The Compost Bin

My 4 year old daughter, who at this point is a lot more interested in gardening than my 6 year old son, came to me during breakfast with big news the other day. "Your Rogoogula is growing."

And since then, I've been calling it Rogoogula too. I like the name better than regular old Arugula. Even Rocket Arugula (the seed variety) doesn't have that same ring to it like Rogoogula does.

But regardless of what I'm going to call it, it did sprout pretty quickly under the light setup that I have in my basement. I'm going to wait until some true leaves appear before I thin out the seedlings. This way I can put the cuttings to good use on a sandwich or something. These first leaves don't really taste anything but once the true leaves start growing, the plants actually taste like arugula.

I'm still a long way from having arugula pesto but since it's still February, I'm just happy that I'm doing any gardening.

Seed starting season has finally begun. Despite wanting to start seeds for the past two or three weeks, I didn't get around to actually doing it until this weekend.

Now that I've cleared an area in my basement, dug the shelves out from under a pile of junk in my garage, set up the lights, the extension cords, the timer and cleaned the APS-24 Self Watering Seed Starting Trays that I love to start seeds with, the rest of this process should be a cake walk. Really it's no big deal to stick a seed in some soil and water it. For me the hard part is organizing all of my junk.

Right now I've got one tray worth of seeds under the lights and soon more will follow. That one tray is full of mesclun greens and arugula. And surprisingly enough, they've already started to sprout even though I only planted them on Sunday.

The next garden project on my to do list is to build a mini hoop house over one of my raised beds. Then in a few weeks when these seedlings are strong I'm going to transplant them outside. By March it should be warm enough, with the aid of the hoop house for these green to grow.

Walking around my yard this weekend I noticed a lot of interesting things that led me to an exciting conclusion. The groundhog was wrong!

Besides seeing these daffodils poking through the ground the one thing that really convinced me that Punxsutawney Phil must have his wires crossed was that I saw his cousin WW3 this weekend. WW3, also known as Woodrow Woodchuck the Third, came out of his winter hole in my neighbor’s property and was wandering around our yards.

WW3 is the third generation of woodchuck that has tried to turn my vegetable garden into an all you can eat buffet. Because of this critter and its ancestors, I now maintain a careful watch of the fence perimeter around the garden, always on the lookout for any attempts to burrow underneath.

His grandmother, The Big W, who lived underneath my old tool shed, met an untimely death trying to cross a nearby road. I cheered when I saw the road kill but little peace was enjoyed by my tomatoes. The next generation swiftly dug in and resumed the war right where The Big W left off.

WW2 was a different type of chuck and brought the battle to the high seas. One day while I was at work, I received a call from my wife.

Image via Wikipedia

“There’s a beaver in the pool!” she yelled. I immediately knew she was talking about my nemesis, WW2. “I think it fell in and it can’t find the stairs to get out. It’s already done two laps.”

With victory in my grasp, I instructed her to, “Go get the pool net and hold him under the water. If you can do it, the carrots will write songs of your braveness for many seasons to come.”

“Are you out of your mind? I’m not going outside. Look, he finally figured it out and found the steps. He’s out now. “

“Curses.” I thought to myself. We were so close to ending this conflict and yet so far.

Fast-forward to 2009, almost a decade in and still the Woodrow family continues to give my vegetables nightmares.

And since I know my enemy well, I don’t think he would have come out of his hole unless spring was about to get sprung.

Have you ever worried that you're spending too much time browsing through seed catalogs?

No, me neither.

Yesterday’s weather was in the forties for a first time in ages. I don’t think it’s been that warm yet in 2009. So, of course, I took a walk around the yard and visited the garden.

Since the yard is still mostly covered in snow, there’s not a lot to see. And there really isn’t anything going on in the compost bins.

These leaves have compacted down quite a bit. In the fall, the bins were filled to the top but as you can see now, we’re about half full. Even though there isn’t a lot of microbial activity in the pile when it’s freezing out, I think the cold temperature does help in breaking down the leaves structure. The constant freeze-thaw cycle that goes on all through the winter has got to help.

Once the weather warms up in a few months, I’m going to have to go crazy with the greens to get these piles cooking. They’re almost 100% leaves. Some good sources of greens are used coffee grinds and vegetable scraps. Another good way to get a leaf pile cooking is with blood meal. Blood meal is one of the highest sources of nitrogen that you can find in a non-synthetic fertilizer.

