Nice Day

The weather was perfect... a nice 80 degrees in the garden today.

The to do list is as follows...

• Harvest compost
• Plant lettuce
• Plant flowers
• Harvest anything that looks ready

Click on photos for a larger view

If you don't like worms you may want to skip the next few photos...

The first fork of compost gave me a fork full of worms.

 Lots and lots of worms.

 My compost bin is more of an over sized worm bin. I don't have a good supply of browns when I have garden greens and when I have lots of browns I don't have greens. The worms do a great job making me black gold the only issue is the seeds don't get killed off without the high temps. It's not really a big deal since I square foot garden. I know where I have planted every seed so anything grows around them gets pulled out.

Hand full of worms.

 I was not happy to finds a few of these in the compost.... That's right it's a wireworm.

But I was really happy to see this... three bins full of compost ready to use in the garden.

Finished compost

Next up is planting lettuce seeds. I decided to plant them in the potato bins that are not being used for anything at the moment. I have noticed that this area is not getting as much sun as it use to. The tree right above it has grown out to the point that it now shades this area of the garden.

One bin has cut and come again and the other is head lettuce. I also covered both bins with fencing to keep the squirrels out.

Bed 2 with some summer flowers to bring in beneficial insects. Cosmos to bring in predators like hover flies and lacewings. Marigold for parasitoids like wasps and a sweet allysum will bring both predators and parasitoids.

Have you ever grown a rampicante zucchino?

Well if you have never grown one and are thinking about it you will need a very tall trellis. This plant stands at about 8 feet and is still growing. I'll take some more photos when it fruits.

And last be not least today's very small harvest...

Cucumber, strawberries and and the last of the spring raspberries.

Carrots

It was a very nice day and I'm looking forward to a 4 day work week. We have a long weekend coming for the fourth of July and I tagged on four vacation days. It will be nice to be home for the week.

Compost Monday

Having a small yard limits me to a small area for composting. When turning the compost I have to move it from one side to the other. Since I have let this pile sit for most of the summer not adding much to it I wanted to sift out the finished compost. I have three ten gallon continers I use to store the compost until needed.

Photos below are of my turning and sifting process and as always click on the photos for a larger view.



From the looks of these healthy seedlings poking out of the bin I would have to say the compost is fertile.



Photo below: All this uncomposted (is that even a word?) material will go to the bottom...



I remove the first layer of the bin and place it next to the composter...



Once I started digging I found lots and lots of worms...

I placed one of my 10 gallon containers into the compost bin and covered it with a piece of wire fencing to use as a screen.



Photo Below: I place small amounts of compost onto the screen and run my hand over it to allow the finished compost and some worms to fall into the container leaving the larger pieces to be placed back into the composter to continue to break down.







Photo Below: Black Gold... if you look closely you will see some worms.



Photo Below: All done...

Photo Below: 30 gallons of compost ready for the garden. The worms in the containers will continue to work the soil.



In another two weeks I will repeat this process... by then I will have used up at least one of my 10 gallon containers. I also want to try starting seeds in my home made compost in February for my 2010 garden.



Happy Composting...