Here I am composting again.
You can see that the compost is really ready to be used.
This is the vegetable waste from the house and plot. Just see how it has broken down into nice rich compost for this years seedlings.
Nothing much to report this week. I went up the plot to take some composting, but didn’t do anything there. Instead I put down some wood chipping on my garden to suppress the weeds.
Do you remember when my comfrey was cut down by those helpful plot tidiers?
Well it has grown again almost to its former glory. It was a bit of a surprise, as I thought it was gone for this season. I did use it as compost, but I wanted to wait until the end of the season as it would then over winter nicely. Now it has grown again, I think it will still provide a good over winter compost enhancer.
Someone was asking about Borage and composting the other day. Well, yes you can compost Borage leaves. They act much like Comfrey and speed up the process and help make a lovely loam.
If you want to eat the leaves then they seem to have a cucumber-like flavour which is nice in salads. Some - if you have seen this summers adverts for Pimms O’clock’ - like to put it in drinks, though I don’t see why you should waste the leaves this way.
The blue flowers are more showy than Comfrey and attract bees and butterflies. to your garden.
If you want to grow Borage, then you are best served by sowing directly in pots or seed trays in good seed compost. Keep them out of strong sun light until they have germinated and produced true leaves. Then plant out or pot on when seedlings are large enough to handle.
I had a real shock today when I went to the plot. Someone had been and cut down my large comfrey plant. I had grown this as green manure for the composter so was surprised it had been levelled as you can see in the picture.
They had a general clean up at the plot yesterday and I couldn’t make it, but still, they didn’t have to attack my plants to get their own back. I know how hard it is to cut the hedges and keen the grass down, but you would expect them to have some understanding of what is a good plant and what is not. 
Here you can see that we just placed the cut up spinach in the composter. There is no need to do much more to it, it’s fine as it is.
In this weather, it will break down quickly. Though I am hoping for a bit of rain soon.
Here we cut up the spinach root we dug up.
The important thing about composting roots is that you cut them up into smaller pieces. This aids the breakdown process and we will soon have some lovely rich compost to bed some more plants with.
Nature is so good to reuse itself and so perpetuate the life-cycle. If only humans were the same.
On a rather windy day, we take a look at the comfrey growing on the allotment.
We will be using this to tempt the slugs away from the veg, but also as an important constituent of the composting process.
It’s a coarse Eurasian plant belonging to the genus Symphytum - part of the borage family. It has large hairy, lance-shaped leaves and drooping clusters of small, white, rose-coloured, or purplish flowers.
Here we have a second short video on what to put into your compost.
Here we have a short video on how to make your own compost.
