Compost: a fool-proof garden project

Never in my life did I think I would write a blog post about dirt, but I am about to, with pictures of dirt to boot. Glorious, hand-made dirt. I always knew that hand-made things feel better to me - I enjoy giving hand made gifts, we only have hand made cookies in the house, most of the decorations on the walls are handmade... but I never knew that even hand-made dirt would be more rewarding.

I guess calling it "hand-made" is a bit egocentric of me. I didn't actually make the dirt, after all. I basically just threw all our vegetable scraps in a huge pile and occasionally, when he had been extra naughty, my son dumped in a few bucketfuls of chicken poo as a punishment, but other than that God did all the work. There is a bunch of intimidating science involved and an entire shelf of books at the library on composting, but I had neither the patience or courage to learn the proper way to compost. I convinced my husband to build me an open-topped wooden bin out of old pallets and just started throwing stuff in it. The only rule was to put in only paper and vegetable products. I know there was something about "turning the pile" in some of those composting books - I think I turned ours about 4 times over the course of a year. I also vaguely recalled my brother talking about "browns" and "greens," so I made sure to add leaves in addition to all our green veggie scraps. And then in November I "put the bed to sleep" by covering it over with plywood and starting a new pile right next to it. If I am honest, I thought I would end up with a slimy stinky mess of rotten kitchen garbage, but I was wrong.

I probably violated many hard and fast rules of composting, but all I know is that yesterday I took off the plywood sheets to reveal a gigantic pile of the most beautiful black crumbly vitamin-rich DIRT I have ever seen. It felt like a magic show and Christmas all rolled into one. I was practically giddy as I shoveled scoop after scoop into the wheelbarrow. I mean - this used to be a pile of celery ends, banana peels and coffee filters and now it was just BLACK DIRT! I am still amazed. And a little perplexed that I could be so darn excited about it. I did remember a line from one of the books about composting that I ventured to crack open: "You will never have enough compost." And boy is that true. Two wheelbarrows full finished off my beautiful compost pile, and it was only enough to fill two and a half of my garden beds. *sigh* I am addicted.

I do walk to the new compost pile with a bit more enthusiasm, though, not so annoyed to be hauling a stinky bucket of old kitchen scraps. Now that I know what they will turn into, and have learned just how easy composting actually is, I am happy to do it. How about you - do you compost? If I can do it, anybody can!

Seed Starting Part 2: LIGHTS!

SOOOO... what have you decided to grow? I think I'm most excited about growing black cherry tomatoes this year. I plan to start a lot of those seeds to make extra sure I end up with at least two bushes.

Today we'll talk about how to set up a grow light, which will ensure that your seeds sprout into sturdy healthy seedlings. But before getting into all that, I have to say that last year I started tomato seeds on my window sill using nothing but the natural light shining in from outside. The seeds sprouted and grew into spindly floppy baby tomato plants that looked terribly unhealthy - but they were growing! I hardened them off and planted them out into the garden. And they didn't die! They didn't grow either, for about a month and a half, but they didn't die! This was a major success in my terrible gardening track record. While my friends were watching their large leafy tomato bushes from the nursery blossom and develop tiny green tomatoes, I was watching my tiny seedlings sit in the garden and not die. But then, after waiting for over a month, they took off and grew, blossomed, and gave me a decent crop of tomatoes. Out of the 24 plants that I started, I ended up with 5 mediocre tomato bushes and enough fresh tomatoes to keep us happy through the summer (though I didn't have any left over for canning or making tomato sauce, which made me quite sad).

I tell you all that to let you know that it is definitely possible to grow tomatoes from seed without using grow lights. However, you will put in just as much work and emotional energy and see a lot less output than you would if you took the time to rig up a light or two. And that's just tomatoes. I have never been able to start pepper or eggplant seeds using my window sill method.

This will be my first official year using grow lights to start plants, so maybe you and I are in this together. I've been watching my brother do it for years and every spring find myself coveting his deep green leafy BUSHES sitting there waiting to be planted out into the garden. This year I hope to have some of those myself. Here is the basic process:

1.) Obtain a light. "Grow Lights" sound fancy and can be expensive, but you will do just fine starting your seeds under regular old 40-watt fluorescent bulbs. The difference between these and officially-labeled grow lights is that grow lights emit slightly more red and blue light than fluorescent bulbs, but the difference is not enough to dramatically affect your plants or warrant spending tons of money. Go for the cheap bulbs!

2.) Create your space. Once you have your light (or lights, depending on how many seeds you plan to start), you need to find a way to rig it up so that it hangs just an inch or two above the top of your seed tray and is adjustable. As you plants grow, you will need to raise the light so that it is always just a little bit above the tops of the plants. There are many ways to do this, ranging from fancy-schmancy to jerry rigged. Here is a picture of my brother's set up from last year:

You can see that he put his seed trays on a shelf in the guest room with the light suspended above them. Rather than moving his light up, he has opted to put a box under the seed tray and gradually move the plants down to maintain the proper distance from the light. Good idea David! :) He is also using a fan; blowing air (gently) on your seedlings better mimics the outside environment and causes them to develop sturdier stems, making them easier to transplant later. You don't have to use a fan, but it will make for prettier and healthier plants, which means more vegetables!

