To Dig or Not to Dig & Uninvited Guests in the Compost Bin

Winter digging? Its a point of disagreement for many gardeners. Personally, I have never made a special point of digging over my plot during the winter months for several reasons. Firstly, if I'm honest, I don't have an awful lot of spare time to spend in the garden and therefore have been known to cut corners. I'm certainly not proud of this but unfortunately my gardening time is limited. Secondly, I have been fortunate in that our soil has never been of a particularly heavy clay type (which might benefit from being dug over in the winter to expose the lower layers to the frost) and I have always found that applying a surface layer of mulch or manure, followed by a relatively gentle hoeing, has always been sufficient for my purposes. I'm certainly not saying that its the best approach, but it has always been good enough for me.

On one occasion, in our previous house, I decided to put my usual habits aside and started to give our vegetable plot a thorough digging over in January. I was horrified when I narrowly avoided spearing a frog that had been hibernating about a foot deep in the soil. Up until that point I had not really given much thought to where frogs spend the winter, and didn't know that many of them dig a home for themselves in areas of loose earth. Others spend the winter sheltered in piles of leaves or under logs - another reason to leave things alone (to some extent) until the emerging bulbs and blossom signal that Spring really is near!

Digging aside, some preparatory work is always useful during the colder months. For example, I have decided this year that I will attempt to make my own seed pots from recycled paper - my success or failure at this will follow in a subsequent post - and I also decided yesterday that it was about time that I cleaned out my compost bins!

We have been fortunate to inherit two compost bins whilst in our current home. One of these was acquired recently from another village resident who no longer had need for it; and the second we found hidden at the end of the garden shortly after we moved in. The latter of these had obviously been used as a general garden waste bin of sorts and was full of branches and other debris and I'm rather ashamed to admit that I have only just got round to clearing this out.

On peering inside the bin yesterday, it appeared that several squatters had taken up residence. A number of snails and woodlice were visible and a couple of spiders hurriedly ran out of sight as I looked inside. The number of webs which were visible did make me a little nervous and I had to resist the urge to tuck my trouser legs into my socks as I emptied out the contents of the bin! Don't get me wrong, I don't mind spiders (living in a thatched cottage, with all its nooks and crannies, you have to get used to them!) and would never purposely kill one, very much adopting a "you don't bother me and I won't bother you" approach. However, I have recently seen a number of (what I think are) venomous false widow spiders in this area of the garden and therefore, whilst I understand they are not particularly aggressive, I did continue with a little trepidation. In fact, after emptying out the debris, I did find what could have been two false widows hiding in the lid of the compost bin and these were hurriedly (and carefully!) evicted. I have included a picture below - any spider experts please correct me if I am wrong!

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have had to evict uninvited guests from a garden bin as, when living in our previous home, our compost bin did on one occasion become a temporary bee hive! Fortunately, I had noticed the bees swarming over the bin and was able to watch while they, with impressive speed, all disappeared into its confines. Even more fortunately, a local bee keeper was able to quickly come and take them all away. I suppose I should have been pleased as I had always wanted to encourage bees into my garden - just not a whole colony of them! On a similar note, after completing my task yesterday and having two compost bins ready for action, it did occur to me that, despite all my good intentions to turn our garden into a haven for insects and birds - it really is doing pretty well on its own!