Weekend Update

I had a great weekend.
I didn't really get an enormous amount of stuff done or anything, but I just had a good time. Saturday, A~ and I dropped the boys off in SLC to visit with some family for the weekend and we just kind of hung out together. It's not at all that I like having the boys gone, but I really enjoy the occasions that she and I get to just be a couple... not "Mom and Dad", you know? We stopped by a couple of our favorite places in town, mosied through a couple of shops, and had some of the best pizza in town! We also made a spontaneous stop at the home of a local blogger that I've gotten to know a bit. We got to meet his family, check out what he's got going on in his garden and talk about our plans for next year. It was the first time I've actually met anyone from online before. I was really pleased with it...(I hope he was too?) Anyway, later that night we got together with a couple of friends, had a couple of beers and BS'd for a while. Like I said, just a relaxing day. No matter how many goals we have, we do have to give ourselves a little time off from time to time don't we?

Sunday was a bit more work filled, with the exclusion of my San Diego Chargers game of course. (Nothing good to mention there!! #*%~$!&^) I moved the compost pile, yeah the one that I just set up a couple of months ago (Make a plan before you do big projects like that people...That's the lesson of the day!), and managed to add some 9 bags of leaves to the bin. I airated and added leaves to the one bin that was already in the process, and filled the second side completely with leaves, grass, coffee grounds and compost. I now have approximately 72 sq feet of compost cooking away for next year!! I am hoping that with what I have going now, and what I am adding to the beds this fall, I won't have to add any outside compost next year. At least not in the back yard gardens.

I also did my weekly coop care and cleaning to keep the birds happy and healthy. Next project on the list is to add onto the coop, for the winter, an outer shell of clear poly. I want to effectively make the outside of the coop like a sort of green house. Their water has been starting to ice over at night from time to time, so it's about time to shift gears again for the winter. I've heard about people actually useing the birds to keep a small greenhouse addition warm through the winter, allowing greens to grown all winter. I'm not sure if that's in the cards, but I am definitely entertaining the thought.

And that, folks, is about it for me. As I said it wasn't the most productive weekend, but it really was an enjoyable one. Hope yours was as well.
P~

Cooking in the yard

Well, it was not one of my shining moments, but in the interest of full disclosure, I aired my dirty side yard. It's one of those catch all places that I just kept "dumping" everything in during projects. I'm proud to be able to say that I think I may have beaten the beast! Trash: removed, pallets and lumber: re-purposed into a two bin compost pile and scrap cut and placed into wood hutch, compost tumbler: relocated, watered and close to being ready. Big sigh......Ahhhhh!
And here's the bin all stocked and loaded up. What's in it? Oh, just about everything. It's got kitchen scraps of course, but also copious amounts of chicken manure/sawdust mix, probably 20 lbs of coffee grounds (courtesy of Starbucks "grounds for your garden" program.), leaves, garden cuttings, lawn clippings, straw, basically all the good stuff watered down well and cooking nicely. Wondering what you ought to see if you want to know that you're compost pile is cooking well. Here you go. (down below) Yeah, that's steam coming out the top. I can place my hand on top and even through the damp leaves I can feel the heat coming off it. It's probably the hottest pile I've had. That's the thing that sterilizes the pile, kills off disease and weed seed and makes it break down quick.
And honestly, I'm just garden geek enough to just love seeing it! It's like a bit of Mr wizard right in my own backyard.
And finally, the good ole compost tumbler from last year. I neglected it quite a bit this year, but the stuff inside it is almost done.
So there you go, "Compost central" is all caught up! Oooooo, next years garden is gonna ROCK with all this good stuff! It's not too late to get yours started too if you haven't already. All the garden waste from Autumn can go right back into the ground next spring!
P~

A little progress, and a failure.

Here's what I started with. Yeah, it was that bad. Even worse actually, I had already started to clean up a little before I took this picture. Those old chicken feed bags are actually full of sawdust and chicken poo that needs to be composted. The old pallets, well, their gonna be the compost pile. At least I was able to work in the shade for a while. I couldn't breathe worth a damn, at least I didn't have to cook in the sun too!

