Saturday, March 29, 2008

A pile of dung!

My intention for this weekend was to level out the soil, mark out some beds, build a compost area out of chicken wire, and maybe, just maybe, sow some rocket (aka arugula).

Well, that whole plan turned into a pile of dung. Literally. After helping out at the Portsmouth Neighbourhood Clean-up event round the corner, I went round to the garden. I knew something was in the air when I arrived. A big heap of horse manure sat in the entrance to the community garden.
I phoned the garden manager to ask who it belonged to. She thought that probably the city had dropped it off. Very nice of them. Were they listening to me???

On closer inspection, it turned out that it was semi-composted. Too fresh to pile onto plants (it was still steaming a little bit and it definitely smelled of manure) but not that wet either. I decided that it probably would be good as a top dressing right now, to be forked in a little bit later.

I spread it on about 1/2 inch thick all over the plot, piling it on a bit more in the area where I want to grow winter squash and strawberries. Managed also to pull more weeds out as I went along.



Of course that meant that I couldn't do any beds or sow anything (in any case, I was getting tired and hungry). The last few days of snow, hail, rain and sunshine mean that April is round the corner and things should be picking up. Maybe I'll actually get some gardening done soon instead of just digging and dealing with shit...

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