I create huge amounts of green waste! In my street, we ALL put out huge brown bins full of garden waste once a fortnight. Even the people who don’t seem keen on gardening do. Why? Where does it come from?

I have a lot of plants that are now too big for the garden and need cutting back a lot even so, this can’t be right. I ship out green waste and ship in compost. If this was a farm, we’d be trying to use our waste properly. Is it possible in such a small space?

Ways to try to deal with it:

Leave it on the ground: I am trying NOT to clear the leaves off. So far, I just seem to have 1000s of slugs and everything looks tatty (see pic).

But it is hard to say if this is from leaving the leaves on the ground or the warm winter. Also at the moment, I am getting the mess but not the payback. Maybe next year/ year after, I will be rewarded with MORE life in the garden?

RESOLUTION: keep going and see what happens

Here it is on January 24th. It’s been snowing so everything is a bit manky, and it’s hard to tell what’s snow damage and what’s slugs. But I think the leaves are disappearing:

OTHER PLANS..

Leave it on the ground2: but chopped up a bit – at the back bits where I don’t go so often?

RESOLUTION: try it behind the fuchsia and see what happens

Use it as supports for other stuff: this works for things like long sticks from the cornea/ bits of the vine but isn’t going to work for every thing

 The hotbin: currently mostly just kitchen waste. TBH I haven’t quite got the hang of the hot bin yet.

RESOLUTION: to try and cut the sticks down small and use them as “roughage” for the hotbin (and as a wider resolution, get the bin to work properly).

March

It looks like it’s working…. lots of flowers and no leaves. Next year, I just have to hold firm and leave the leaves there.

• 

•