Waste Not

      One thing that I find fun and challenging about gardening is the ability to often recycle things, such as pots, poles, boards, leaves,and oh yes, plants.

Leaf pile, as of 11/15/11

      The leaves are almost finished falling from my trees, and the neighbors trees.  Several neighbors bring over their leaves, and yesterday I mowed my next door neighbor's back yard leaves into my flowerbed.  I will shred the above pile with the mower, so next spring I will have lots of beautiful leaf mold.  The leafy greens in front are swiss chard.  This clump is ready for a last harvest, then I hope to move the plants to a cold frame to hopefully overwinter them.  Although swiss chard is quite cold hardy, I have not had much luck, maybe one in ten plants, with it overwintering unprotected.

Red onions, 11/15/11

White and yellow onions, 11/15/11

      The onions above are the last of my onions from the summer crop.  Some were too small to bother with trying to use.  Some were sprouting, and some were gasp, mushy.  So back in the ground they go.  I expect all to sprout usable scallion type onions, and hope some will develop bulbs.  All should overwinter without protection.  The green sprouts in the red onion picture are peas that sprouted from pods that fell from plants in the summer.  They will not produce peas before the winter kill, but the sprout tops and tendrils are delicious and pretty on a salad.

Ruby lettuce, 11/15/11

      One of my park gardening neighbors is about to put his plot to bed for the winter, and was not interested in these Ruby Lettuce volunteers in his garden.  Well I was!  What a bounty.  I potted them all up for a few days, hopefully to allow them to develop nice roots.  Remember those straw bales for my daughter's new cold frame, well here is some beautiful lettuce for a start.  And below are some starts of Tatsoi and thick stem chinese mustard getting ready for transplant to some cold frame.

Tatsoi on the left, chinese mustard on the right

      And lastly, pictured below, are some baby lettuce volunteers on the park compost pile.  Don't rush over there to get them, as they have already decided to move on.  They appear to be a green romaine lettuce, a very welcome addition to my lettuce collection.  So all of these plants have been saved from ending up on the compost pile, and some had actually started out there!

Compost pile lettuce

It Pained me to do it

      For the entire gardening season I have been able to compost everything back to the park plot other than harvested produce.  Then came August and 20 inches of rain.  Growth in a tropical rain forest is extensive.  As in weeds.  And more weeds.  Some weeds that I encouraged like Purple Basil and lamb's quarter.  Mistake.  Lamb's quarter may be edible, but that does not make it a desirable crop in a garden.  Nor the Purple Basil in excess.  Both turn into shrubs in just a year, with tenacious root systems to match.  Next year: no lamb's quarter, and maybe one or two Purple Basil.  Goodbye my little unlovelies.
      Tomatoes, peppers and most squash don't like that much rain, so gardening has taken a hit while the weeds are on a joy ride.  This late in the season it is also naturally the time to see a fade with the need to start some fall clean up.  But this is a little too much.

Veggie waste and weeds, 9/21/11

      I would normally try to cut this all up into small pieces to add to the compost pile, but this mountain is overwhelming.  It could take hours or days cutting it up, versus maybe an hour to run it over to the park compost pile.  Where they have front end loaders to do the mixing.  So, gulp, I gave into the time priority and loaded the pile onto my motorized garden cart.

Smarter gardening, 9/21/11

      Sometimes it just pays to bend a little.  After all, the plant material is being composted, and I will bring back wood chips, grass clippings and leaves to my garden.  So I am constantly adding more organic material to the beds.  And it shows.  I now have soil instead of clay, and big worms are now present to do the soil tilling the non motorized and quiet way.  There was not a worm to be found three years ago.

Same spot as above, now much prettier

Ready to start the fall gardening

Oh Well

      Two days ago I was in a clean up mode over at the park garden.  I was proud of myself for cutting down a lot of seed stalks, including the various blue colored chicories that had seemingly run their course.  After all, I probably still had seeds in packets and had never tried to store those little seeds.  All of this done early in the morning before the sun was very high in the sky.  So the barren seed stalks went onto the compost pile.
      Lo and behold, when I hit the park yesterday morning, I was surprised to find this sight on top of the pile:

       I think I won the "Prettiest Compost Pile of the Day" award with this one.  So I should be a little more observant next time to make sure a plant has run its course before whacking off its top.  These little blue flowers do attract a myriad of small bees and wasps, many assumed to be beneficial.
       I have always admired the wild blue corn flowers that grow freely by many roadsides, but had never been successful getting them to transplant to my home garden.  The red stemmed dandelion is actually a chicory, and in addition to its beauty and delicious edibility, puts on this nice flower show when it is done.  I expect to get more greens to regrow from the base as the weather cools in the fall.   

