Rather than covering the entire yard with compost, a basic design (bed layout) for the yard was sketched out and marked with sticks.
Next, the soil-fixing minerals were placed directly onto the mowed-grass and compost was placed on top. The beds are complete when wet cardboard is placed over the compost and mulch on top of that.
7:30am on Friday before work - going at it.
The compost is so warm in the middle of the pile from the decomposition that's occurring. You can literally see the steam coming off of it and mixing with the cool morning air!
We're getting there... by October 10 we should have most or all of the yard complete, depending on how many people show for sheet-mulching part II.I'm going to say this multiple times throughout these blog postings, but I cannot say thank you enough to all those who have helped me so far:
- All my roommates for being out there with us last Saturday, and helping with the tedious tasks like removing the tape from all of the cardboard boxes.
- The countless others who joined us for 4+ hours on a Saturday morning / afternoon.
- Steve at Amherst Recycling for being so great and giving us heaps and heaps of free mulch, and delivering it, too!
- Snowball for saving my butt when I was faced with shoveling the 10,000 pounds of compost into a Uhaul in under an hour.
- UMass Waste Management for providing us with all of the compost and GardenShare for the tools
- Sarah for helping get the mulch - so key!
- Leah for coming by and keeping my spirits high - doing sheet mulching with others is highly preferable to doing it alone.
Thanks, James!
No comments:
Post a Comment