Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Sunday 15 July 2012

A sunny, busy, morning in the garden

Well we actually had a SUNNY day today ! at least until 5 pm, when it started to rain .

I did a fair bit of work in the veg garden. A few of the shallots are still growing


But most needed lifting and sadly a lot had rotted away.



The parsnips are doing well -


You can still see the loo roll tube I grew them in :-) Must add this shot to the "How to" guide!


And when I carefully excavated the soil - look! A parsnip!



We stopped for a tea break and, as usual, were joined by cats and hens. This is Babs, she wanted a drink of Compostman's tea.




This ought to be a carrot bed. No carrots grew.


The broad beans have all failed - covered in chocolate spot:-( so I pulled them all up and harvested the few beans on them.


The very pretty Purple Flowered Broad beans got it as well.

This is one of the beds containing early potatoes - I have had to lift them all, even though the harvest is rubbish, because I need the space for Kales AND the haulms were showing signs of Early Blight - not surprising really, considering the wet, humid weather we have had. I am on constant alert for Blight in the Early main crop beds.


This was the result of digging up 5 roots of Orla . Not good!


I had a delivery of plants from Rocket Gardens, today - they come packed in hay :-) What a very good idea!



 I am hoping the courgette plants I purchased will produce something as all my outdoor courgette plants were smashed to bits by heavy rain.

 So, not a great yield of produce    from the garden, but at least we have something to eat - I was beginning to worry we would only have tomatoes and lettuces!

2 comments:

  1. From what I've heard you are very lucky to have parsnips this year.

    We are hiding from the sun today as temps have hit 38 and are still climbing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love the loo roll idea! will definitely be pinching that one!

    ReplyDelete

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