Worst job of the year?

Gardening is not all fun, you know. As well as all the pleasurable tasks like sowing, planting and harvesting, there are some horrible, dirty, unpleasant tasks - the ones that only really dedicated gardeners understand, and the ones that put off the new gardeners who sometimes think everything is easy.

Here's an example:

This year I grew my tomato plants in big plastic containers (as I always do) using a growing medium with a high proportion of composted stable manure. As regular readers will know, I have been plagued with problems stemming from weedkiller contamination in commercial compost, and I decided that instead of recycling the used compost as I would normally do by distributing it around my garden, this time I would dispose of it completely by taking it to the Council tip. Easier said than done!

I spread my trusty old groundsheet on the shingle, and then tipped out each pot of compost onto it. As you can see, it made a pretty big pile:

That compost was really squashy and smelly!

The empty pots got a thorough wash with the hosepipe before being stored away in the garage. That was the easy part.

The hard part (and the most unpleasant part) was to put the compost into old plastic sacks, in which it will be transported to the tip. fortunately, whenever I buy compost I always keep the bags in which it comes, for occasions like this.

I will evidently need to make several trips to the tip! Fortunately it is only about four miles away. I'll have to be careful to avoid soggy compost leaking out and contaminating the car though.

Let's just hope this is a one-off job. Next year I will be trying to source some better (safer!) compost for my tomatoes, so hopefully I'll be able to revert to my normal procedure.