Whilst embarking on some composting excavations this morning, the thought dawned on me how much things have changed in a very short space of time. Rummaging through the lasagne of my compost was like rooting around through the last few years of my life! And there have been gigantic shifts in terms of eco-awareness in that short space of time!
[Scroll down to the photos below, if you want to skip the blurbings, to have a look at some of the tell-tale-trinkets captured in the time-trap of my compost!]
I love compost!
A Compost Composition
The decomposing matter
(of green waste and paper tatter)
Provides homes for little critters
And food for rhyming witters
The worms eat through the stuff,
(the leaves, peel, food and fluff)
And leave behind their poo
Which enriches soil anew
The plants grow strong and healthy
in nutrients they’re wealthy
Then return to compost heaven
For a year or two, or seven!
Compost Heaps
I have 3 compost heaps/ bins in my garden. The one behind the shed has only been harvested twice in my 20 years here! It tends to be where I put the woody cutbacks and other things too big for the compost bins, and that I don’t want to rubbish-bin. (I also have an area beside the shed where I keep branches which have all kinds of uses, certainly too good for the fire or bin!)
I hadn’t touched this particular compost bin for a good 2 or 3 years. It is the one under my dining room window. A long time ago, I decided to rig up a line so that I can just open the dining room window, pull the line to open the compost bin lid, and throw my compost straight in. Very handy for wet/ wintery days!
And I’m sure this is a contributing factor to the reason I found a few good-as-new plastic mushroom tubs in there, as well as a fair few other interesting non-compostable ‘treasures’ (see below). The earliest date I could detect on any of the packaging was April 2017, though I’m certain the compost below that could be up to 5 or 6 (or 7!) years aged.
Plastic Preservation
Things have been so well preserved partly due to them being flipping plastic (this was prior to the big plastic-awakening of 2018/19, still, no excuse). Also because I’d allowed my heap to become so dry. Rest assured it is now well mixed and watered! (A good use for the algaefied, stagnant water from one of my water butts. This one is a metal bin with a grid lid, which keeps birds etc out, but unfortunately not slugs, leaves and other fallen things which assist in the richly anaerobic perfuming process.)
I hadn’t intended on digging out the compost today, but as these things tend to do, it just happened!
I was planting some last (late) early seed potatoes (should have been out a month or two ago) and needed some decent compost.
‘Behold’ I thought, ‘I have 3 compost-heaps full’! And so it began…
A few ‘finds’:
Some unidentified pink fungus/ mould…
A whole young coconut, and an old, completely hollow onion skin,
A cardboard paper-hanky box, yet to be consumed (left) and the pesky plastic hanky box ‘sleeves’ (right). The small pile of other non-decomposed ‘stuff’ is the remains of a baby-wipe. Yep, those are fine strands of plastic…
Coconut shells are built to last (left)! And the fibrous skeleton of something leafy (right). Both went back in for round 2 (or is it 3?!)
This is what a laminated cardboard box ends up like (left) once the remaining card is peeled away… And clearly crisp packets don’t decompose!
Gutted! I took a fantastic, brave video of this spider eating its beetle breakfast in its eggshell home, but in actuality I only video’d the moments before and after the gristly act…
I think it is a member of the tengenaria (house spider) [shiver] family.
Be impressed – that was a lot of asking around and google-imaging spiders!
And to end, a poignant, sore reminder of happier times gone by… The un-composted box from my discontinued and most favourite teabags in the world. You can read my review of the new, ridiculously inferior replacement here if you feel inclined… Or rather you should have done, it seems to have disappeared. Along with a raft of other unhappy Morning Time Tea customers. I had been drinking it for over 25 years. My review was polite and factually correct, I recall using the word ‘dishwater’…
And the remains of one of my second most favourite, and also discontinued tea-bags in the world, with the laminated sachet that some teabags are now packaged up in. Pffffft.
The main image at the top of the page shows just how well avocados (and their stones) are naturally packaged up!
Further reading:
This article is very informative if you’d like to read a balanced view about the history, pros and cons of packaging fruit and veg.
And my favourite composting website.