And here, is the end of this afternoon. It shouldn't have taken so long mind you, but it did. I had to take some breaks and catch my breath, and kept getting side tracked. But I think it came out pretty good all in all. Should have good air-flow, and is made out of all recycled materials so it only cost about $1.50 in nails. It started raining pretty hard this afternoon so I got pushed inside, but hopefully I can get the compost piled in there tomorrow and get it "cooking" so it can get mostly done before winter.

The other thing that I did get done was my first attempt at homemade sauerkraut. A~ swears I tried it once before at our last house, but I don't recall it. Who knows? (honestly she's probably right!)
I sliced the cabbage and salted it with some of the homemade Salt Lake Local-Salt that I made not long ago and then packed it into a couple of containers. In total, I used 5 lbs of cabbage and followed a recipe that I found in "The Joy of Pickling". We'll see how it works.
So, two things I wanted to do got done, at least mostly. One however, was a failure. The sourdough no knead bread. I don't think it's the starter, I have great confidence in it. It's just hitting a year old this week as a matter of fact. Having been "born" to our family last September.
I mean take a look at that. Those bubbles are from yeast. Not wild, we tried that and weren't happy with the quality of it, but no doubt influenced by it through it's time exposed to the air during "feedings" such as this one. We generally have sourdough pancakes on Saturdays, and this one, I took an extra cup of starter out to use for the dough.
A close-up of the bubbly goodness that is our "pet", the sourdough start.

At any rate, the dough did leaven to a degree, but I think either I didn't use enough start, or the weather was a little to unsettled and the temperatures too low to really get it to mature as a dough. I didn't waste time with baking it, it would have been a brick, but I'll try again. That's just how it goes doesn't it. We try things, tweak them, learn from our failures and progress. What more could I ask for.
Till next time.
P~

New Additions

I got a package about a week and a half ago. When I opened it, this is what I saw.

Inside was a thin muslin bag...Interesting. What could it be?

WORMS!! About 1000 of them (give or take); I bought them from Uncle Jim's worm farm the week before and had just received them. I had been wondering why they waited nearly a week before mailing them, I ordered them on the Wednesday before, and they still weren't showing as sent on the web site so I called. Well I jumped the gun, they just hadn't updated the status' yet but the wigglers had been mailed on Monday. It seems this is the standard practice, mailing on Monday that is, so that the worms don't get held up over the weekend and dry out and die. Very considerate worm farming isn't that?

So anyway, I got out the compost crock from under the sink which had a bunch of "goodies" in it and got ready for a feeding. I've been using this crock for almost a year now. It's lid broke toward the end of summer last year, so I've been just placing a small tea plate over it. If you empty it regularly, it doesn't really even stink (too badly). I need to find a new one. It was just an old second hand cookie jar that I found at the thrift store.

Before I got the worms out of the bag I had put together a new home for them. I shredded some old cardboard that I had available, and added some peat moss that was also lying around to act as bedding. I wet the whole thing, and then squeezed it out till it was about like a damp sponge. I added this bedding material to a 15 gal. Rubbermaid tote that was one of our old book boxes before the library was finished and that I had drilled holes around the bottom and lower sides of for air flow.

So far so good. I received them not last Wednesday but the one before that and they seem to be adapting very well. Just tonight I went out to feed them and they are all densely packed around the scraps from the other night. The main reason I got them, apart from the tales of amazing nutritive properties of worm castings, was that I had a very tough time last winter with composting through the cold. This way I hope to have built a large enough colony of worms to accomplish our composting needs throughout the winter, and provide an occasional treat for the chickens.

Anyone else out there, worm farming? How's it working out for you?

P~

Compost Day

Thought I'd spend a little time on compost today, there were a couple of things that I'd cover. For one, I learned recently of a program that Starbucks Coffee has in place. It's called Grounds for your Garden and it's something they put in place to help take care of the some of there coffee grounds waste. All you need to do is go into you're local Starbucks store and ask for their old grounds for your garden and you will get one of their old bean bags filled with used grounds.

Now, what do you do with them? I'm putting mine into my compost pile, of course. With the nitrogen to carbon ration that they have, mixed with a healthy bit of carbon rich browns, in this case straw, I should be able to kick up the heat in my pile and help it to break down faster and more completely.

