It’s a Jungle Out There

I don’t have much time these days to get my thoughts together in a coherent way but I thought at least I could post some photos of my organic garden. Let me just say that when I planted it back in May I thought I didn’t really have enough in it. For weeks it looked kind of sparse. Well in June I got back from the beach and decided it just wasn’t taking off. It hadn’t had enough water and had weeds taking over. I spent the day weeding and watered it a few times. BUT… the biggest thing I did was that after weeding and watering I covered it with cow manure and compost. That was the magic key I guess, that and some great thunderstorms. I have a jungle in my yard now. One of my plants is over four fee tall.

The most amazing thing is that much of what is growing I didn’t plant, at least not on purpose. I have a number of things that came out of the compost I threw down. I have butternut squash and pumpkins growing and another squash type thing that I’m not sure what it is yet. I’ll have to see what comes up. Hopefully it is some acorn squash which I love. Anyway I have so many zucchini that I’m giving them away left and right. They are really delicious too.

Following is a recipe I invented to use the zucchini I have. Take a large baking dish and layer the following:

zucchini cut in 1/4 inch rounds, salt and pepper to taste, Italian seasoning, olive oil, large bread crumbs (I make these by toasting whole wheat bread and cutting it into small squares),  generous amounts of olive oil sprinkled on, and mozzarella cheese, I do this in two layers and then bake at 375 degrees for about 30-40 minutes. I cover it with foil. It is delicious.

We have also made chocolate zucchini cake. I won’t post the recipe but you can find a number of them by googling it. It is fantastic. I had guests over and they couldn’t believe it was full of zucchini. I half the sugar used in the cake and add a half a cup of chocolate chips. Yum!

I admit that due to the overwhelming number of squashes they are squashing out the tomatoes but it is kind of fun to see thing appear almost over night in the garden. I hear it must be the cow manure. Experienced gardeners call it black gold. I have also found that the zucchini literally grow over night. I can check the garden in the morning and find a couple that are too small to pick and then come back the next morning and they haver grown larger than I am supposed to let them.??

I will end with a couple more photos but they are about a week old and the garden has grown even more since and the tiny pumpkin is getting much bigger.  Happy gardening.

Mimi

Composting for Dummies

Today I finally got out in the garden. I was desperate to dig around in the dirt. I don’t think I have truly left my childhood. In fact, how many of you alert readers remember a time when for fun your mom would send you out in the yard with nothing other than a kitchen spoon to dig in the dirt? I have a very strong memory of this simple and yet fun activity. I still love it but I use a small pick and a shovel now.

I have had mixed success in my gardening, mostly because in our locale we have endured a number of years of drought and nothing really can replace the rain. I also don’t have  a huge extra income to spend on plants. I mostly split up the ones that multiply all on their own, better known as perennials. I also fully admit that I can not get out in the yard as often as I would like, it will be less now due to my new job, so I don’t water my plants regularly. The weeds seem to thrive while the plants aren’t always as prolific.

One of my favorite activities is composting. I positively love it. Why do I love composting? Mostly because it is such a great way to make wonderful soil AND keep tons of garbage out of the landfill. I must say that I am glad I did not go out and pick up a book to read about how to compost because if I did I probably would never have gotten started nine years ago. I was chatting with my neighbor one day and she suggested I just throw my kitchen trash out in a pile of leaves in the back yard. I could not believe it could be that simple so I kept calling her back to ask more questions. She was patient and I kept on.

Some time later I picked up a couple of books and read about how one was “supposed” to correctly compost and realized I was doing it all wrong. Apart from NEVER putting in meats or fats I did just about everything I wasn’t supposed to do or rather I did nothing they suggested. The amazing thing was that at the end of each season I had produced an amazing thing called humus; rich black dirt some folks call black gold. I have consistently composted for the entire nine years. I have done a number of different things but it always seems to work out for me.

