Holiday Effects on My Compots
I want on holiday on December 23 for 10 days and arranged for a kind neighbour to water my garden (but not my Compots specifically).
He watered every 2nd or 3rd day, but only the garden NOT the Compots. The weather was very hot (up to 42 degrees on some days) so I expected my Compots to have dried out a bit. When I returned I became quite ill with Pneumonia and so did not even go into my garden let alone check my Compots for 5 days after returning and the weather remained extremely hot. In total roughly 15 days of no rain, watering or topping up with moist scraps.
Click to view Bob’s garden video and Shirley’s Video for a comparison
When I recovered enough to go outside, I found that my Compots had partly dried out but not as much as I had expected. The contents looked damp but not moist, so I added more kitchen scraps to each one over the next 2-3 days. They also got watered as I watered the garden. I found that each Compot returned to its usual behaviour as the contents have kept reducing ever since.
This shows they will continue to “work” without rain or watering over the pot or around the surrounding garden in extremely hot dry weather. Mine were not watered near them for two weeks as I normally do. The Bacteria, worms plus flies all “composted” my kitchen wastes while I was way and sick. Any worms that were near my Compots before have now returned to the surrounding soil and started to do their work again while the soldier fly larvae happily munch away inside the Compots.
So if you happen to go away for an extended period from home, just water your pots when you return if they look too dry, empty the moist contents onto your garden if desired, or simply refill with more kitchen waste.
If you live in an area of extremely dry climate you might find adding coffee grains, tea bags or anything moist will help keep the moisture content up inside your Compots so the contents don’t dehydrate and hence not decompose properly. Of course watering your garden will help your pots but you may not have enough spare water to do this especially if you are on tank water. Grey water of course will do as long as you are using a low phosphate detergent and don’t water the leaves of your plants with the grey water.
Adding Comfrey or beneficial bacteria can also help the decomposition process
Today’s Did You Know…?
Tea leaves are a particular species of Camellia know as ”Camellia sinensis”. It is actually only the tip of the leaf and the leaf bud that are used to make the tea. Because the leaf is soft it is easily picked by hand as happens is places such as India, where people are many and labour is cheap.
However in Australia (North Queensland on the Atherton Tablelands) it is picked by machine because of the high cost of labour.
In 1848 a Scottish gardener by the name of Robert Fortune, was hired by the British East India Company to steal the tea from China, which they then introduced to India to break the Chinese monopoly on Tea production.
“After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world”.
Alan Macfarlane; Iris Macfarlane (2004). The Empire of Tea. The Overlook Press. p. 32. ISBN 1-58567-493-1
