One of the joys of getting a bit older is having the time to putter around in the garden. Below is my garden blog. This site also contains sections of recipes and features about specific, and often obscure, gardening lore.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Our warm and dry weather broke overnight with a cool, but needed rain. Daily highs are supposed to be down 10-20^o over the next week with some freezing temperatures in the early morning hours. The contrast in weather over what we had a year ago is amazing. At this time last February, we were recovering from a winter storm that had shut off our power for a couple of days and pretty well immobilized our area, if not a good bit of the nation. So even with the cooler temperatures, we're doing pretty well for early February.

Today (February 4, 2012)	Ice on trees (February 3, 2011)	Ice on creek (February 3, 2011)	Senior Garden (February 5, 2011)

Compost

I've mentioned working our compost pile(s) several times this month without offering an image of what I was talking about. We currently have three compost heaps. The one in the foreground of the image at left is a pile that is pretty well mature. Using a piece of half inch hardware cloth, I've been screening out undigested organic material from the first pile, throwing it on the second, and using the screened, mature compost to add a bit of fill and nutrients to one of our raised beds.

The second pile had begun to look like a garbage heap a few weeks ago, as I kept adding kitchen scraps to it with no covering. The partially digested material from the first pile has now covered the sprouting onions, bad potatoes, coffee grounds, and vegetable peelings that had been previously exposed. We'd never get away with such a mess in the city, but living in the country with our nearest neighbors far downwind, I can cheat on care of the pile at times.

The second pile also needs to be turned, but with the rain and cooling temperatures, that will have to wait for better weather. Mixing a pile regularly and adding a bit of lime and fertilizer helps it break down a bit more quickly. During the winter, however, things are usually just too cold to permit much decomposition, but having the pile ready when warm weather arrives saves having to mix the pile then when other garden chores mount.

The smaller, third compost pile at the back of the photo is one that contains asparagus, broccoli, and kale stalks, along with some other slow-to-digest materials such as leaves from the yard and grounds. Without a chipper/shredder, I find it difficult to get some materials to break down in the four to six months other materials need to compost, so I simply started a "slow pile." It's still pretty small, as I also used many of our kale and broccoli stalks to fill holes around the Senior Garden grounds.

Let me add what may be a good tip we've found on composting our coffee grounds. We used to use the standard, white coffee filters most folks use. I noticed that while the coffee grounds digested, the white filters took much longer to break down. In a moment of clarity, I realized that those filters probably had been bleached to achieve their whiteness, with some of the bleach residue slowing decomposition, not to mention what it might have been doing to us as we drank the coffee that had flowed through the filters. So we switched to brown, unbleached coffee filters that break down fairly quickly in the compost pile and also gained a bit of peace of mind.

Other Stuff

I wrote yesterday about putting some used, grass clipping mulch around our newly transplanted sage and oregano (just barely visible to the right of the concrete well cover in the back of the photo at left). Most of those clippings came from an area of the garden (foreground of photo) where we'd had some of our fall lettuce. It's also the bed that will get our first planting of peas sometime next month.

I usually try to prepare a bed for spring peas sometime in the late fall. This year that meant just getting the last of the lettuce out of the way, as I'd thoroughly tilled the area before putting in the late lettuce. The now removed mulch held back most weeds, although I did pull a few stray weeds yesterday.

Sometime early next month when the soil is at least partially thawed, I'll just scatter my early pea seed in a 6" wide row down the center of the bed. Then I'll poke the seeds into the cold soil one at a time. It's a little hard on the fingers, but is an easy way to get ones peas planted really early. The pea seed will just sit until conditions are suitable for it to germinate. Note that I don't use this method for some pea varieties such as Eclipse, and to a lesser extent, Encore, that require fairly warm soil to germinate.

Since we just used up the last of our peas frozen from last year's garden (along with the last of our sweet corn and our carrots ), I can hardly wait to get planting.

Friday, February 3, 2012

With yet another warm winter day, I transplanted our sage and oregano plants today to what I hope will work out as a permanent location for them. I'd put them in one of our raised beds last summer knowing full well that I'd have to eventually move the perennials. Their old location will be filled with onions and carrots next spring.

I started out my gardening tasks for the day by screening another cartful of compost. Our two sage plants and our single oregano plant got a good trimming before being moved to an area behind our shallow well. I used a shovelful of compost in the hole for each transplanting and another around each plant before mulching them thoroughly with some used grass clipping mulch from other areas of our garden. I also transplanted a miniature rose bush that had bloomed and gone dormant in the pot I purchased it in. It went into a flowerbed along the east side of our house. All of the transplants then got a good watering, as things are beginning to really dry out here.

The rest of the compost went into the raised bed where I'd dug the herbs. With the compost I added to the bed yesterday, the entire bed has been top-dressed with one to two inches of the precious black gold. If the warm weather holds a bit, I'll begin screening more compost for our asparagus bed.

While I love being able to get some gardening done in the middle of winter, there's also a price to be paid for the mild winter (so far). I mentioned last month that our garlic, which should have remained dormant until spring, has already sprouted. I noticed after transplanting the rose bush today that some of our daffodils are already up. Some of them are around four to six inches tall, certainly way too tall to survive a really hard freeze.

At this time last year, much of the nation was reeling from a major winter storm. Our power was out for a couple of days, and we huddled around our kerosene heaters to stay warm. Today, I worked outside with a light sweatshirt over my flannel shirt...and worked up quite a sweat.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

February is usually a month where we do a good bit of indoor planting, but get little to nothing done outside. We'll definitely be getting many of our garden transplants started this month, but other than heavy fog the last few mornings, our weather has been glorious for several days. Yesterday, I gathered and burnt limbs from the yard and screened compost and added it to one of our raised beds. The day before, I pulled some vining weeds from the same raised bed. And of course, there was the fun and games I described in my last posting about adding several tons of needed gravel and fill to our driveway. It's really been a treat to be able to get some outdoor chores done at this time of year and to simply stand at times and enjoy the unseasonable warmth.

While I hate to waste good weather days, I took it a bit easier today, as I had an early morning appointment with the laser surgeon. While it's great that cancers and pre-cancers can be easily lasered off, it's also a reminder that as we age, taking adequate precautions when working in the sun is essential.

I started another tray of onions today with the same method and varieties as I did last month. I had just enough sterile potting mix left over from geranium transplanting earlier in the week to fill the tray. I even remembered to fill our twelve quart pot with mix and pop it in the oven so I'd have sterile mix on hand for our next planting adventure. And I guess I did make one change in our method today, as I put this tray of onions over our heating mat to speed the onions' germination just a bit.

Any further gardening fun and games for the day were cut short by a phone call from my wife, saying she was on her way home to pick up "the boys" to take them to the vet for their annual shots and heart worm testing. While Mac (in the foreground) and Shep (on porch) are both pretty well behaved dogs, wrestling both of them into a small, Honda Civic and getting them to and from the vet is a job for two. Actually, Mac loves to go for a ride and will often jump, unbidden, into our car or truck if a door is left open. Shep is a bit more reluctant about going for a ride. (Maybe he remembers the trip when he went to the vet to get "tutored.") But other than Mac insisting he supervise my use of the floor shift by laying on the console, the trip was actually pretty pleasant, and both "boys" got their shots and a good report on their heart worm tests.

One of the joys of living in the country is being able to let our dogs run free. They follow us wherever we go on the property and try to accompany us on walks and bike rides. Over the seventeen years we've lived at this location, we've had lots of dogs. They've all lived pretty good lives. Sadly, folks don't seem to have any feelings about dumping the previous family pet in the country to fend for itself.

January, 2012

From the at Senior Gardening