If any of you are new to composting, or are thinking about getting a pile started, which I heartily encourage, then one thing I have learned is that getting the pile "cooking" is one of the most important things you can do. Getting the heat turned up inside your pile cooks the seeds, sterilizing them. It also helps the organic material inside the pile break down more completely and more quickly. Getting this heat turned up comes from having a good balance of greens and browns, nitrogen rich plant material and carbon rich dr material such as dry leaves, straw, or dried grass clippings. So far I have found straw to be the most consisent material that is easily gotten in my area. When you have this mix in the right proportions you'll need to turn the pile regularly to make sure the organisms in the pile can breath and make sure it stays moist. Not wet, but moist.

Once you have all this in line, you'll be sure to have your pile cooking like a pro. In the little video I made, you can pretty easily see that there's steam coming up out of the pile, this is a sure sign you're on the right track. I hope to cook this pile pretty well through the rest of the fall and into the winter and then finish it off in time for spring planting. If you haven't cleaned out the garden yet, or can still get a last mowing of the lawn, I encourage you to get those greens and some good dry browns together and get cookin'!

P~

Finally got some work done

I got out into the yard again today to get working on the garden area and here it is. I pulled almost all of the plants from the garden during the week to get ready for today so that I could concentrate of getting the work done, or nearly so.

You may remember a list that I posted a little while back with so much to do and so little time; I thought I'd update you to the progress. I know it helps me to see others posting their goals and how they go about accomplishing them, perhaps I can inspire one of you.

• Pull the summer veggies that are now, thanks to an early and hard fall, dieing.
Check. I pulled all the squash, pepper, tomato and other plants that were still left in the garden beds.

• Pull the annuals from the front beds.
Check. Petunias and other annuals pulled, potted plants pulled and soil sifted to remove roots. Next spring I'll add some fresh compost and vermiculite to re-energize it and get it ready for a new planting.

• Dig out, split and replant the Rhubarb so we can have more next year.
Check. Look at this thing! I thought it looked like some kind of strange alien life form, I know, time to lay off the star trek huh? I dug out carefully around the outside of the crown and root ball. For those of you that are not familiar with it, the crown of a plant like rhubarb or strawberries is that area at the top of the root ball that sits generally at the soil level. It is where all the growth of the plant comes from. After I had dug out the whole plant, I used a flat shovel to split the crown into three pieces each of which a bit of rootstock still attached. I gave one to a neighbor that was interested in growing some of her own. The two I kept were added to part of the new area of garden that A~ and I cleared out last weekend, right between where my raspberries and strawberries are growing, I thing I'll call that the pie stretch of garden from now on.

• Decide which large perennials we will leave where they are and which we will move and then actually move them.
Check. A~ and I got this done last weekend, and opened up a good sized area of our back planting area for future gardening. We've decided that the front is largely for show and the back is for food. Works for me.

• Cut up and consolidate all of the pulled greens from the garden for composting.
Check. I also collected the bagged grass from the last lawn mowing (yeah our lawn is done for the season.) I've found that our gas lawn mower works great as a garden waste compost prep device. That's a really technical geeky way of saying that I can chop the heck out of all the greens and browns collected in the garden before adding them to the compost pile. This makes the breakdown of the compost go much faster and the finished product much finer. Speaking of compost, My wife thinks I may have become a little, well, let's just say she says I've gone a little overboard when I referred to this area of the yard as "Compost Central". You can see behind the bags of grass clippings that I've added an area for an actual pile to sit over winter. I haven't added all the clippings and greens yet, I need to get some straw to make sure I get adequate carbon to nitrogen mixture and that I have enough room for air movement. This is what keeps the pile from smelling and gets it hot, helping it to break down quicker.

• Prune, thin and support the raspberries and strawberries.
Yes, check. I finally got around to doing this. This year my strawberries really went crazy. I got a decent amount of berries from the small patch (4' x 5') that I had last year. Then after harvest, they began to drop runners and new growth. Whoa, they spread like fire. I pulled a good bit of the old growth to allow the new plants to come up better and thin the patch. I also made a distinct edge to the spreading patch. final size of the patch is about 4' x 8'. Not quite twice the size, but with the thinning and some care, I hope to get nearly twice the harvest next year. As for the raspberries, I learned this year that raspberries will only fruit on the second year growth but not thereafter; I cut out the two year old growth and strung up and supported the one year old growth, hopefully I can get my two plantings on the same schedule from here on out. Last year one of them gave a lot of fruit, this year the other did; if I can get them both producing together I'll be a happy sorbet eating man!

