Homemade compost

The first weekend of March brings glorious sunshine. Perfect weather for gardening.

The weekend jobs were to carry on improving the area where the apple tree will go and some general tidying before spring really hits.

The apple tree will go near the top of the garden in the left side border. The soil in that area is horrid and needs lots of improvement before the tree goes in. For the last few weekends I have removed the grass, added good soil and dug it over but with any heavy rain it still gets too boggy.

This weekend I started adding sand to improve the drainage.

But how about the compost heap? Since starting work on the garden I have composted as much as I could, with any extra going into the wheelie bin. But for those few years I had not looked to see what was happening below the top level.

After removing the newest material from the top it wasn't long before I found really good decomposed compost, as you can see from the photo. And there was loads of it. Three buckets of this free compost then went in to the border to help improve it.

I hope to be able to have the soil ready for next weekend and get the tree planted before the growing season starts again.

I also dug up the carrots that have been growing since last spring time. I was hoping these would have grown bigger than the previous year but no such luck. As you can see from the photo the average length is only 2-3 inch's and perhaps two meals worth.

The lack of growth may be due to the depth of the container. This year I will plant some carrots direct into one of the borders to see how they do.