I am almost on top of the work again, and I should be able to start re-potting bonsai tomorrow. Yesterday it rained, and today I tidied up most of the garden.
Before the rain, I managed to run the garden over with the verticutter again, scraping out an awful amount of mess.
It was a huge, fluffy pile that sagged a bit in the rain but not very much. I was considering what to do with it to accelerate decomposition. Moss takes a very long time to die, even in a pile. And after that, it takes a very long time to decompose because it is very poor in nitrogen. Out of the various ways to add nitrogen, I decided on Calcium cyanamide. It should initially kill all the moss and plant material in the pile, and after a while, when the pile gets colonized by bacteria, it should decompose faster. At least those are my hopes.
I estimated that I will have approx one cubic meter of slightly compressed moss, and for that, according to a quick Google search, about 0.5 kg of fertilizer should suffice. So I took a fork and I tidied up the pile, stomped it down a bit, and added the fertilizer throughout. Then I watered it even more with about 30 l of water. I am curious how this experiment turns out.
Due to everything being wet, I could not shred the reed stalks, so I had to break them manually. I added them around the garlic and strawberries to serve as a mulch.
And I also used a few bundles of reed stalks to line the walkpaths between the vegetable beds. This way, I won’t get mud glued to the soles of my shoes whenever I need to go there after rain. And they also should not get overgrown with weeds.
That’s a lot of moss and thatch. Though as is the way with compost I don’t suppose it’ll make that much by the time it’s done. Good use of the reeds, especially on the paths.
The garlic is looking good, some is obviously further along, but still all of it looks good.