I would love to be able to grow heather like that rebecca! Love the color and everything!

Beautiful, Rebecca!

Oh Rebecca - that is BEAUTIFUL!!

Thank you for the compliments on my garden, I will take credit but heather is so easy to grow, the only thing is once a year weeding and trim a bit after blooming and that is it. I think the closest you can get to heather for hot climates is perhaps salvia. I like salvia really well but we are wet too long and it does not like that, I like masses of bright small flowers and I like low growing, ground cover type things. So heather works better for me. Totally off topic, but Sharron started it.

Beautiful Rebecca, very colorful.

I "spot compost" in the wintertime, where even here in GA it gets too cold for the compost pile to heat up. I had some newly created beds last fall, so all winter long my bucket of kitchen scraps were buried in different locations in the bed, and then forgotten about.

Imagine my surprise then, when I returned home from several days away from home and found melon vines resting on top the wood chips that marked these new beds. I now have 2 canteloupes working their way to ripeness, and 2-3 small honeydew melons trying to hide themselves from the rabbits/deer so they can grow/flourish.

No complaints here, though -- if the melons live long enough to be harvested, I'll just be grateful for the unexpected bounty.

LUV the heather rebecca

>> nearby tree roots are very intelligent and find their way very quickly to the pile. They "know" the nutrients are located there.

I put my above-ground compost heap too near an evergreen tree. I didn't see roots for a while, but suddenly the whole "finished" side, that I don't turn often, was FULL of feeder roots. Bummer.

I hope that tree doesn't really NEED those new feeder roots, because I chopped them!

So I moved all my unfinished compost to the only accessible place left in my yard. However, it is surrounded by bamboo, rhododendrons and azaleas. Does anyone know if they have surface roots that can turn up and infiltrate a compost heap? I have solid clay, so they will be desperate to get at the compost.

I hate to isolate the compost heap from the soil with plastic, but maybe I have to.

I know bamboo will. That is a real bummer Rick.

Rick, I used to have a rough wooden frame compost bin close to the willow tree and after finding the roots in the compost as you did, I thought I would try putting a couple of layers of landscape weed cloth on the bottom, that helped but the roots then went up the sides and into the compost, then I put it on the bottom and up the sides for about a foot or so, and stapled it to the sides of the bin, that worked quite well.

Hmm, weed cloth! That would be better than plastic. Thanks.

>> I know bamboo will.

I've been surprised that (so far) I've been able to contain Fargesia rufa (a clumping bamboo) with just some paving stones stood on end (a mini-raised bed).

I think that, maybe, the edges of the bed dry out so fast that the roots (rhizomes?) don't even try to escape the center of the bed. And the bed sits on top of some heavy clay, so that (maybe) up to now they have not had much motivation to go deeper to escape.

But the location of the new compost heap will tempt them!