Compost Grows Bigger, A Battle Against Clay Soil, And Shiitake Spawn Takeover The Sawdust - April 5th 2018

I regret that I hadn't taken a photo right as I first peeled back the top layer of the compost pile.. because the evidence was very clear that the decomposition process was well underway! Lots of decomposed material with the gray color and what looked like steam, so I know the temperatures are getting up.

Still, I am adding more house scraps of veggies, fruit and egg shells and piling more brown refuse on top. I haven't yet acquired any more pallets either for the two remaining walls of the compost, perhaps a roof too. I have also been looking into a hugelkultur since I have so much extra wood and crap laying around. Just need to figure out the soil issue.

The sky was a vibrant blue, with a nice clarity in the atmosphere. Although there was a pretty obvious soapy sheen to the clouds near the Sun, since they spray the sky so often with chemicals and regular pollution as well this seems to be a regular occurrence now in our skies.

The issue with my soil is that it is extremely high in clay content, which makes it clump easily when wet, and impossible to work with if wet. Also is bad for aeration of the soil and can lead to rot of the plants if water is too stagnant. Since I have been tasked with replacing all the plants in the large pots on the pool deck, I will also grab a few bags of mulch to amend my clay soil with.

Most of the plants I transplanted appear to be dead. So I will work harder towards making this work. Snow is in the forecast, even if it is only a little now. Need those steady warm temperatures!

I had saved the bag that was sent with all the shiitake spawn dowels I used for inoculating a few logs for fall I wrote in a separate post here, and had thrown the sawdust from the drill cores of the logs into the bag. There was some gooey looking stuff in the bag, I assume shiitake spawn or something, because whatever it was has grown a bit inside the bag with all the food. Cool stuff! I could always make more sawdust, and add it to it, creating more shiitake spawn sawdust, and could use the sawdust to inoculate some more logs! So much to do..

Take care everybody!