Mid-season Composting

City of Mississauga Composters
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July was a month of delays and extreme heat. The 'hardscaping' was not finished until almost August, and the hot, humid days, with no rain, turned the ground dry and the grass dormant. As a result we did very little lawn mowing with the hand mower, and even less gardening. We didn't water our lawn during the drought, allowing it to go into its natural dormant state, but we watered our flowers a few times to keep them healthy.

The hot weather, though, was conducive to composting and when I was turning composter #1, I could see that excellent soil was forming in the bottom. We lost our boxwoods during the renovation of the front lawn -- they died before we could find a place for them -- so I had a fair bit of new material to add.

It was time to move the advanced compost into composter #2, for further composting, and freeing up space in composter #1 for additional biomass. I undertook this job today and was delighted to see how far along the bottom half of #1 had progressed.




Gene turning out Compost (photo by Marion)
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Just look at all that rich new earth created from cuttings, clippings, kitchen scraps, human hair, lint from the dryer, and guinea pig litter!




Mid-season Compost
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Come next spring, it will be further refined and ready to spread on the new native plants beds.