I rake the leaves in a huge pile at the side of our yard next to my neighbor’s fence then in goes the kitchen trash; banana, apple, potato peels, coffee grounds, tea bags, old lettuce, anything vegetable matter that has not been eaten. I also have the girls compost their guinea pig bedding which is shredded newspaper and lots of poop of course but since they are herbivores it is fine. We even compost the ashes from our wood stove when they are COLD, otherwise you will set the whole thing on fire.

Because I don’t really want to turn it often, actually I never turn it, I told you I do everything I’m not supposed to, it doesn’t rot over rapidly. However, it still works for me. Today I dug down just a little and found lovely heavy black wet rotting leaves. I used them to mulch one of my flower beds. What I do there is to put down heavy wet newspapers and then the rotting leaves and low and behold I have a great weed barrier and it looks pretty good. In fact, from a distance it looks just like expensive mulch. The best part is that it is free and better yet recycling trash. Here are some photos and if anyone gets inspired to try it out remember you just need a largish pile of leaves to get started. Here is a wonderful website, A Complete Guide to Composting to help with other details.

I almost forgot to mention some other benefits of composting. It gives many wonderful critters a great place to live and feed. Today I found two beautiful skinks just waking up. It is still a little cold for them but when they got out in the sun they started moving around. I got a photo of one. I also have box turtles every single year in my yard and they often lay their eggs in the compost. My dog benefits as she has a compost buffet whenever she likes. The vet says its fine because it is vegetable-it won’t make her fat. The only down side is the gas it gives her but I guess I shouldn’t mention that here.

 

 

Back to the Garden

One of my very favorite things to do in the whole world is dig in the dirt; what a wonderful and simple pleasure. It started when I was a small child. I remember my mother giving me a small spoon and I would go out and dig away for what seemed like hours, funny huh!? I now use a small garden hatchet which is my only really irreplaceable tool. I use it for almost everything; removing weeds, separating perennials, digging, planting and loosening the soil.  I guess I feel close to my ancestors with my little hand held hatchet out on the earth.

Today was the perfect day to be out gardening as it was nice and cool and wet but not too wet, no bugs or blazing heat yet either. I only got to three out of six flower beds but it’s a start and just to smell the fresh earth made me feel positively joyful. At times I get discouraged because in general my yard looks rather shoddy as I have the entire neighborhood tromping all over it with bicycles, scooters, roller skates and all manner of childhood toys and amusements but I figure one day when the kids are grown and gone I’ll be sad when I look over a perfect yard and miss these days of childhood laughter and play so I do what I can with my garden and don’t worry about the rest. I do not use any chemicals either and so the weeds just love our yard but then so do all the wonderful creatures we get to see each year. Last year we had box turtles all over, we even got to see them mating, then found their babies as well. We had giant black snakes, toads, salamanders, hundreds of birds (sorry to say but that’s why the black snakes come, they feed on the birds), rabbits, voles, moles, an occasional raccoon or opossum.

I also had the good fortune today to hear of a plant sale not far from here so I stopped by and picked up some more perennials to add to the mix. I didn’t get them planted today but will get to them in the next couple of days, I hope. No matter how hard I try though I don’t seem to feel finished with the garden, it just keeps growing and needs tending but that’s what I enjoy so I don’t mind. I just wish I could keep the weeds at bay but I’ll keep trying.

Lastly as for the garden I must put in my “green” tip. The best thing one can do for the garden is to compost. It is free and super easy. Most people have a bin, I”m a bit lazy and just dump all the leaves in a pile in the corner of my yard then all year dump the kitchen garbage and cold ashes from the fire. Every now and again I turn it with a pitchfork and low and behold I end up with beautiful black rich humus. I use it in varying degrees of rotting for my flower beds and I have ended up with lovely rich soil all for free plus the organic trash doesn’t end up in the landfill. Here’s a photo of my present pile which might look like leaves with kitchen trash on top but the inside is gorgeous.

