Yard Scraps = Future Compost

The lawn is infested with weeds.  But Mom and Dad are too old to want to weed, and I don't particularly care about dandelions, clover, bird vetch, peppergrass, or most of the "weeds" we have.

However, I strongly care about sow thistle!!

Right: I stole this picture of a sow thistle leaf from the Internet.

It looks something like dandelions, but the leaves are hairy and pokey.  When mature, it has small dandelion-like flowers.  I hate accidentally walking through or sitting on it, and getting pricked.


When we got our topsoil delivered, Dad decided it would be a great idea to dump some soil around our spruce tree.  I understand that topsoil has nutrients in it, but this grade of soil also came with a bunch of weeds.  Also, seeds will germinate in it.  It is so embarrassing to have weeds growing in spruce-needle mulch in your front lawn.


So I decided to get rid of as much thistle as I could find, and add them to my compost bin!

Right:  Thistles and some humongously overgrown dandelions that I found here and there.  Also, gloves from Canadian Tire, a Fiskars weeder and my shameless Cutco scissors.

Dad is paranoid about weed roots growing back, so I cut the roots up into tiny pieces about 1cm long.

Leaves and roots:

Bucket of leaves:

We also have these stupid tree-weeds.  I can't stand them, they're so hard to get rid of.  So I raged on them a little today, and managed to pull some roots out.  Score!  These will go into my new leaf mold, into which I'm also adding wooden wastes, since I'm going to let it sit for a year or two anyway.

Corn was on sale at the store, so I got to add lots of kitchen scraps to my compost heap!  This is the second bucket:

Cutting it up to speed up the process:

I dug a hole down the sort-of middle of the heap.  Near the centre, you can really feel the heat coming out of here.  In my arbitrary rummagings, I came across a big juicy centipede and about five earthworms.  I'm proud!

To my surprise, I discovered a patch of grass that was still dry and hard!  In the picture, it's the pale patch near the centre.  I quickly pulled up as much dry grass as I could find, and wetted it down with water before pouring in the corn husks.

I'm so excited for the compost to be ready!

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Hardening Off

I've been ill the past few days, and my plants have grown noticeably since!

New or Noticeable Growth:

• new pumpkin seedling!
• second and third true leaves forming on squashes!
• second and third true leaves on broccoli!
• distinct true leaves on all tomatoes
• distinct true leaves on sage
• first true leaves on parsley!

Possible Problems:

• one zucchini's cotyledons are turning yellow
• smallest butternut appears to be suffering from rust
• cosmos are still extremely spindly

Actions since last post:

• threw out diseased pumpkin and other diseased seedlings.

Update on Compost:

Lookin' good!  I wasn't wearing my butch lesbian hiking boots today (because I was transplanting--see below!), so I didn't fully rake out the materials.  But I just tossed the upper bits around to add more kitchen scraps.  YES!  It's starting to cook in there!  I'm so excited!  

New Definition!

"Hardening off", besides sounding like a wonderful euphemism, is something you do to plants that were started indoors but you ultimately want growing outdoors.  You slowly introduce them to the outdoor-world.

Depending on the plant and the weather, this could be in half-hour increments over three weeks, or, like, hour-increments over two weeks...  The idea is to lessen the shock of cold, wind, direct sunlight, humidity, etc.  Because the shock could kill them.

This is the second or third time my plants have been outside, and they were out for about 1.5 hours.  I think the wind may have been too much, though (see below).

Transplanting

I took my plant trays outside into the 15-17C sunny afternoon to begin hardening off while I transplanted/thinned some.

Plants Thinned/Transplanted:

• Broccoli
• Tomato
• Cherry Tomato - Hybrid

Plants that will require thinning as as soon as I find more trays:

• Cherry Tomato - Sun Sugar
• Agastache Cana
• Marigold
• Bee Balm
• Cosmos (they're just EVERYWHERE)

Unfortunately, the broccoli and tomatoes didn't respond well to the 10km/h winds while being transplanted.  I lost three plants due to snapped stems or broken leaves.  The tomatoes, especially, would snag on each other and tangle in their fuzzy stems.  However!  I did a seedling count, and was surprised by my totals!

These counts includes plants of poor health--but there are not many of them!

Broccoli:  13 plants
Tomato - Stupice:  21 plants
Cherry Tomato - Hybrid:  13 plants
Cherry Tomato - Sun Sugar:  17 plants
Basil - Genovese:  20 plants
Basil - Purple:  18 plants
Parsley:  11 plants, some are very young and delicate-looking, two have true leaves
Zucchini:  2 vigorous plants!
Butternut:  3 plants; two vigorous, one has issues
Pumpkin:  1 new seedling
Peas - Snow:  4 plants, well on their way
Peas - Snap:  3 plants, just beginning; 1 seed germinated but hasn't yet pushed a stem up.

Flowers: will count another day...


