Compost Tea, Handy Cart, New Gate and Moving the Poop Pile
plus the very best electrolyte drink
According to permaculturalist Morag Gamble, if you want to nourish your plants you need simply to douse them periodically with compost tea. This is made by planting comfrey around your yard, picking off some leaves now and again, and letting them sit in the yard in a pail of water, until they are fetid and disgusting.
Once the mixture starts to smell like rotting teeth, you’ll know it is ready!
Wheelbarrows are good in their way (Bill Coperthwaite surely thought highly of them) but I am a little embarrassed to admit that my favorite yard vehicle is a sturdy, plastic child’s toy: the Little Tykes tugalong caboose (not its real name). I found this one on the side of the road over a decade ago, and it plugs along just nicely. Especially handy for relocating mature hosta. Here, being used to bring some squash seedlings, lavender and rosemary to their corners of the garden.
Last weekend I came home to a new gate, special thanks to my husband. The gate itself is actually not new, but relocated from an area where we no longer need it, and now allowing direct access from the dog yard to the vegetable beds.
This gate needed to be placed right next to the spot where I had been composting the dog feces over the winter. Once the gate was in, and the poop pile disturbed, the chickens showed an immediate interest and I knew something had to be done. I removed the wire and - in the hot sun (anything above 70 degrees in Maine) I shoveled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of silty, nasty, heavy yuck and moved it to a pile at the far edge of the yard, adjacent to the regular compost pile. I used a regular wheelbarrow for this dirty job, rather than the Little Tykes caboose which doesn’t ditch its contents easily (and plus it would have just seemed wrong).
Once the pile was moved, I put a large planting pot near the gate to serve as a poop collector and caddy.
Job done, hands washed, shoes exiled to the back porch, I refreshed myself with an excellent electrolyte drink that you make as follows:
in a four-cup mason jar
squeeze half a lemon
add a big spoonful of raw honey
and a two-finger pinch of Maldon flake salt
filtered water to one-inch from the top
mix well and enjoy
