July

The garden turned pink and purple this month

An ornamental thistle, not a weed, Honest!

Vegetables ready for eating this month Cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots, cut and come again lettuce, potatoes, courgettes

The weeds have been prolific this month and I have spent a lot of time on other things so when I started to tackle them I had to make quite a few more moranges.

Compost Heaps and Moranges

Several people have asked me to define the difference between a compost heap and a morange.

A compost heap is an organised affair based on well-researched scientific principles. The aim of a compost heap is to rot organic material down in such a way that internal heat destroys most weed seeds while retaining the nutriments plants have taken from soil and air. Ideally all the material needed for the creation of a compost heap should be added at the time of its creation in several layers of different consistencies. Some of those layers may consist of kitchen waste and even animal remains if the heap can be protected from foxes and rats. The addition of saved buckets of urine will hasten the rotting process. A compost heap should be covered to retain heat.

A morange is a much simpler affair. It consists solely of weeds, ideally added in layers, leaving time between each layer for rooted weeds to dry out. A morange will not kill off weed seeds. In the best moranges there should be no weeds that have reached flowering stage.

A collection of moranges may be used to create a compost heap but the material may also be used thickly as a mulch in its own right or thinly to hide plastic bags that have been laid on the soil to retain moisture round plants. They can also be used on top of woven black mulching material to protect it from ultra violet rays. Morange material is more economical than shredded bark in the kitchen garden and not nearly so heavy to lug about. If the morange consists purely of grass it is not too unsightly in the ornamental garden either, being particularly useful between plants that have to be set far apart, such as dahlias or perennial shrubs.

If pre-flowering material from a morange has been placed on top of plastic bags to protect summer vegetables, such as courgettes or cauliflowers, then in the autumn, when the plastic bags are removed, the material can simply be dug into the soil along with manure or compost.

Two of my grandchildren about to move a morange