Saturday, June 21, 2008

June 21, 2008

Well, today was mostly a day of rest. But I felt better later in the day and went out into the garden. Watering I found out what scoundrel knocked over my corner corn stalks... it was me dragging the hose over the corner of the bed.  GRRRR. 

After watching my potato plants grow and grow and me be too sick to go out and do something about it, with the weather in the 70s and no sun, I went out and cut another level of boards.  Here's a great pick of me installing them.



Hehe, think it was a little past time?  Well I am shocked to tell you that I used five of my 2 cubic feet bags of Mel's Mix to fill them even to a point where I felt I'd done an OK job of it.  Unfortunately it was dusk at the time (9:30ish) when I took these pics. 



And take a look at the same pic of the Yukon Golds, reaching for the stars...



Tomorrow I'll add the final board and burry that tall one.  I'll leave the foreground one uncovered (hilling) to allow it to continue to grow.  I should note that I tried to move the branches into the center to provide places for potatoes to grow.  Boy those branches were brittle. I broke a couple against the walls. I doubt those will grow, but I left them anyway.  /shrug. 

While I was out there I took some shots of my rose garden. It's a mess of dead irises and evil morning glories but I thought I'd share.



Here is my favorite rose bush, well actually I just found one that's white with red tips. I tried to take a picture of it but it reflected the flash.  Tomorrow maybe.

Here's a pic of my compost bin... It's beginning to look a lot like compost... hehe.



Thanks to Joe over at Ft2Garden.com, I now know more about composting than I will ever need. He's amazing for a code monkey.  Thanks Joe!  Doesn't it look good? See the grey clumps, I'll mix those up later. When I was doing that my right arm went numb hehe.

My brother was over today picking up styrofoam that I would have normally mixed into my trash as space was available, but he took it to break up in the bottom of a huge pot to plant his herb garden.  He used to use a 4x4 raised bed for herbs, but he's moving the prennials to the pot and planting veggies in the bed.  He's also considering a green house in his side yard, but that's another story for another day. 

He called today to ask if I wanted a few chive plants. They reproduce like weeds and he's got more than he needs.  So I've got to figure out an herb garden solution of my own, and fast.  I like the idea of pots, but I've got to figure out where to put them.  And of course I've got to buy the pots.  Hehe I just told a garden buddy today that I was trying not to spend any more money on my garden than necessary.  See how long not spending money on my garden lasted, hehe.

Man it feels good to work in the yard.

Enjoy your garden!

1 comment:

  1. go to starbucks - or several of them - and get yourself around 20-30 lbs of used coffee grounds and "layer" them into your compost as your flipping it next time... It'll cause one huge, final spurt in decomposition that will help finish you off more rapidly than grass + kitchen waste alone.

    One tip about the starbucks collection. Tell them that you'd be perfectly happy just taking whatever they have in their current garbage bins. Sometimes they go through this process of putting back into these little 3lbs silver bags but that's wasteful and a real PITA when you're trying to collect it en masse.

    Hell, once a month I go on a mission and try to collect about 120 lbs of it and use it as the organic fertilizer for my lawn. (20-30 lbs per 1000 sq. ft.) Makes my yard smell like Jaun Valdez for a day or two but I'm all about free + organic. and since coffee grounds are a perfect 35:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio they're actually self-composting alone...

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