The second heap of dry leaves did heat up to 50°C. Thus, I now know for sure that inoculating old grass and leaves with calcium cyanamide does help the decomposition process. And since I had to mow the grass (my garden was slowly becoming unwalkable), I mixed it with this old one again.

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Mowing the grass all around my garden was a whole day’s work, mixing it in alternating layers with the old grass did add some effort, but not that much. In the evening, I had a nice fresh green heap in the garden. That did not last long – the very next morning (today), the heap was already browning, and when I measured the temperature all around it, I got 55-60°C everywhere. It was perceptibly warm to the touch on the surface.

As an experiment with this second heap, I added no additional water whatsoever. For now, it relies purely on rain and the water from the fresh grass and decomposition. We shall see how that goes. I will again monitor the temperature daily, and I will only turn it, when it starts to cool off.

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I prepared a second three sisters patch, and I also reinforced the first one with poles connecting the tips of the outer rows. The tips were already connected with twine, but those only worked as reinforcements in tension. Connecting the tips of at least the outer rows with poles reinforced the whole structure significantly. Once the beans get established and get a few turns around the base of each pole, the whole structure should be able to withstand significant winds, hopefully. I did this already a few times (for beans only) and it worked.

Whilst doing this, the curse of my bloodline struck.

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I got distracted by an arriving package, and I put down the shears for cutting twine somewhere near the working area. I never found them again. My mother came by, and she was looking for them all over the place, too. And although she is very good at this, she did not find them either. Two days later, when mowing the grass, I found the plastic handles in the lawn-mower basket, but I never found the metal parts. Thus, I still do not know where and how exactly I actually lost them. It was definitely somewhere in the places where we looked, repeatedly.

I also planted all of my corn, which also took two days. Initially, I wanted to plant 8 beans, 2 corn, and 1 pumpkin in each square. I changed that, and I am planting either 8 beans and 4 corn or 8 beans and 1 pumpkin per square, alternating. For the 5×5 patch, I have 12 squares with corn, and 13 squares are so far empty, waiting until the Hokkaido pumpkins are big enough to survive slugs. For the new 5×3 patch, I planted 7 squares with corn, and the remaining 8 will get butternut pumpkins, possibly without beans, because of their poor germination rate. I am contemplating reinforcing the poles for these 8 squares so I may perhaps lead the butternut pumpkins up instead of leaving them grow along the ground.

I also put the beans outside in the shade to harden off for a few days before planting them in full sun.

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I was pretty knackered after all that work, so today, I decided to chill out a bit. I went to weed the onion patches, this time removing as much weed as possible. I managed to weed slightly over half of the patches before it started to rain, and I had to go inside.

There is still a lot of work to do. I reckon that once the beans are hardened off and can be planted, it will take a few days too, due to the sheer number of them (over 120 pots). After that, the pumpkins should go reasonably quickly.

And when the pumpkins are in the ground, I will, hopefully, have time again to do something else. It usually is like this in the garden – a lot of work in the spring, a lot of work in the late summer/fall, and relatively little in between.