Green onions that I’m growing from the cut bottoms of green onions. Yo dawg, I heard you liked green onions…
Photo with 1 note
Hugelkultur. For when composting isn’t slow enough. On top of this pile of branches I dumped 10 pounds of used coffee grounds and filters and a few forkfuls of semi-composted weeds, and then covered to the top with dirt. Next year this might become something useful, like vegetables.
Electric lawnmower. I much prefer the manual reel mower. Quieter, less energy use, easier to remove the bags, and easier to turn. The electric one can take on cutting jobs taller than the manual one though, which is why this one stays around.
This will eventually be vegetables. It contains, from the bottom up:
-1 inch or so of freshly pulled-up weeds
-1/2” metal screen for gopher prevention
-10 sheet thick layer of newspaper
-Partially composted material from the Compost Ball
-Sprinkling of peat moss
-1 foot stack of alternating layers of grass clippings, peat moss, and municipal mulch.
I hear that sheet composting is a forgiving activity, but I wonder if I have too much nitrogen and too little carbon. Only time will tell. The next garden bed will be a hugelkultur (http://hubpages.com/hub/Hugelkultur-Using-Woody-Waste-in-Composting) pile, as both an experiment and a way of disposing of recently pruned tree branches. For how many websites talk about hugelkultur, very few actually show a mature hugelkultur bed. Maybe because it takes a couple of years before it’s decomposed enough to produce.
Mulch, dumped in the yard. The city calls it mulch but it’s way more decomposed and active than my active compost heap. It generates its own heat and votes for Ralph Nader and everything.
One truckload of mulch from the municipal landfill. That’s two cubic yards, at a weight of about 2500 pounds. Or about 20 wheelbarrow loads. I counted them. San Diego charges $5 per cubic yard of mulch if you want someone with a bulldozer to drop it, or residents can load it in for free. I am not a resident of San Diego, but the owner of this truck is, and he makes annual mulch runs for his friends and family who garden.
We made 3 runs that day.
Spring preparations
Boy it’s been a while, hasn’t it. Spring is coming, and with it a flurry of garden activity.
The compost tumbler has been hard at work. So far I’ve learned that:
-It gets really hard to turn on its stand if it’s too loaded.
-If you rest it on the ground and it’s got a lot of stuff inside, it will develop a flat spot. I remedied this by turning it every day.
-Two 5-pound bags of coffee grounds will make anything a slimy mess. Best to use that stuff carefully.
You would think, then, that one would be careful not to load it too heavily. The unfortunate thing is that unless you stuff it full of material, the critical mass isn’t there for it to really heat up and become hot compost. That, or I’m not using the right materials.
I’m on the 4th load, going to take it easy this time and give it a couple of months to cook down because I’ve got a ton (literally) of mulch to keep me busy for a while.
A full armed and operational battlesta…I mean composter.
We bought one for the Woot price of $99.99.
Page 1 of 2
