Shift of Tow

Today I talked myself into another attempt at canna removal, even though I’d convinced myself that the bees had taken over the compost and there was little I could do about it except wait until they moved on. My conviction faded along with the pain from the bee sting, and I managed to get the rest of the cannas out of the compost bins. I also didn’t get stung again, despite stirring up the bees a couple of times while shoveling compost. I got a few mosquito bites, but that’s nothing compared to the fire of a bee sting. I am suddenly cavalier about mosquito bites*.

Here’s how it looks now:

The compost smells fantastic to me, like everything good about the outdoors. If it weren’t for the bees and the wariness they cause, getting out there to dig in the dirt would be a completely fantastic experience. The stuff in the bins now is loose, a little leafy, and full of little bugs. Oh, and our bins are really huge! Each one is about four feet on a side; I had to climb into one of them to get the last of the plants pulled out. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of this compost when it’s done—I’ve been really focused on having a way to reduce and reuse household waste and haven’t given a lot of thought to using the product of the bins. I guess compost is great for mulching, and maybe next year we can use it as a top layer for our planned vegetable garden.

I accumulated quite a pile of what I was calling canna bulbs, but it turns out that what I’ve got are canna roots with little “eye” bulbs coming off of them.

Cannas are apparently a huge source of starch, and they’re grown agriculturally for just that. I can see it; some of the roots I pulled up were huge. I have a ton of the little bulbs, and I think I’m going to try to dry them and give them away to friends.

I also think I figured out where the cannas in the yard are, now that I’ve seen a bunch of pictures. They’ve got stalks with smallish red flowers on them, but the leaves look a lot like the cannas in the compost. It’s just that they grew a lot taller in the compost, and I never saw them flower. These were probably a result of thinning out the ones in our sunny side bed, and the little patch out back. You apparently have to thin these out every few years, in our zone (right on the border of 7 and 8, for the curious), though in cooler places they have to be dug up each fall.

The next thing I have to do for the compost is finish shoveling it over (and covering the canna waste), and then set up a compost bucket inside. I think I might just use a bowl that we’ll keep in the freezer (to prevent smells), and take it outside each day.

*Someday, a shark will bite me and then I’ll dismiss bee stings as nothing. But it will totally take a shark bite and nothing less.

We’ve got a couple of compost bins out back, and I’ve been meaning to start using them almost since we moved in. The hold up is that one of them has a bunch of cannas growing in it.

Since there aren’t any cannas growing in our yard that I can see, I wonder where they used to be, and why they were thrown away.

Today I got on my new gardening gloves and went out there, intending to yank out all of the cannas and turn all of the compost over into one of the bins.

I yanked out a bunch of the cannas and started making a big pile of the bulbs. I’m hoping that removing them from the cannas I’m putting right back into the compost will keep them from growing again. The bulbs were buried pretty deeply, so I imagine this was more a problem of not turning the compost than anything, or maybe the previous owners stopped caring so much and just tossed them in at the end of last summer.

I got a lot of them yanked out, which you can see if you compare the next picture to the first one.

Why did I stop before it was done? The canna side of the compost is full of bees, and one of the little bastards stung me right through my glove.

I forgot how much it hurts to get stung by a bee. I fled inside and left the shovel and the pile of bulbs laying in the yard. I’ll get back out there… sometime, and finish. I need to find a bucket to use for compost, get the last few cannas out, and turn the whole thing into one bin. However, I think I’m going to spend the rest of today on my fainting couch, clutching ice to my hand.