I had a very busy week in the garden, although I had to push the pause button for two days due to rain. I repotted all bonsai trees that were urgent, and now I can spend a few days taking some new ones out of the nursery and perhaps start putting them into pots. And I spent a lot of time on other works too.

Firstly, I raked a lot of dead grass and tree leaves out of my coppice and around the wire fence. The result was a slightly bigger pile than the moss one I showed you last time. The raking almost led to a relapse of my back pain, but luckily, it seems that a day of rest in the warm has helped.

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Having a huge pile of dead grass and leaves has inspired me to do something that I normally do not do – hot composting. I had to do my first mowing of the lawn anyway, and that always results in a huge pile of green grass clippings.

I normally do not bother with hot composting; I only do slow composting. I dump all organic material throughout the year in one designated spot in the garden, and maybe once a year, I turn it, and then I leave it be until I need it. With grass clippings, it is important to let them dry first, otherwise the pile ferments anaerobically and too quickly and starts to stink mightily. That is why I rarely use the collecting basket on my lawn mower. This time, I did use it and I mixed the fresh, wet clippings with the old leaves and dry grass atop the moss pile. It increased its height twice, and its volume probably three-four times.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

That is a big pile, but it still was not enough to use all the grass. The first reason why I do not bother with hot composting is that I usually have just too much green grass and never enough browns. For reference, it took me 5 hours of continuous mowing to cut most, not all, of my garden. I walked about 18000 steps whilst doing it, which is probably more than 10 km (I have long steps).

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

So after I started my experimental “hot” pile, I simply dumped the rest of the freshly cut grass on another spot. Since I did not let it dry first this time, it might ferment, but I am not that bothered by the smell. Depending on the weather, I will probably get the same amount of grass several times over during the summer. Which is the second reason why I do not bother with hot composting – I have enough work to keep up with the grass alone. Turning the compost pile over to aerate it would just add a lot of work, and I simply do not want to bother with that. I am only doing it this time because I hope to get compost more quickly to hill up the potatoes when they sprout. It does not need to be perfect for that; it just needs to not be stringy and matted, and it must be decomposed enough to not be hot anymore. That is a lesson that I learned the hard way – even a small pile of organic material might heat up enough to “burn” plants nearby.

I’d love to have a better use for my garden than having to mow grass on most of it, but that is not feasible. Starting an orchard is not possible due to water voles – hell, even starting and maintaining a firewood coppice is a challenge due to those fuckers. Not to mention that I would still need to mow the grass under the trees. Converting it all into vegetable patches is not doable either, not for one person. In the past, we had geese and rabbits who used up the grass and converted it into edibles, but I am not the right kind of person to have poultry or rabbits. So, mowing and composting are the only ways. That at least helps improve the soil on the vegetable patches significantly over the years.