Lessons Learned - Seed Starting

General:

• Try this growing medium next time:  2 parts starter soil, like 7 parts coir, 1 part perlite.  
• Large plastic cells are better than small plastic cells.  
• Fibre cells are better than plastic cells.  
• Individual fibre cells (at least Jiffy Pots) take up a lot of room and tear easily when wet.  
• Connected fibre cells don't hold their shape well, and squishing them will alter the soil shape!  
• Connected fibre cells are stronger than Jiffy Pots.
• Connected fibre cells are the way of the future!
• Seeds that have produced seedlings don't need to be covered.  In fact, they will be healthier when uncovered after a few days of growth!
• NEVER USE POPSICLE STICKS AGAIN, EVER!  ONLY USE PLASTIC!  
• Have one tray for starting seeds ONLY.  When seedlings emerge, move them to an uncovered tray at most one week later!
• Sow fewer seeds per cell.  More cells is better than more seeds per cell.  

Seeds that WILL germinate (so don't plant so many next time, especially not in each cell!)

• tomatoes--all of them
• broccoli!
• basil, for the most part
• zucchini
• peas--both kinds

Seeds that have more difficulty germinating (so plant more cells, but only one in each)

• pumpkin
• parsley

Don't over-seed cells; this ESPECIALLY applies to:

• tarragon
• chamomile
• oregano

Photo time!

Besides using colour-coded plastic toothpicks, I can now distinguish the regular tomatoes from the cherry tomatoes!

Regular tomato:



Cherry Tomatoes: Hybrid (upper) and Sun Sugar (lower):




After transplanting the tomatoes and broccoli, they went LIMP!  I was so scared!

  

But they started to perk back up after about an hour:

 

Chamomile: looks like they've survived transplanting!  A little spindly, but healthy.

 

Sage:  I'm a little concerned...  Some may not make it.

 

Snow Peas.  You can see them putting out curling tendrils!  They'll have to go outside soon!

 

Snap Peas:  about a week younger than the snow peas above.  In the right picture you can see the pea (seed) with the root and plumule coming out!  How neat is that?  (That's pretty neat!)

 

Pumpkin seedling!  He looks happy!



Butternut:  The smallest one seemed to have some difficulties, might be rust.

 

Trimmed the infected parts off.  Hope it survives!  It's already put out some true leaves, though; so it should be okay...!



Another butternut plant.  It has little yellow-brown specks.



Zucchini plant has yellowing cotyledons!  Oh noes!

 

However, it's also putting out it's fourth and fifth true leaves!



Basil - Genovese and Purple:  There doesn't seem to be much change.  Maybe they're still adapting to their new homes...

  

Cosmos - Candy Stripe.  True leaves!



Bee Balm.  A very nice new friend of mine recommended I plant my Bee Balm in a container, as it's a relative of Mint, and will spread EVERYWHERE if I'm not careful.  Noted!



Agastache Cana:  Also a relative of Mint, so I might want to pot this, too.



Marigold:  Man I just love seeing these true leaves!



Calendula:  some are a bit weak and spindly; the leaves are heavy and the stem has difficulty keeping them up.  Also: the cotyledons and true leaves look very similar!

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Composting

Mistakes

I made a mistake.  It's a mistake I'm not proud to admit, but for completeness, I should probably mention it on this blog.

After having a bunch of friends over on Saturday, I got zealous and started planting seeds in my raised beds.  Then I watered the soil.  I then realised the soil consistency was NOT what I wanted!  (I think it's too sandy; when I watered it, everything sank and compacted and when I came out the next day, all the water had evaporated and left cracks in the soil.  Not sure if this means too sandy or too clay-ey).

The next day, I put down a grid on the beds, still pretending everything was hunky-dory.  I became aware that there wasn't enough soil in the beds!

So I've been working since Tuesday trying to repair this.  I bought a few packs of Coco Peat and Perlite to provide better water retention and airflow.  It's been hard work incorporating everything into the raised beds!

While I'm on the topic of soil amendments, I'll mention that I'm using two other ingredients in my raised beds:  blood meal and bone meal.  I'm using bone meal to add calcium to the soil for my broccoli and tomatoes; and I've heard that the smell of blood meal can repel rabbits (we have a family living in our yard somewhere, we suspect it's under the deck or under the trailer).

I will re-grid the beds later.


Composting


So I went to Myro's and helped rake the lawn a few days ago.  In return, I got to keep the dry grass for my compost bin!  THREE BAGS of the good stuff.  Yeah!  And that was just the front lawn!

After some more plant-thinning today, I raked out the materials already in the composter.  The old stuff is mostly wet, and since the new grass is dry, I want the wet stuff on top so the water can soak downwards.

After raking out the old stuff:



Dumped in the THREE BAGS of dry grass:



Put the old stuff back on top and watered the whole pile lightly.  Tada!



Just lookit all that delicious organic material!  I can't wait to have all that compost!!

(Actually, I'll have about half that much compost; most of that pile is air, and it will reduce as the organic matter "cooks".)

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