In the end I cracked, and gardened in the rain. I got soggy, and I got muddy, but all the plants were down or potted on or Chelsea snapped (my garden's a bit dense for chopping, so I tend to just snap off half the stems - any flowers or buds taken out by accident go into my garden vase). While I was digging holes for New Guinea Busy Lizzies and a colossal Borage (my third attempt to grow one -- one went to slugs, one was outcompeted by a geranium) I found that some elements of my spring top-dressing of home-made compost had not been dragged underground by the worms:
Yes, absolutely, those are tea bags. Tea bags, the mainstay of any British compost bin. But not just any teabag, no. These are luxury pyramid teabags. They feel slightly silky to the touch, they came filled with premium large leaf tea, and foolishly I thought that they would be biodegradable. Not so. They see to be about as biodegradable as a pair of tights, and are now officially a menace to the compost bin.
that'll be fucking Teapigs teabags then. Local company and we're supposed to be proud of them, but sorry, just a PR exercise in flogging overpriced unremarkable tea.
ReplyDeleteThink I read somewhere that most 'normal' teabags have some plastic content in them...
Sadly I think they were Whittards, who are normally a bit better behaved than that, but Teapigs are definitely among the fancy teabag offenders. I'm fairly sure my entire garden has some plastic content (aren't we in the plasticene era?) so I'm not too bothered about traces of nasties in the main teabags, as long as they'll pass through the worms and slugs and rot down successfully.
DeleteMaybe we all need to switch over to duck-shaped floating tea balls and loose tea? Jeeves & Jericho’s little tins are also potentially a space-saver in a crowded kitchen. :-)
ReplyDeleteMmm-mmm. Jeeves & Jericho tea made in a prolapsed duck. I do have a few tea diffusers (and even some tea pots). But I do like a fancy tea bag, as long as it'll compost.
ReplyDelete