The Compost Bin

Let's take a break from all the Woodchuck madness and talk about one of my favorite subjects, compost.

Just because I do a blog called The Compost Bin, doesn't mean that I never run out of compost. Even though I sometimes have three compost bins going at once, I always wind up buying a few bags of the stuff at the garden center. It's takes planning and some effort to have finished compost at a specific time of the gardening season. Now if I was a totally organized gardener with all the time in the world, I'd use my homemade compost tumbler to cook up batches of compost that were ready every month. But that would mean that I'd have to turn the tumbler everyday and constantly check the moisture and get the green/brown ratio perfect. When it comes to compost, I'm more laid back and willing to wait longer if it means less work.

On one of my recent lunchtime walkabouts I found myself in Whole Foods. I'm a brown bagger when it comes to lunch but I'm always searching for a free snack. I head over to Costco a lot. They have free samples of food, plus a book section and patio furniture. I can't think of a better way to spend lunch than reading a cooking book on a chaise lounge eating food on a toothpick. But anyway, sometimes Whole Foods has some free samples out as well, so I hit them up occasionally.

My last Whole Foods trip wasn't very successful in the free food department but it wasn't a total waste. I noticed that they were selling a few varieties of compost. So on a whim, I bought few bags to check it out.

Now if you've bought bags of compost at a big box store then you know that the quality can be hit or miss. A lot of times the bags get soaked in the rain and the compost gets an ammonia smell to it. Yuck! Or you cut open the bag and the compost is just a big brick of soil that you have to chop up with a shovel. No fun!

Whole Foods compost is like the Cadillac of bagged compost. The bags are filled with slightly moist, dark brown, perfectly finished, crumbly compost. And I even saw some tiny worms in there. The only bad thing about Whole Foods compost is the price. Like everything else in that store, their compost is expensive. Because of the high price, I definitely wouldn't use it to fill a raised garden bed. But I had no problem tossing a few handfuls into the planting holes of some new perennials that I bought.

Despite the price, I'm going to have no problem recommending Whole Foods compost to friends and family.

To stop (or at least slow down) my woodchuck invasion the first thing I did was retrace his steps. There was an obvious hole in the vegetable garden fence (buried bird netting on 2x2 posts) that he must have bit his way through. So I knew how he got into the garden area. But where did he get into the yard?

Ah-ha! Here's the hole. Now if this was where he lived, all I would need is some dynamite and the woodchuck problem would be over. But this is just a short tunnel that goes from my neighbor's yard, under our fence and into my yard.



Now over the past two weeks, I've filled this hole in at least 4 times. And if you look closely, you can even see the chicken wire that I buried in there too. It's right next to the buried hose that I use to get water up to the garden. Every time I fill in the hose or block it with chicken wire, a big heavy bag of dirt or anything else I can get my hands on, the woodchuck just keeps digging until he gets around my obstacle. Sure is a persistent little varmit.

It seems like I'm going to lose the battle to keep the woodchuck out of my yard so I'm going to fall back and concentrate on protecting the vegetable garden instead. This war is not over yet.

There's nothing worse than losing a loved one. In this case that loved one was a bumper crop of bok choy.

I started the seeds under lights in my basement at the end of winter. Then I went to the effort to build a makeshift hoop house to keep the bok choy warm when I transplanted them outside. They even survived a couple of frosts under the hoop house and now that it's bok choy eating time I will have to go to the produce store. I have nothing to show for all of that effort because of a woodchuck.

Whether you call them woodchucks or groundhogs they are the mortal enemy of the vegetable gardener. And this woodchuck must be opening up his fortune cookie by now because he ate an entire raised bed full of Chinese take-out.

Putting up a stronger fence around my vegetable garden has been moved up to the number one priority on my To Do List. The current fence (that the woodchuck bit through) worked fine for the past two years. I just took a roll of bird netting and attached it to 2x2s around the garden. I also buried it under the ground so that nothing could tunnel underneath it.

But I guess after two years out in the elements, it got weak enough that it became the appetizer for this fat woodchuck. And by the way, this happened a few weeks ago but I'm a bit behind with my blogging lately. In my next few posts I'll describe what I've done to keep this pest out of my garden.

This Ornamental Cherry Tree was a one year wedding anniversary present from my Aunt. It's now eight years old and has come a long way from that little one gallon pot that it came in.

Originally went I planted it, I did a terrible job. I guess I didn't pack the soil down well enough because it started leaning and looked pretty crooked. But it still grew nicely for about five years. Then a few years back we did a major pool renovation and it had to be moved. The landscaping crew wrapped it up nicely and put it in a nice safe corner of the yard away from all the heavy machinery.

And months later, when the landscapers were done robbing us of all of our money, they used one of those heavy machines to replant the Ornamental Cherry Tree properly where it sits today.

Looking good garden greens! I think there's going to be some delicious salads in my future.





By the way, all the white flowers pedals all over my raised beds are from my apple tree. They blow all over the garden every spring. It's really a shame that I have this great old 30 foot apple tree that produces apples that are so pest ridden that I just put them right in the compost bin. I just don't have the free time to organically care for this tree and I definitely will not spray anything on it.

For the first time this year, yesterday's lunch came from the garden. Most of the garden greens that I planted in early spring under the hoop house are doing great. So great in fact that I grabbed some scissors and did some harvesting yesterday.

I'm always feel a tinge of pride whenever I pick those first vegetables from my garden. It's pretty much in vogue now a days to grow your own food but how many of those people who decided to grow their first Victory Garden after watching Oprah or the morning shows actually had a nice bowl of garden greens for lunch yesterday? In your face newbies!

So this salad consisted of some simpson lettuce, mesclun greens, arugula and some red leaf that I don't remember planting. It must be from the mesclun seed packet. Along with the salad my wife made a zucchini and onion quiche. The zukes and the onions didn't come from the garden but check back in about two months and I'm sure my garden will have some veggies for the quiche too.