Gardening 2013
Jan. 5th, 2013 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterBased on a survey of the worm bin, it looks like my effort to give ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scrottie worms for Christmas wound up failing. Sigh. When he was out here in November, he had the most unfortunate job of emptying out the blue compost barrel, which went severely anaerobic and was full of all sorts of cockroaches. The anaerobic-ness isn't especially surprising when you realize that the barrel lacks ventilation. Also, I didn't have a big pile of brown matter to mix in with the green matter I kept adding. I do now, thanks to the huge piles of leaves dropped by the oaks. I don't have a satisfactory solution for the whole mess right now. It makes me miss the Farmer House, which came with a two-pile compost and where I had a great system going - fill one side up, and when it got full, empty and screen the other side, then flop stuff over from the full side to aerate it. Also, I miss the worm bin bench, which worked wonderfully in cooler weather. Worms just prefer wood over plastic.
When I went to the library this morning, they had a collection of gardening books in the front display case. Nice to see, but hard to check out the book on composting sitting there in the case. I finally paid a year-old library fine and checked out a couple of knitting books instead.
Today, I took down the dead tomato plants and pulled up and straightened out the tomato cages. It has been raining yesterday and today, so the soil's too wet to move around much, but here are my upcoming January garden projects:
-Disassemble backyard crop circles and move soil to the front yard [only trouble is the dog dug up some, but not all, of the onion starts in two of the circles...should I scrap the rest, or leave them? A dilemma...]
-Rake leaves/etc out of ditch [water is sitting in the ditch - great for breeding mosquitoes, not so great for those wishing to avoid mosquitoes]
-Saw up dead log that's wedged in the fence [too wet for today]
-Work soil in front bed, pull out grass in frontmost section, then lay drip irrigation
-Plant artichoke seedlings
-Start tomato seedlings - a Roma variety, for canning, maybe more Early Girls, and a Black Prince or similar variant.
-Figure out how to rearrange the potted plants - the dog has started playing with the smaller plant pots (killing a rhubarb and spider plant so far), so I might need to get some pavers to set them on out front. I'm reluctant to just set them on the grass, as the grass will grow up around them annoyingly. You already know how I feel about the grass.
The lemon tree, satsuma tree, and fig all look the worse for wear. Hard to know if I should really do anything, or just let them be and see if they recover at all. The lemon tree shed all of the leaves on the side of the tree that was closer to the grow lights. The satsuma tree appears to have lost about 80% of its leaves in the cold weather. Regardless, the satsuma needs to be re-repotted, with better drainage. Maybe I can get gravel out of the ditch for that.
scrottie worms for Christmas wound up failing. Sigh. When he was out here in November, he had the most unfortunate job of emptying out the blue compost barrel, which went severely anaerobic and was full of all sorts of cockroaches. The anaerobic-ness isn't especially surprising when you realize that the barrel lacks ventilation. Also, I didn't have a big pile of brown matter to mix in with the green matter I kept adding. I do now, thanks to the huge piles of leaves dropped by the oaks. I don't have a satisfactory solution for the whole mess right now. It makes me miss the Farmer House, which came with a two-pile compost and where I had a great system going - fill one side up, and when it got full, empty and screen the other side, then flop stuff over from the full side to aerate it. Also, I miss the worm bin bench, which worked wonderfully in cooler weather. Worms just prefer wood over plastic.When I went to the library this morning, they had a collection of gardening books in the front display case. Nice to see, but hard to check out the book on composting sitting there in the case. I finally paid a year-old library fine and checked out a couple of knitting books instead.
Today, I took down the dead tomato plants and pulled up and straightened out the tomato cages. It has been raining yesterday and today, so the soil's too wet to move around much, but here are my upcoming January garden projects:
-Disassemble backyard crop circles and move soil to the front yard [only trouble is the dog dug up some, but not all, of the onion starts in two of the circles...should I scrap the rest, or leave them? A dilemma...]
-Rake leaves/etc out of ditch [water is sitting in the ditch - great for breeding mosquitoes, not so great for those wishing to avoid mosquitoes]
-Saw up dead log that's wedged in the fence [too wet for today]
-Work soil in front bed, pull out grass in frontmost section, then lay drip irrigation
-Plant artichoke seedlings
-Start tomato seedlings - a Roma variety, for canning, maybe more Early Girls, and a Black Prince or similar variant.
-Figure out how to rearrange the potted plants - the dog has started playing with the smaller plant pots (killing a rhubarb and spider plant so far), so I might need to get some pavers to set them on out front. I'm reluctant to just set them on the grass, as the grass will grow up around them annoyingly. You already know how I feel about the grass.
The lemon tree, satsuma tree, and fig all look the worse for wear. Hard to know if I should really do anything, or just let them be and see if they recover at all. The lemon tree shed all of the leaves on the side of the tree that was closer to the grow lights. The satsuma tree appears to have lost about 80% of its leaves in the cold weather. Regardless, the satsuma needs to be re-repotted, with better drainage. Maybe I can get gravel out of the ditch for that.
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Date: 2013-01-06 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-06 04:48 pm (UTC)