Piling the Heap

Our house was built in the late Nineteen century. It’s a reasonable sized terraced house with a garden of about 600 square feet. When they moved in the garden although reasonable neat was rather overgrown, and it wasn’t until last Spring (2007) that David started to dig out some flower-beds.

As he dug away, all the weeds and old grass were piled in the corner of the garden. While he was digging David noticed a distinctive smell from the earth. It was unusual, and reminded him somehow of his childhood. As he continued to dig he realised that the smell was that of ashes from a coal fire. Clearly in times gone by previous owners had put hearth ashes onto the garden. As a result the soil was dark and crumbly – ideal for growing plants, and more importantly an ideal habitat for worms.

Indeed David found lots of worms in the ground. Not only were there big fat earth worms, but also a lot of smaller red worms, which are also known as blood worms or Tiger Worms. Despite being small Tiger Worms have an incredible appetite, they reproduce quickly, and as a result produce a lot of compost. David quickly realised that the pile of garden waste that was growing in the corner of the garden would soon be a fertile and attractive compost heap