Compost and Cow Manure

 Today was a busy day for me.  Tuesdays are Rotary Club of Inman meeting day so I like to schedule a lot of my running around and errands in Inman on Tuesdays.   I made a stop at the Inman Library and returned a couple of books.  There is a lot of construction activity happening on Mill Street. I’ll be excited to see what the planned renovations look like in our little town.

After Rotary, I made a stop or two and then got home.  I was gone all last week with the grandchildren to visit Disney World.  I expected the yard and plants to be really in need of my care when I returned.   However, the cold weather we have had slowed things down and I wasn’t as far behind as I thought I might be.  I was really excited to see how much the raspberries had grown, especially the new ones we put out.  I had planted English peas before I left for Disney and they are coming up. 

Any gardener is really fond of good dirt, compost, manure, and fertilizer.  I haven’t really had a real compost bin, although I have had place in the yard where I put compose material and just let it naturally decompose.  But I was looking on YouTube recently and saw a video for making a compost bin out of wood pallets.  We have plenty of those because Harry places the big round bales of hay on pallets in the barn. As he sells the hay or feeds it to the cows, the pallets become available.  So, we watched the video and he said that was an easy thing to make and it was.  This morning while I was at Rotary, he put the bin together and we moved it to the spot near the garden.   We leveled the ground and placed the bin.  I put some good sturdy cardboard down on the dirt. That will keep out the weeds and eventually break down in the compost. By that time, I won’t have to worry about weeds coming up in the compost.   I’ll include the link to the video.  We didn’t put a gate that opens in ours because when we need to, we can scoop out the good stuff from the top. 

As I said earlier, any serious gardener has a thing for good dirt and fertilizer.  I love putting manure on my beds, especially the roses.  Horse manure, mixed with sawdust, and well rotted—several months or even a year—is the BEST!   While I was gone, Harry went to a friend’s house that also buys hay for her horses from us.  She had a pile of horse manure mixed with sawdust that was really perfect!  He brought home several loads and scattered it on a new section of vegetable garden we opened up this spring.  But he saved several big scoops for me to play with!  So today, I pulled pine needles back from the rose bushes and scattered this really good horse manure around the roses.   I worked it in with my spade and was careful not to get it to close to the base of the plant.  Even though this manure was very well decayed, it can still “burn” the plant if put too close.  

Thinking about all this compost and manure and natural gardening reminds me that the natural way of things is best. God has planned for the breakdown of plant material so that the earth constantly renews itself in spite of man’s interference.  This evening after supper, I walked out to the new compost bin to toss cantaloupe peelings and some lettuce that had gone bad in the fridge.  A Bluebird was sitting on the side of the bin checking things out.  I am sure that he will take care of insects around the bin for me.

Everything has its place and its purpose.  Even horse manure.