My dad and I are sharing a seed starting space this year, so he built grow light stands using PVC pipe:

The lights sit on top of the PVC pipe frame and we will be lowering our seedlings as they grow. I'm using the greenhouse to house our seed starting operation simply because there is no room in my house. I know that my brother has started seeds in his garage where there is no sunlight and my other brother has started seeds in his closet. You don't need a lot of space to do this, and because you are providing the light using your grow light, it doesn't have to be done outside.

3.) Furnish your space. If you are anything like me, you get excited about a project like this but run out of steam once the newness wears off. A few weeks in, you get tired of watering the plants twice each day, or actually forget to water them at all! Let's not allow that to happen this year and make sure our space is as user friendly as possible.

Of course you need to be near an electrical outlet so you can plug in your lights and fan, if you are using one. Put plastic under your area if you are growing inside to keep water from draining onto your floor. Buy a watering can or mister - something that puts out a delicate spray of water so that you don't wash your tiny seedlings away when you water them. You will be watering them a lot, so you want to make sure doing this is not a huge pain - positioning your grow station far away from a water source is a bad idea.

4.) Get Creative! As far as I'm concerned, one of the biggest benefits to having a garden is saving money. There is no point in spending all of the money you are about to save on supplies to get your garden set up. Look around and ask around for things you can use to set up your seed starting station. Craig's List is a great resource, as well as freecycle or even garage sales. It doesn't have to look good - it just has to work.

If you've hung in there with all my ramblings, you are ready to set up your growing space. This is the hardest part of the whole process - once your seed starting area is ready, you can move on to the fun part: putting seeds in dirt. That's coming next - I'm so excited, aren't you?

Sunflower Seeds

Speaking of seeds, how about some sunflower seeds? Sunflowers are my all time favorite thing to grow. They are easy, hardy, and there really isn't anything quite like the look of a gigantic sunny yellow flower towering over your vegetable patch to bring a smile to your face. Plus, after they get all brown and shriveled up, there is a treasure trove of delicious (and nutritious!) seeds inside of them to be eaten. Oh, and the dried up sunflower stalks make excellent ninja swords.

Since I actually planted my sunflowers in the spring this year, they blossomed at the same time all my other vegetables blossomed, so I think the bees they attracted really boosted pollination in my garden. As soon as those huge flowers opened up they were absolutely swarmed with bees (we're hoping they are the bees from my husband's new bee hive... more on that later).

If you grew your own sunflowers this year, here is how to tell when the seeds are ready to be harvested. Once the petals are gone and the back of the flower turns yellow, like this:

you can cut the flower head off - leave about 12 inches or so of stem. If your flower is 8 feet tall, be careful how you cut it because that thing is dang heavy and could hurt if it came crashing down on top of your head. Hypothetically speaking. Anywho, the seeds are not quite ready to be removed from the flower at this point, so if you have nice dry weather and can keep the birds away from your seeds, you could opt not to cut off the flower head and allow the seeds to cure in the garden. Last year I did that and a couple unexpected rains got the seeds wet which resulted in mold, so this year I cut them and brought them in. Hang your cut flower somewhere warmish and dry - I have one in the food pantry and three in the barn. Once the back of the flower turns brown, you are ready to harvest your seeds. They should come out pretty easily, but you will make a mess, so it's best to do that part outside.

I plan on using these tips to roast our own seeds - looks easy enough. Of course I'll save a few to plant for next year too.

So here's my quick list of why you should plant sunflowers in your garden next year:

1.) They are super easy to grow - just poke in a seed, water it and watch it grow.

2.) They don't require much space. Yes, they are tall, but not at all wide. I have a friend who lives in a tiny apartment and she grew a gigantic sunflower in a pot on her tiny outside porch. They fit nicely amongst your vegetables.

3.) They will make you smile.

4.) They will make your neighbors smile.

5.) You get approximately a bazillion seeds from one gigantic sunflower. That's a pretty high yield on your investment of one seed and some water.

6.) Sunflower seeds help lower bad cholesterol, raise good cholesterol, are very high in protein and amino acids. They also contain high levels of anti-oxidant, B vitamins, calcium, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, magnesium, and selenium.

7.) They attract pollinators to your garden which will give you hight vegetable yields.

8.) Think of all the ninja swords you could make out of one 8 foot long sunflower stalk. Or you could skip the cutting and just make a javelin. The possibilities are endless.

9.) Cheese. That's right. You can make cheese out of them. And anything that can be made into cheese simply must be grown.

And now I will step off my sunflower soapbox. :)