Before I got outside in the garden I took the girls to our local Nature Center where we volunteer. We play with the corn snake and speak to people who come in to visit. The girls also hunt for frogs, tadpoles and other critters in the water. I took several pictures inside, one of which was a phoebe nest. Suddenly, and I am not making this up I saw a bird flutter by the window. When I went outside to look I saw that it was a real phoebe in her real nest. I ‘ll post the two photos plus some others of the girls and the center. Enjoy and get outside and dig around yourselves, I guarantee in the very least you’ll feel closer to the earth! Happy gardening.

Organic Gardening

Today I was looking at a form which asked, “what are your hobbies”? At first I thought, hobbies, who has time for hobbies but later in the afternoon while digging up crab grass in my garden I realized I could put down organic gardening. I was so proud of myself. I am not just a gardener, I am an organic gardener. It just made me feel all earth friendly and what not. In all seriousness though, I am an organic gardener. I have never once used pesticides of any kind on either my flowers or veggies. In all honesty, I do have loads of weeds but as my sister reminded me, native people didn’t have a word for weeds. Very smart people they probably didn’t bother weeding either, good for them!

This is a photo of daughter number three helping me weed. She lasted about one minute, enough to take the photo and then she decided it was back breaking and ran off to play. Oh well, it was a nice idea I suppose. Back to the organic gardening. Part of my  gardening problem is a lack of funds and time. To remedy these limitations I have come up with a long term plan that has worked fairly well. I started a compost heap.
I killed two birds with one stone. I got rid of kitchen garbage and lots and lots of leaves that would have ended up in the landfill. They sit and heat up and by spring I have lovely free “mulch” for my garden. I admit there is still the stray egg shell that ends up in the flower bed but mostly from the street you can only see rich black stuff. It is great for the garden too.

I have started a few things from seed which actually survived and are now doing so well I’ve been able to separate them and add them elsewhere. I have had much luck with hosta which I think are so nice and green. Isn’t green a lovely thing to go against the brown earth. They are beautiful even if they only get little purple flowers once a year for a couple weeks. I did buy a couple of hostas when we first moved in our house eight years ago but now have them all over my yard.

Having a shady back yard I have lots of shade loving plants such as the hosta. I also have lots of lilies all of which were given to me by my next door neighbor. They also propagate themselves and are beautiful with large orange and yellow blooms.

I fully admit I am in no way a master gardener. I have killed about as many plants as I have grown but that doesn’t stop me from loving organic gardening. I love the smell of dirt, especially composted dirt. It looks like chocolate or coffee grounds and has a rich sweet smell. Odd as it may seem it was a smell that relieved my nausea when I was pregnant with my last daughter. Perhaps this is why she loves digging through the compost and looking for worms. She holds them and talks to them and even gives them names. Sorry, I’m getting off the subject.

Here is a photo of my irises which were given to me several years ago. I had a bumper crop when I had them in the front yard but they just didn’t look right there. They don’t seem to be as happy in back. Maybe next year I’ll have to find them a new location.

I also have lavender and rosemary which the girls and I love to just rub our hands in. I’m working on getting some time to get out there dry some of it and have the girls make sachets. Any suggestions on recipes for such would be lovely. I did buy the lavender and rosemary but must have put them where they wanted to be because they have done very well.
As for the vegetable garden it isn’t tilled yet. We just had a new water main installed so they tilled part of it to put in the new pipe. I share the plot with my next door neighbor which is such fun. We share the work and the bounty at the end. For the last several years we have had a severe lack of rain and I wasn’t able to water because I was caring for my ailing mother so we got almost nothing last year. The year before, our first year we had tons of stuff falling off the vines.  I have a very good feeling about this year though. I am ready to care for it. Our secret to success in this garden is cow manure which my neighbor’s husband donated from his farm. The stuff is black gold. I wish I had enough to put all over my yard which though is green from the street up close it is mostly crab grass and chick weed. Oh well, it looks nice enough.

In the end I know my yard would never win a prize and it is not professionally landscaped but I love it and look forward to years of growing things. Happy gardening to all.

Mimi