July 17-23, 2011
Heat wave! Good for composting!
Using a screen, small hoe, shovel, and wheelbarrow, we separated woody chunks (white box) from good compost (from fall 2010). We used the rich compost to boost nutrition, placing small amounts of compost around the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, watermelon, cucumber, popcorn plants. It's all about organic gardening!
Our composters are small, so it's important to keep them watered and aerated (by turning the green matter). The extreme heat helps to break down the plant matter more quickly
Plant parts we don't want in our composter:
Our composters are small, so it's important to keep them watered and aerated (by turning the green matter). The extreme heat helps to break down the plant matter more quickly
Plant parts we don't want in our composter:
- No seedy weed parts (no burdock, dandelion seeds),
- No mint roots or stems--they are too resilient for composting
- No extremely woody plant parts (sunflower or corn stalks).
- No diseased plant parts (blighted sunflower or tomato leaves)
What else is new?
- Check out the shaping of milkweed pods from the those puffy pink milkweed blossoms.
- Purple balloon flowers, lilies and white phlox are blooming in the front flower bed.
Harvesting this week
Unbelievably, despite the heat, we still have some salad greens and sugar snap peas. In addition, this week, we enjoyed....
- 4 small cucumbers, 2 yellow squash, lots of dill weed & flowers, lovely basil
- kale, green onions, jalapeno and 1 sweet green pepper