• Weed some of the bad areas of the yard to get a head start on next year.
This part is an on going project. I am trying to get a handle on weeds overall, the grass looks good, but I still have to weed and till the new garden areas before winter sets in.

I hope your garden chores are coming along. This is that time of the year when it is so easy to neglect the garden, but at the same time is one of the most important times for prepping and putting the earth to sleep before winter. I'm really pleased with my progress so far this year. I spent much of the spring this year going through the beds and getting them ready for planting. I hope to be able to get seed in the ground much earlier next year and enjoy a greater and earlier harvest. Don't throw in the trowel yet, there's work to do. (Yeah I stole that line from Mother Earth News, it was just to perfect I had too. LOL)

Namaste
P~

Compost Day

Well it's that time again. Compost Day!!!

The last time I screened out my compost and collected it was on August 8th. Today is (or was) the 27th of September. That's 7 weeks and 2 days. This was even faster than the 2 1/2 months for the last batch. I can only assume that it was due to the new container, the metal one, that holds in the moisture and the heat better. You can see by the black gold in my hand that this batch was much more moist than the last. Strangely, I didn't water it nearly as often as I had in the past and I also had quite a bit more in the metal barrel that I did in the first model that was plastic. After screening it I finished up filling one of the 20 o 30 gallon totes (I don't remember the actual size but it is in the background in the movie clip below.) and having enough left to fertilize the winter greens. I was wondering, anyone of you have any suggestions on whether I should add the compost to the garden and let it sit there over the winter, or should I bag and save it until the spring?

I built myself a new peice of composting equipment today that I thougt I'd share with you. It's a screening basket, or at least that's what I'm calling it. I picked up some 2x2 rabbit wire from the ranch store this afternoon. (That's rabbit wire with a 1/2 inch spaceing between the wires, or 4 holes per sq. inch.) I attached it to some left over oak strip from the flooring project, you will probably see a lot of this in the future, and bent in the ends to make it a basket. My 12 yr old and I then scooped out about a half basketful of compost and shook the heck out of it to screen out some of the big clumps, sticks and incomplete items. I took another movie of it to show what we looked like to the neighbors, oh yeah and show you how well it worked.

So what do you think? I've already got the metal barrel nearly filled with the stuff that I'd started collecting while this was cooking. We'll see, maybe I can get one more batch done before it's too cold. I can try!

P!

Compost Day

You may remember a while back when I built myself a DIY homemade Compost Tumbler from an old pickle barrel and some salvaged wood. Today I pulled and screened the finished product of that endeavor. The rich brown humus that is the finished product couldn't make me happier. I was told that if you can't recognize what was put into the compost then it is done. Well, this pile has garden cuttings, grass clippings (some of those from the last addition are still recognizable but barely.), egg shells, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, sawdust, paper towels and shredded documents from work. I'm sure there's a lot of other things that I can't remember, but it is a very well rounded mixture I assure you. I was not really too happy with the physical performance of the composter itself however. The plastic barrel that I used as the main portion of it, was warped pretty seriously because of the double to triple digit heat that we've had this summer, plus the couple hundred degree internal temperature caused by good composting action. I have a method that I am going to try to solve the problem with it, but in the mean time, I was able to procure a new, metal food grade barrel for a measly 3.00 dollars. It was originally a bulk wheat barrel for the Church storehouse and I got it from their thrift store. I haven't modified it too extensively yet. I only punched a bunch of holes in the top and bottom. The lid is removable so I can take it off to add content, or water the mix. Rather than put this barrel in place of the other one, since it has no side opening yet. I decided to leave it on the ground, and roll it across the grass to tumble it. This method I am happy to say, took considerably less time to come up with, and works great. I thought I'd try something new, and post a short clip of it here.

Hope that works for you. It's my first time useing YouTube. So I'll mark two days ago, August 6th as the day I loaded the composter with the goods, and we'll see how long this batch takes to "cook". The last time I did it, it tooks something like 2 1/2 months, I kept adding as I went though. This time, I filled it with kitchen scraps, grass and sawdust and I'm leaving it at that to see how long it takes. Having two tumblers now, I can get one going good, while I start collecting in the other.
I'll keep you posted.
P~

Compost Day

Sunday was compost day around here. I've been collecting my compost thus far this year, not in a pile, but in a bucket. Well a tote actually. I took one of those 20-30 gallon totes that you can pick up just about anywhere, It was an old one that was begginning to crack so I gave it new life as my compost container.

