Compost and Courgettes

The courgettes are coming to the end. Considering that they started out very sorry looking after the slugs decided to feast on them, they have really performed quite well. Certainly we haven't had as much this year as we did last year. There are still plenty of flowers on the courgettes, but they seem to mostly be male flowers on long stems. The Female flowers are lower down but they cannot really been seen at that level in amongst the huge number of leaves. So it's time to thin out some of the more worn leaves and let fresher growth come in.

But they still have a couple of surprises hidden under their leaves. Firstly there are three (yes three) giants that are growing for seeds.

The weed membrane has orange stripes that are 25cm apart. So this beastie hiding beneath this leaf is a shade over 50cm in length. The other two are shorter, but a lot fatter. They're all going to stay in place until the very end of the season. Then they'll go home to sit and cure in the kitchen for a while, before spending the winter in the shed.

But the courgettes have worked wonders. I've even had enough "spare" that I could take them into the office where they have featured as part of the canteen offerings.

The Leaf Beat is also going to seed. But there are still a few tasty young leaves poking through the huge growth of stuff.

Now everything that gets cut back or cleared goes into the compost bin. However at the office they go a step further than a simple bin. They use a proper composting system for all the kitchen waste and from the coffee/tea making areas.

Now obviously this is a commercial system. But it's something we would like to try and reproduce at the allotments. There is too much waste being generated into the waste bays. Each time we get the council to come in and remove the rubbish, it costs us £160. If people composted more, we'd have better results (nothing like a good dose of stimulants for plants) and less costs. All-in-all not a bad thing.