An exciting day is one that we bought the ‘Shredder 2000’…. It was actually a Ryobi contact shredder and it’s purpose was to deal with the cuttings from the tree and bushes in the garden. We used some of the money we got from selling our old Freecycle shredder we have had for years, a ‘roller’ shredder which turns out is a lot quieter but not that much good on smaller things. We spent the day cutting and trimming the tree in the garden and then shredding it all. This resulted in five bags of shredded material.

Up at the plot I had already prepped the second bin of the pallet composter. We built the composter with the pallets, as one of the first things we did when we got the plot, five pallets giving us two ‘bins’. The first bin did well last year, the second one has never been used for anything but storing things. I cleared it all out, lined with left over polythene that we still have from when we first covered the whole plot. The idea of lining is more to keep in the heat and keep out weeds. Some may say you need the air coming in from the sides to complete the mix, but if you turn it every so often then that does the same. Also, the bins are sheltered by overhanging trees and so while they do get wet in the rain, they don’t get over wet. The resulting shreddings have filled up the bottom, I need to cut some old decking to act as the front of the bin as I’ve done on the lefthand one. I’ll leave the lefthand bin until it’s all composted and so for the next 6-12 months I’ll add to the righthand bin.

At the plot I checked the turnips were getting established, and the spotted tiny sprouts on the sprout plants.

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