COMPOSTING, A DIDACTIC & A PERSONAL VIEW
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Start With The Carbs
A bit of chemistry might be good for your compost. Just a bit. Actually, we mostly need to deal with only two familiar elements of the 100 plus known ones. These two elements are carbon and nitrogen, and they are the ones for which the “bugs” that do the work of making compost are most hungry.
“Work” is too strong a word, though, because these composting bugs do nothing more than eat. Nonetheless, a balanced diet -- one balanced mostly with respect to carbon and nitrogen -- does these bugs, the composting microorganisms, good.
This time of year, the microorganisms’…
FRUITS UNLAWFUL AND LAWFUL
Interloper, Not Welcome by Everyone
As I was coming down a hill on a recent hike in the woods, I came upon an open area where the path was lined with clumps of shrubs whose leaves shimmered in the early fall sunshine. The leaves — green on their topsides and hoary underneath — were coming alive as breezes made them first show one side, then the other.
The plants’ beauty was further highlighted by the abundant clusters of pea-size, silver flecked red (rarely, yellow) berries lined up along the stems. I know this plant and, as I always do this time of year, popped some of the berries into…
WINTER READINESS
For anyone who missed my recent 90 minute webinar on GOURMET COMPOST, the webinar has been recorded and is available for $35 on-demand from Oct. 1st, 2020 until Oct. 8th for $35. The webinar covers options for compost bins, feeding your compost “pets, monitoring progress, what can go wrong and how to right it, when is compost “finished,” and making the best use of your compost. Click below to pay almost by any of a number of ways. Thank you.
Putting Summer in Jars
I’m hunkering down for winter, which includes capturing what I can of summer’s bounty in jars and dried and frozen…
CREATURES LARGE AND SMALL
Identity Crisis?
For the past couple of months, I’m not so sure that my duck knows that she’s a duck. She and another female duck once shared a drake, and they all lived together in their own “duckingham palace.”
Sometime after the other female and the drake were taken by a predator, probably a fox or coyote, I thought our remaining female might enjoy some company at night. So I coaxed her to take up nightly residence with our three chickens -- a rooster and two hens -- who have their own house (“chickingham palace?,” actually more palatial than duckingham palace).
Not only…
GOURMET COMPOST WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
WEBINAR: GOURMET COMPOST FOR YOUR PLANTS
Learn the why and the how of making a compost that grows healthy and nutritious plants, everything from designing an enclosure to what to add (and what not to add) to what can go wrong (and how to right it). Don't bother stuffing old tomato stalks, grass clippings, and leaves into plastic bags; just compost them! The same goes for kitchen waste. Learn what free materials are available for composting.
Also covered will be the best ways to use your "gourmet compost." Good compost is fundamental to good gardening; it put the "organic" into organic gardening,…
COMPOST, KALE, A FLOWER, AND AN ODD ONION
Ins and Outs of Compost
Mostly, what I’m doing in the garden these days is making or spreading compost. Lots of good stuff — old vegetable plants, hay, weeds, rotted fruits — is available to feed my compost “pets.” And compost spread now has the ground ready for planting in spring.
Do you have any questions about composting? Want to know how to make best use of compost? Interested in details about how to make gourmet compost? This is a reminder that on Wednesday, September 23, 2020 from 7-8:30pm EST, I’ll be hosting a webinar about composting. For more information and registration,…
I’M NO MICHELANGELO, BUT . . .
Lawn Nouveau
I’m taking up sculpture. Not in bronze, Carrara marble, or granite, but with plants.
My easiest sculpture is one I’ve been doing for years. I can’t really say “working on for years” because every year it vanishes, to be started anew each spring. It’s “lawn nouveau,” as I call it in my book, The Pruning Book, and then go on to describe the technique as “two tiers of grassy growth . . . the low grass is just like any other lawn, and kept that way with a lawnmower. The taller portions are mowed infrequently – one to three times a year, depending on the desired look…
COMPOSTING WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
COMPOSTING WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
Presentation by Lee Reich (MS, PhD, researcher in soil and plants for the USDA and Cornell University, decades-long composter, and farmdener*):
Learn the why and the how of making a compost that grows healthy and nutritious plants, everything from designing an enclosure to what to add (and what not to add) to what can go wrong (and how to right it). Don’t bother stuffing old tomato stalks, grass clippings, and leaves into plastic bags; just compost them! The same goes for kitchen waste. Learn what free materials are available for composting. "Bring" your questions…
DAILY GRAPES
As The World Turns...
Over the years, gardening has made me more and more aware of our planet’s annual track around the sun. How quaint. It gives me a certain kinship with the peasants at work in the 15th century painting for the month of September of Les Très Riches Heures de Duc de Berry.
As with those peasants, September is a month when I have abundant fruits for harvest. Like the peasants, I’m harvesting grapes; it’s been a bumper year. Unlike the peasants, my grapes are destined for fresh eating rather than being sullied by fermentation into wine. (Okay, okay, just kidding,…
