Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Down in the dirt

So in an attempt to not be quite so wasteful, we started composting a few weeks back. Cathy popped next door to Arctic Ventures to rent a movie and pick up a few supplies, came back with one of the composters they've had on sale since last August. To be fair, this wasn't completely unexpected. We had been talking about it for ages and hemming and hawing on it. Cathy just went and showed some initiative.

So low and behold, several weeks after we tossed in some dirt - just to get the composting ball rolling - and then added all manner of kitchen scraps, we now have a small pile of dirt. As dirt goes, it's fairly exciting for us. This might indicate a problem with our social life, but nonetheless, we have dirt. Ta da!

Not that we've been lacking in it for the last week or so. As things begin to slowly thaw outside and mud season (which always corresponds with excessive daylight/people slowly going mad season) we've been tracking in copious amounts of dirt from the outside, despite our best foot stomping efforts.

Still, this is good dirt we've produced, or so I'm lead to believe, bursting with all the nutrients that freshly composted soil is supposed to have. The problem is, we have nothing to do with it. We have about 10 plants in the house and that's about all we can handle. These plants are the tough ones. Cathy kills the rest of them with her strange hatred of all house plants. She's already weeded out the weak; these are the hardy survivors, determined to live to spite her.

However, as hardy as they are, none of them are currently in need of high quality dirt. Furthermore, I anticipate having many more pile of composted dirt over the coming months and years. I could toss it out the window, but it seems kind of a waste given all the effort we've gone through to make this high quality dirt.

So does anyone need some dirt, or know of a place I can unload dirt on a regular basis in town?

Last Five
1. Red right ankle - The Decemberists
2. Heart shaped box - Nirvana
3. Sick muse - Metric
4. Bear and the barbed wire - Mark Bragg*
5. Heart of the matter - Don Henley

5 comments:

Matthew & Michele said...

Isn't there a volunter greenhouse spot in Iqaluit. I'm sure they could use your extra high quality, organic dirt.

Nancy Crozier said...

Some years ago a grow-up was busted on our street, and the house's owner (he'd been renting it out) had to clean up after the cops took the plants and equipment. He had all this soil to get rid of, so our friends took some for their garden. And you should see their flowers now!
:-)

Jaime said...

I liked this entry. I'm an avid murderer of all things green myself, so I laughed at the idea of plants growing in spite of Cathy.

I was going to make the same recommendation as Matthew...I'm sure the greenhouse (behind the old Subway) would be happy to have dirt.

Actually, scratch that...you should produce so much dirt that you could give somebody a real lawn, haha. But then there would be the issue of shipping up sod.

Sara Dorman said...

I want to know what's going on (arctic radiation???) that makes you get compost so quickly. It usually takes months (years?) to get good compost. I started a new composter a few weeks ago and it's still pretty obviously banana peels etc. Is yours really a wormery?

towniebastard said...

We're not using worms. We have no place outside to put composter (plus, um, there's the cold which would kill worms very efficiently). So we have an electrical composter, which I appreciate seems to defeat the purpose, but it's low energy and does the trick. We throw in the leftovers, mix in a bit of sawdust every now and then and voila...soil in about a month.