As you can see I cut a ton of holes around the outside and the bottom of the tote, and elevated it on a couple of 4x4's. This whole thing was a sort of experiment. The last compost pile that I attempted was pathetic. although since the pumpkins that I had put in it did not decompose entirely, I did get a bunch of pumpkin plants to grow in that spot the next year. Anyway, I decided to try a different method this year.


So far I think it's been working out pretty well. This is the stage that my compost is at right now. I started it... hmm let me think for a second. . . . sometime around two months ago. I think that if I just let this go for another week or so, I could put it in the garden with no problems, but I really don't know what to look for to know when it's done. It is very rich and dark though and has no real stink

What I did today was to add the scraps that I collected last week in the house, as well as my paper towels and some other greens to the pile.
•First I spread out what was in the tote on a tarp. This just seems to me to be the easiest way to do it. I tried mixing it in while the existing compost was in the tote and it didn't seem to get the stuff up off the bottom as well.


•This is the inside and out glazed ceramic cookie jar that I picked up for a buck at the Thrift store. I keep it under the counter next to the trash can and put all my kitchen scraps in it. It has a rubber seal in the lid and keeps any smell inside the container. I also mix in all of my coffee grounds and that helps to keep the stink down I think. The next step for this process is to dump out all of these onto the pile on the tarp.










These are the two bags of used paper towels that we collected over the last two weeks. I wadded them up and gave them a quick spray with the hose to dampen them. Wading up helps to trap air inside them, and spraying seems to help them break down a little faster. I go ahead and mixed these into the compost along with the greens that I added warlier. I use these paper towels to double as my "Browns". Generally you would use dried leaves or the like, but there are very few mature trees around me that leave any dried leaves and besides, this is a great way to get rid of used paper products.




This is my new compost tumbler. I made this out of an old pickle barrel that I was able to pick up for $20.00. All of the wood is re-used construction waste. The rollers are the old skateboard wheels and bearings from one of my kids old boards. The only new items on this are the peices of hardware to hold it together.












I cut into it and made an opening side that I hinged with some old rubber that I had laying around. (If you've seen the pictures of my garage, you'd understand I don't throw anything out.) On the side with the two openings for filling, I riveted some rabbit wire on the inside to allow for air transfer without all the compost falling out. On the bottom I cut into it and made a larger central hole for the same reason.
Now that I had all of the compost items mixed together well, I added them into the composter. Gave it a spin for good measure and will leave it closed to "cook" for a while before turning it again.

As a side note; I am pleased with how the tumbler came out, but have since found that the bottom side of the barrel, the one that does not have the rib around it, is not nearly as strong as the top end. You can see in the last picture that the left side of the composter has started to dent in slightly. I has dented more since then but is still useable. I am going to be keeping a lookout for a metal drum to replace this one with for the longrun and I'm sure I will make some sort of modification to this one for the short term, but for now I think this will work well.
P~

Fire wood storage.

At our house, there's one thing that we all love about summer. Campfires! Every year we love to have campfires in the backyard at our little coleman firepit. A~ and I have found that there's really not a lot of foods that our boys won't eat if it comes off a stick. Yeah, I know, they're boys through and through. So anyway, I have a couple of businesses that I drive by everyday going to and from work that are always putting piles of firewood out for free (My favorite price). The problem is that every year I try to make a nice orderly pile on an old palet that I keep back in a corner. I always start out good, but by midsummer I have a messy unsightly heap that is falling all over the place. So this year, I was able to recycle some construction materials from a home that's being built next door and set out to build a firewood storage rack. I have most of it framed up and ready to store wood in, but I still need to build a roof over it so it doesn't all get wet. I do have to say I am pleased thus far. I'll get some pictures of it soon. Next yard project, compost pile. I am looking into a couple of different ways that I can accomplish this. My wifes concerns need to be given the utmost consideration, if I want to keep it that is. She doesn't want an eyesore out back, and is worried about pests. I want to find a way that I can do it cheaply, I am leaning towards either building a wooden frame and covering it with wire or possibly using a recycled water barrel to build a rolling composter.
Any suggestions appreciated.
P~