Free bins, and cauliflowers!!

A friend dropped me a message yesterday to ask if I’d like three compost bins. I rarely say no to offers of free stuff for the garden so I said I could go to pick them up today. Imagine my delight when I realised that two of them at least are 600 litre bins. That’s quite a bit larger than your standard dalek bin so I was thrilled.

Once I’d lugged them down to the vegetable garden I put one together. It was something of a conundrum at first, but luckily I found the instructions on the internet, thanks to an Ecosia search. I then started moving compost into it.

Compost turned into one of the ‘new’ bins.

With the ‘new’ bin on the right

If you’ve ever turned or moved compost you’ll know that it’s damned hard work and I gave up once the bin was three-quarters full. I was on the brink of sloping off for a cup of tea and a rest when I remembered a BBC Outlook podcast I’d heard recently. In it a young man who had taught himself to play piano on a paper keyboard said ‘you can always do a bit more than you think you can’. So with his words ringing in my ears I made up the next bin and began to fill that from my current palette heaps too.

Two bins in place. Once the third one is made up I’ll be able to move all the rubbish and the other two open compost piles away completely.

Compost nearly gone from one bay.

I haven’t finished. I’m 67 for heaven’s sake and I’ve put on more weight than I care to think about over Christmas and New Year. However, I’m thrilled to bits with my free bins. They’re going to make compost-making a whole lot tidier and better organised. Tomorrow I intend making up the third bin and dismantling the current messy palette bays.

Thanks for passing the bins on to me Katie & Gordon. I’ll make good use of them.

Homemade compost is producing some monster cauliflowers. Look at the size of this.

This is one cauliflower. The curd is still only the size of my hand and has a way to go, but if the leaves are anything to go by it will be huge. Gloves for scale.

These cauliflowers are self-blanching. The inner leaves twist into a coil and cover the central head - the curd - to keep it out of the glare of the sun and keeping it white. This one is still tiny and won’t be ready for a few weeks yet.