grow, marvel, eat, laugh, persevere

Showing posts with label compost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label compost. Show all posts

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Temporary Housing

So, within an hour of reading Marc's post about temporary compost bins I was headed to the hardware store to pick up a few things for my newest project. SO, I'M IMPULSIVE! I blame all you garden bloggers for this! Besides, this IS the answer to all my problems! What a great use of beds during the off season! What a great spin on Lasagna Gardening! What a great idea for those of us have have no place to hide our bins!

I found these really long metal rails in my basement a long time ago. They were left by the former owners and I'm so glad I didn't throw them away. I put them in my car and headed to my local hardware store to ask them to cut them in half for me. All I had to buy was chicken wire. Can I just say right off the bat that I HATE CHICKEN WIRE! I have never worked with this stuff before but what a pain in the ass! Then I just followed Marc's directions. Put metal rails on the corners of the beds.

And wrap them with chicken wire. This was the worst part. Trying to straighten this stuff out enough to work with it was virtually impossible. But, it's done! It probably took about an hour total.
Then I proceeded to throw crap into them. I had planned to fill them equally but after seeing how much space there was I started thinking it would be better to fill one completely first, then the other. Even if one remains empty, it will be nice to be able to turn the full one into the empty one a few times before spring.
Here's one temporary bin that I started filling. I threw all my old tomato, pepper and broccoli plants in first, then the dead Zinnias. It was much higher than in this picture but I could tell that it wasn't packed enough and it just didn't seem right. Since the sod transplant didn't really work I decided to pull it up from the kitchen garden and throw it upside down in the bin. This worked great because it smashed the stuff down and also covered the tomatoes and broccoli which I was concerned might attract animals. Now I've got a place for all the leaves in the front yard, too. I'll be outside at dawn, hopefully before my neighbors wake, to steal their leaves for my new temporary compost bins.Here's the site of my first kitchen garden after it's been cleaned. Before May 21st it had grass just like the area around it. The black weed barrier I used killed all the grass as expected. Now it's just dirt. I bought grass seed to plant in this spot but I guess I've waited too late. Now I just need to keep this spot clear until spring until I can try to grow some grass.

Another Garden Blogger Saves The Day!

For the last several weeks I've been fretting over what to do with all the garden debris currently laying around making a mess of my front and back yard. Here's all the stuff I need to get rid of but just can bring myself to throw away.

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!!

The magic dirt maker arrived!

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. The instructions don't really say how long it should take to finish but I'll keep you posted.

Compost - here I come!

Friday, August 3, 2007

Seeds And Stuff...

I received my lettuce seeds today!

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.

  1. Paint awesome freecycle table and chairs (I finished de-rusting it. YAY)
  2. Deadhead 26 hedge roses AGAIN. These things are blooming like crazy!
  3. Dig up evil purslane
  4. Spray more skinny weedkiller on bastard weeds
  5. Return ugly plastic planter boxes
  6. 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
  7. Turn compost in homemade composter
  8. Divide Iris

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Homemade Composter

After reading Colleen's blog about how she made her own composter out of a plastic storage container, I decided to give it shot.

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

In case you haven't heard, Chicago is presently infested with the "17 year Cicadas." In my area, they have been manageable but today I had a fatal altercation.

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...

Here's a few pictures from today. I think my favorite thing in my garden these days is the watermelon. I think the leaves are so pretty! I had to redirect it because it was headed for the patio. I didn't realize that these things actually grab onto whatever is in it's path. Am I suppose to have a trellis or something?

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.

Garage garden with straw. I think I've killed the grass around these beds by letting the crap that I dug up lay on it for too long.
Foundation bed


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.

One final note on Cicadas. I googled them and I think it's actually the male that makes the noise so I guess those were girl Cicadas attacking me.