Beneficial Bug Bed

      There are many nasty bugs that we battle continuously.  But there are also beneficial bugs that help us in that fight by often eating the baddies.  But the good bugs also need pollen at times, so I have devoted the space in the bed that contains the compost pile as an area set aside to attract good bugs.  It is planted with perennials and herbs whose flowers should attract beneficial insects, and whose undisturbed plant mass should provide homes for the bugs.  Hopefully more good bugs than bad bugs.

Beneficial bug bed, 5-10-11

      The compost pile is a very important part of the garden for me.  It is therefore located right in the middle of my garden, where it can be accessed easily.  I have yet to dig it out to use the compost, as it just seems to keep breaking down stuff as it is added.  I am sure the run off from the pile is beneficial to the surrounding area.  Perennial flowers are planted at both ends of the bed, to attract beneficial insects as well as to add some color.

Daisies and Columbine, 5-10-11

      To bloom later in the summer will be black eyed susan, purple coneflower, bronze fennel, carrots, bee balm, cosmos and more.  I am thrilled with the number of cosmos volunteers popping up all over the garden.  I had loads of marigolds set seed two years ago, but strangely never got a single volunteer.  Bonnie's garden seems to have thousands, I will ask her for a trade.

Robin update

Lou's Pride

      Lou's Robin was the leader over in the park, having four eggs for quite some time.  As a matter of fact, she had five at one time, but Lou saw her fly off with one and drop it in another plot.  Robins are reported to know when cowbirds lay an egg in the robin's nest and then to take some corrective action.  Maybe this was such a case.

My Robin's nest, 4/29/11

      My robin is trying to make up for lost time.  She added a third egg a day after the second egg.  This is a good thing, as Lou is enjoying his reign as Robin king just a little too much.

And then there were four, 5/1/11

      On my visit to the park yesterday, I was happy to find the fourth egg.  So Lou, now we have an even battle going.  He will have the first chicks though, as he has a head start and it only takes two weeks for the eggs to hatch.  And then only another two weeks for the babies to fly off!

Screech, screech, screech, 5/1/11

      Momma robin is none too happy with my visits to the park.  You can see her perched at the gardener's feet just a garden over.  Screeching.  Just wait until the babies hatch.  I read that the parents dive bomb on intruders then.  Oh joy.  And they can have up to three broods a season.  Luckily on a new nest.  Hopefully not in another corner of my compost pile.

Keep it for the Soil

      To get good productivity from a garden, you need good living soil.  As you take produce away from the garden, those nutrients are being lost.  Therefore I recycle everything from the garden right on site.  The compost pile sits right in the middle of the garden, so it is never far away.  Weeds, veggie trimmings, leaves and whatever else organic goes either onto the compost pile or directly to one of the wood chip paths.

Sunflower stalks, 4/17/11

      The sunflowers that I rescued last year as baby volunteers from some of the grassy areas next to the gardens grew to be twelve foot monsters!  New volunteers from last years seed heads are coming up now.   Sun flower sprouts are delicious, so if there are too many volunteers, some will find their way to the salad bowl.  The picture above is the pile of stumps or stalks from the sunflowers that were too large for me to break up by hand.  I tried whacking them on the edge of the compost bin, but knew that that would result in a broken down compost bin.  So I rescued a black locust log from the wood pile and hauled it to my garden.

 

      The two pictures above are of the log and a piece of a red oak board to be used as a whacker.  And one of the monster sun flower stalks that was being ornery.  I started breaking up the stalks in a bed, but that meant picking up the pieces afterwards and moving them to the path.  Much easier to move the log to the path, and do the whacking there.  All I had to do was put about two inches of the sunflower stalk hanging out over the stump.  Whack that two inches with the red oak, and it ususally broke off to the path with very little trouble.  Some pieces took several mashings to break them up.

No more sunflower stalks, 4/17/11

      The lighter colored pieces are the newly broken chips.  Now everything can stay at the garden to be recycled.  The sunflowers did fight back a bit, as when I washed my hands I found a totally popped and angry blister on the palm of my hand.  Maybe I should have done the job a little more slowly.  I would like to find a log about three feet long so it would be at a better working height.  That should not be too hard to find.