Category Archives: garden

As usual I had quite a few things on my ‘to do’ list today, including sorting out my rotary washing line, which seems to have screwed itself into the ground with all this wind and building the long-awaited dog poo composter!

If you haven’t got a dog, look away now.  If you have got a dog, which, yes, you take out for walks but also ‘goes’ in your garden then this could be good for you.  For a while I was wondering what to do with all that poo.  You can’t put it on a regular composter because there is too much nitrogen in it for vegetables, as well as the possibility of parasites.  Not good for the veg and potentially not good for us.  But you don’t want it lying around the garden either.  I thought there must be a way of breaking it down naturally (I don’t want to put it in my bin really), so I googled ‘dog poo composter’ and lo and behold, somebody has already solved the problem for me – here it is.

Basically you just need a bucket with a lid, or a dustbin – any container really.  Just dig a hole far away from your veg plot and in a place where neither clumsy feet nor children could step into it.  The hole needs to be deep enough to sink the entire container into.  You might want to add some stones to the bottom of the hole to ensure decent drainage.  Once you’ve done that, get your container and drill lots of holes in it.  Place the container in the hole and pour a bucket of water into it.  The water should drain pretty quickly out of the holes, if it doesn’t you need more holes!  Get drilling.

To make sure that the dog waste breaks down you’ll need some septic tank starter.  After looking in very large DIY stores I finally twigged that Pets at Home might have it, and went to buy some ‘bio-activator‘.  They also sell ready made dog poo loos (but you still need to dig the hole!).  Follow the instructions on the bottle and you’re ready to go!  You need to add about 20mls to start the process and then 5mls or so every week, depending on the numbers of dogs and the, errrrm, numbers of poos you have.  You are now ready to add the poo!  Note that I did not take a picture of this process, but here is my finished composter:

Finished dog poo composter

NOW WASH YOUR HANDS!

Apparently if you add some green organic matter, like what you’d normally put in your compost heap, the breakdown happens faster.  Depending on how quickly it fills up/breaks down you may need to empty it from time to time.  The resulting sludge (sorry!) is apparently great fertiliser and can be used on ornamental plants, but keep it away from anything you might eat.

OK enough about poo.  Here is a flower:

Sneaky crocus

I’m sure this sneaky crocus wasn’t in flower yesterday!  Spring is clearly on its way.  Even walking to the train station in the mornings is properly light now.  I love it!  As if the crocus wasn’t enough proof, here are some tender new leaves just starting to show.

Spring leaves

Tess and I went for a very long walk today.  One of the great things about living round here is that, even though its London zone 4, there are still plenty of different walks for us to go on, beautiful open spaces within 5 minutes of leaving my front door.  I feel so lucky!

There is a fox in this picture, believe it or not!