Today in the apartment homestead, I used my first batch of homemade compost!
Much black. So nutrition.
The top part of the bucket smelled like really rich soil. The bottom part smelled like a dirty aquarium or scummy pond? I mean I stirred it with a stick all the time, but the bottom couple of inches kinda needed to be scraped out with my gloved hands. I hope I didn't just breathe in legionnella or something. XD
After I used it all up, I started the new batch with everything I had stashed in my freezer for months (to stop mold), and the box of browns I had collected that wouldn't mold (matchsticks, cat hair, paper, houseplant trimmings), any current stuff I could add (the dish full of eggshells, the detritus from an incense burner, new pruning). It filled the bucket!
That'll break down though and get smaller. I filled the bucket a few times with the first batch and it always shrunk. Even today, I only harvested maybe 2/3 full amount of compost.
I had stopped adding to it months ago, so it could finish breaking down and I could use it this summer. I probably started it around a year ago, so this new batch will be for next year!
With this compost, I potted my Wandering Dudes (that is officially the new, nicer name for this plant per a FB plant group I'm in because the common "Wandering Jew" actually has horrifying white supremacist origins) that I had had rooting in water for way too long...
...and I divided some Snake Plants into two pots instead of one. I originally thought I would divide them all into multiple small pots for each growth, but they were REALLY tangled together at the roots and I felt like it would cause too much damage separating them more.
They were originally all in this pot!
I added support sticks to try standing up the droopy leaves. In this one, it's the stick from an old broken cat toy. In the other, I used a dowel that I had been using in the tomatoes that they really didn't need anymore (since I moved them outside, there's been some die-off. :( I hope they recover). When I pulled it out, I discovered the bottom had rotted off!
The same size dowel that is my compost stir stick to show how much is gone.
I mean, it's just wood, so I'm not surprised really, but I've never had that happen in a houseplant before. I suppose, however, that the tomatoes' need for a lot more water is what did it. More gardening lessons learned! :)
So that's about it in Phe's plant world today. How are your gardens doing?
Be good, Steem fam!