grow, marvel, eat, laugh, persevere
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Temporary Housing
Another Garden Blogger Saves The Day!
Dead Zinnias that were the subject of the bastard garden center piece
Kitchen garden
Annuals I still haven't dug up yet
Trash can full of wood chips
Leaves Leaves Leaves
I got the compost tumbler for my birthday and I do love it but I'm mostly using it for kitchen scraps since it's a closed system. I need more space! Not only that but it's getting colder and colder and the long I wait to clean this stuff up the less the chance that it will actually get cleaned up. I am in that OMG, OMG, OMG I'm so far behind mode.
So today I'm finally catching up on my garden blog reading and I stumble on this AWESOME idea of making temporary compost bins RIGHT IN MY NEW RAISED BEDS! Marc is a genius! I was planning to layer greens and browns in here anyway but only 12 inches worth and I'm sure that would shrink to nothing by spring. So I'll use the marc method which will give me WAY more space to collect. I am so excited! I have work to do!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
It Is ON!!
It's the Envirocycle compost tumbler and I love it already! I can't wait to take it outside and start throwing stuff it in! It's so easy to turn and its green.
Compost - here I come!
Friday, August 3, 2007
Seeds And Stuff...
I ordered these seeds after reading Farmgirl's detailed instruction about growing lettuce from seed. I was so impressed I ordered them straight off the website that she orders from. I'll be planting them sometime in in the next month or so in the soon to be built planter boxes. The nice people at the seed store also sent me a free pack of Common Thyme. Thanks nice seed store people!
Here's my dwarf snapdragon that I bought a while back. It's another plant that started blooming after I added the woodchip mulch. Notice the bastard weed in the background. I hate that stuff!
In other gardening news I finally cut the scary cracked Big Boy tomatoes. Mom (and everybody else) was right! They were not all gross inside at all! I had a couple of slices on my veggie burger and it was AWESOME! Guess who's having a tomato sandwich for lunch tomorrow??
I have another busy weekend planned. Here's what I'm hoping to get done.
- Paint awesome freecycle table and chairs (I finished de-rusting it. YAY)
- Deadhead 26 hedge roses AGAIN. These things are blooming like crazy!
- Dig up evil purslane
- Spray more skinny weedkiller on bastard weeds
- Return ugly plastic planter boxes
- Scrape paint off old window and find place to hang. I think I want to get rid of the glass in this thing and use it as a trellis for a climbing rose
- Turn compost in homemade composter
- Divide Iris
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Homemade Composter
I have several of these blue Rubbermaid storage containers and back when my bare root hedge roses arrived, I dumped the stuff out and used it as a tub to soak my roses. After that, I really didn't see the point in cleaning it and converting it back to a storage container, so it's been sitting in the garage.
I poked millions of holes in it using my drill but I noticed that Colleen's holes are much larger and that's got me a little worried. I'd like to use this one to dump kitchen scraps into along with the coffee grounds and filters I'm getting from work but what if my holes are too little? I think that means it smells bad, right? So far all I put in there was the filters from the coffee grounds, a little straw and the deadheaded roses. I'll add apple cores, lettuce we don't finish and other kitchen stuff to it as it accumulates. This should be interesting...
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Cicada wants to be my boyfriend
After battling with my weed wacker for weeks I finally threw it in the car and drug it to Ace Hardware. Thank you bald Ace Hardware guy in Forest Park for fixing me up! I'm officially boycotting Home Depot! Anyway, I took it home, cranked it and started working and then I noticed a few Cicadas in my yard. The next thing I know, the things are dive bombing me! I think they thought my weed wacker was another Cicada tryin to get it on! So one of them comes flying at me and my reflex reaction was to use the weed wacker as a sword or some other weapon, and, you guessed it, the Cicada was chopped to smithereens! I feel bad about it! Sorta. I kept trying to tell myself that the news people said they will not hurt me but it didn't help. Every time one came at me I tried to fight it off with the weed wacker. At one point I hit my grill and a everything on it went flying. I was screaming like a 5 year old. I don't care what they say, these things ARE dangerous! I thought about asking Mr. Wonderful to fight them off me while I finished trimming the backyard but they freak him out as much as they do me. At some point I just gave up. These things are only suppose to live for 3 weeks. The weeds will just continue to look like crap for a bit longer...
Rose Garden after straw. It actually doesn't look so bad and the roses are all doing pretty well, even the sickly one that I thought wasn't going to make it.
I finally decided to try my hand at composting! Since I have no container whatsoever but lots of stuff to compost, I decided to throw it over beside the garage and see what happens. I don't plan to leave it there because I'm worried that it will damage the fence or the garage. I also won't be putting any food there because I'm way more afraid of rodents than I am of Cicadas.