garden bed, the leaves are part of the organic layer I place on top of the sod.

Big Brash Brassica



But this is not the end to my leaf harvest. Brassicas make up a big portion of my fall garden as they are cold tolerant and tend to grow better in the cool, fall weather. Here my eldest daughter (her hand for scale at the top right) shows you some supersized greens: leaf broccoli, kale, chinese cabbage and a baby mustard leaf. They were whizzed up and added to a pancake recipe to make a savory base for curry. The kids loved these pancakes which did not taste that green (a plus for them).

As December begins, leaf harvest is almost at an end. The trees stand naked and the brassicas are braving the bracing wind. All is waiting for snow.

***

Also...

Seeds, glorious seeds. I'm pleased to say that I have had lots of requests for seeds (see side bar for seed list) and another batch of mailings will be going out this week. They may take a bit longer in this Xmas rush but hopefully they'll be there shortly.

Wondering where part three of the Soil Scars and Dressing your Dirt went too? I felt like a leafy interlude but Part III on specific veggies will be here next week, promise.

Harvest Day - cool cabbage, leaves of plenty

Oak leaves from the two very generous trees overhanging our yard.

This harvest day, I took in the last of the leaf bounty. The end of my driveway lacks the usual row of 10 yard waste bags as mine are spread out on my perennial beds and on the pathes of my vegetable gardens. I had quite a surplus this year as I raked up all my neighbour's leaves (they were ill and as I usual scam their leaf bags after they've done all the work, I figured it was karmic time for me to help collect them) so I also have extra high piles of leaves in the back turning into leaf mold.


Cabbage versus hand. Oh and that's no petite feminine hand, I outspan some guys.

I would also like to draw your attention to this massive cabbage. I know that they can grow bigger but I grew this one. Even with those chew marks, isn't it gorgeous? Most of my cabbages were the normal 2 year's old head size or smaller, which I expect with my tight spacing. But this one was planted near the edge of the patch and if I remember correctly, its neighbour was eaten by something so it had more room than the others. So now that I've managed to grow this Mammoth Red Rock, what the heck am I going to do with it?

For more on my befuddled and often mismanaged well planned and executed cabbage growing instructions, see Cabbage as Big as My Head from last year.