Compost – A Fall Flower Ritual
The first batch of bulbs gives me an excuse for digging into the compost pile. I throw back the top layers that were put on since June, and after grinding a sharp edge on my round pointed short handled shovel I shave down the front of the pile in inch-thick pieces. It is not powder – it doesn’t crumble to dust. But it breaks up plenty well to be mixed with the soil in preparing beds for fall planting of either bulbs or hardy flowers. Since there is little nourishment or nutrient in the rotted leaves and other material making up the compost it is always necessary to add a complete commercial fertilizer and mix it with the soil at the same time you apply the compost.
Incidentally, I never have any compost over 11 months old. Compost that I do not use in preparing beds (I try to redo every bed about every three or four years) I put on top of the ground as a mulch.
Garden myths and superstitions about planting plants like night blooming cereus plant have been one of my hobbies for a good many years and I have gathered in a tremendous number of them. Many of them have good sound horticultural practices behind them, such as not planting night blooming cereus plant until the leaves of the oak trees are the size of squirrel cars. The only trouble is to catch the squirrels and find out how big their ears are.
Many others are completely ridiculous such as the one that says only a virtuous woman can grow ivy successfully in her home. Some day I am going to try to incorporate all of these in a book showing just why some of them make good sense and why others couldn’t possibly be true. If any of you have any from your mother, grandmother, or friends and neighbors, I would appreciate having them.
Many others are completely ridiculous such as the one that says only a virtuous woman can grow ivy successfully in her home. Some day I am going to try to incorporate all of these in a book showing just why some of them make good sense and why others couldn’t possibly be true. If any of you have any from your mother, grandmother, or friends and neighbors, I would appreciate having them.
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