Compost? My Arse!

Sorry, I meant  MY ANTS

: /

One of my customers asked me to empty their compost bin. It was the DALEK type and the contents were to go onto the flower beds.

Great idea:-

1. Feeds the plants
2. Improves the look of the beds
3. Mulches the plants (holds in the water)
4. Soil improver as the worms mix it with the underlying soil.
5. All this and it's FREE!!!!!

Look at what I found.....

It's one big ants nest.

Looking more like a termites nest, I felt as if I was in an exotic land, not a quintessentially English Cotswold garden. 

I never see any reason to remove Ants from the garden. In lawns, simply press the nascent nests flat with your foot. In pots? Move the pots having emptied them and refilled with fresh compost. Or, why not put up with them, see what happens, JUMP when you have to, otherwise, CHILL.

But in a compost bin, well, what can I say? The closer I looked, the more impressed I was with the structure.

How can something so small build something so big? 

All gone now. Spread onto the flower beds. It was the finest compost I've ever seen and would have been fantastic saved in old compost sacks for use as seed compost next spring.

Before spreading it onto the garden, I knocked the whole thing apart and watched as the poor discombobulated (?)  Ants went crazy. The compost was then moved to one side and the bin replaced on the same spot as before. I went away and did something else for an hour. This gave the Ants a little time to get out and take their eggs and grubs with them, which they did. If I had the time, I might have left the whole thing alone for a week to see what happened.

I wonder what I'll find in the Dalek bin next time I look?

Sometimes being a gardener has its' perks; unless you don't like creepy crawlies.

ME?

I LOVE-EM

: )