I’ll probably skip the blood meal though. I drink way too much coffee, so finding enough greens is never really a problem.

All through the fall, I was hoping to build a mini hoop house or a cold frame and extend my harvest and try to grow vegetables in the winter.

As you can see in this picture of Swiss Chard covered in snow, I never did get around to building anything. It would have been great to pop open the hoop house on a sunny winter day and cut a nice fresh salad for the family but unfortunately I didn’t have enough free time to get it done.

Well even though it’s February, I’m not ready to give up yet and I’m about to try something new. In March, I usually start seeds in my basement under grow lights. Mostly I start tomatoes, peppers and a few other seeds. Well my idea is to start some very hardy greens this month and then transfer them outside to a hoop house. Having a fresh salad in March is almost as good as in the middle of winter.

The greens I’m thinking about are Spinach, Arugala and Lettuce. According to Four-Season Harvest, those crops should be able to withstand the cold as long as they’re out of the wind. They’d never germinate in those conditions so I figured why not start them in my basement.

And if I’m feeling lucky, I’ll probably add some Swiss Chard, Bok Choy and Broccoli Rabe to the mix as well. I think they’re a little less hardy so we’ll see. I’d love to try some root vegetables like beets, carrots and parsnips too but anything with a tap root usually doesn’t transplant too well.

Once the plants have gotten a good start under the lights, I’ll move them outside and see what happens.

I really want to grow a lot of food this season so I figured I might as well start ASAP. And besides, I really don’t think I can wait any longer to start gardening this year. I’m ready to start now, even if it means trying to grow vegetables in the winter.

Since I don't have a very complicated haircut, I started cutting my own hair to save some money. It's pretty much a buzz cut so it's silly to pay $20 for something that takes less than five minutes to do. I'm not exaggerating. The girl that used to cut my hair would take me without an appointment any time I wanted because I was in and out of there so quick.

So once a month, I break out the clippers and go to town on my head. And instead of clogging up the vacuum cleaner with a big wad of hair, I've been composting it instead. I just pick up as much as I can from the sink or the floor after I buzz myself and stuff it in a bag or a container, then bring it outside to one of my compost bins. I either dig a little hole and cover the hair ball with leaves or sometimes I'll just leave it on top of the pile. I've even seen birds come by to take some for their nests and I think that's pretty cool too.

I've read that hair is very slow to decompose but it's a great source of nitrogen (something like 12-0-0). I only just started doing it recently, so I'll report back on how quickly hair breaks down once the warm composting weather returns.

There really isn't a lot to write about during the winter. It's about 25 degrees tonight and once again it's snowing. And this storm could drop another six inches on us. [Update: The storm was a dud, just a lot of ice] So as you can imagine, there's not a lot of gardening or composting going on here.

So what's a garden blogger to do? I'll tell you what I did. I sat at my computer and looked at all the photos that I took this year and tried to find some pictures that I never posted about. An iPhoto slide show with about 5,000 photos might sound like fun to you but trust me, after an hour or so, it's gets pretty boring. Let's see, compost picture, compost picture, here's one of my kids in front of the compost bin, another compost picture, oh here's a picture of compost. You get the idea.

Watching the pictures slide by, it occurred to me that I never created a post about how I built my homemade compost tumbler. I did make a compost tumbler video about how I kick it around my yard but I never explained how it was made



How To Make A Garden Compost Tumbler
First thing you'll need is a garbage can with a lid. Next you'll need a hole saw. A hole saw bit isn't expensive, they're probably about five bucks. Connect it to your drill and make a bunch of holes in the garbage can. You can also put one or two holes in the lid. This way when it rains some water will get in there. You also want to put one near the bottom of the can or even on the bottom if you want. This is be used for drainage for that rain.

Next you'll need some screen material. They sell fiberglass screen at home improvement stores so that people can batch up their window screens. You can also patch up your garbage cans with them too. Cut some squares that are few inches larger than the holes.



Glue the window screen squares over the holes. If you're a crafter, then I'm sure you have a Glue Gun. If not, then super glue would probably work too. I glued the screen to the holes from the inside of the can to keep the tumbler neat looking but you can also glue them from the outside.

The lid is held in place with bungee cords. And as you can see in the video below, these homemade garden compost tumblers are very easy to turn. No cranking here.