Compost Post

Only a true gardening geek would be thrilled to get a kitchen composting pail for Valentine's Day, and I'm afraid I'm guilty as charged. This little pot from Gardener's Supply is pretty enough that I don't have to hide it under the sink, and it's got replaceable charcoal filters in the lid so that it won't get smelly.

I have always believed in the virtues of composting, and have a compost tumbler that I bought at least ten years ago, but I have not had huge success with it—either I don't have enough materials, or the ratio of green and brown materials isn't quite right, or the materials are not finely shredded enough, or I don't turn the bin often enough, or it's too dry or too moist, or I lack bacterial activators, or whatever.

Undaunted, I'm trying once again this year. I saved a big pile of chopped leaves from last fall, and right now, the tumbler is about a third full of them. As I fill my kitchen compost pail with veggie and fruit trimmings and egg shells and whatnot, I dump them in the tumbler as well. (This proved to be a little difficult the first time around—the lid is heavy and rotates to the bottom, and the leaves that I added last fall had mixed with rain and snow, and froze to the lid, making it quite difficult to open!) In the spring, I'll add grass clippings, and try to turn the bin every day or two to aerate it. In theory, I should end up with a bin full of compost in a few weeks. In theory. Still unproven. But I'll probably keep trying until I end up compost myself!

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Anyone who knows my husband knows that he loves to garden, so when his daughter gave him a gift certificate from Wayside Gardens for his birthday, he spent several delighted hours with the catalog, trying to figure out what to get. He finally settled on three plants (and I hope Wayside forgives me for borrowing the photos from their website):

• Aconitum carmichaelii 'Cloudy'. Aside from the fact that he liked the look of the flowers, this monkshood has several other features that influenced his decision. It starts blooming in late summer when other flowers have started to fade, thereby extending the garden season; it prefers part to full shade, so we can put in the berm, where we have fewer plants than elsewhere; and it's poisonous, so nothing will eat it.
  
  
  
  
• Dicentra 'Ivory Hearts'. Although my own heart belongs to Dicentra 'spectabilis', we've had such awful luck with it that I suppose if we want a bleeding heart, we have to consider other species, like this one.
  
  
  
  
• Aruncus 'Guinea Fowl'. We have tried (without success) to grow goat's beard from seed, so we shall see if a plant will do better for us. Alan thinks the white plumes will look good next to the Perovskia, and I'm inclined to agree.
  
  

Besides these three plants, we also ordered another rose to replace 'Benjamin Britten', which we lost to mites last year. This time we're going to try 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' from David Austin. (The photo here is from their website.)

It seems like we lose a lot of roses in the sunny border: first 'Falstaff' and 'Ambridge Rose', and now 'Benjamin Britten'. This bed really should be a good site for roses, so I'm hoping we will eventually find the right collection that will last for years to come.

The 2010 Gardening Season Officially Begins!

A few weeks back, before the Midwest became the Great White Way (covered with a thick layer of snow), I saw a few daffodil and hyacinth leaves breaking ground, and I suppose I could have marked that as the beginning of the 2010 gardening season, but nothing says "spring" to me like those first few seedlings sprouting under the grow lights.

I'm actually a little behind schedule this year—I was tardy getting my order in, and therefore tardy in receiving the seeds—but the 'Gonzales' cabbage and 'Small Miracle' broccoli have all germinated.

Even though my new transplant pots are not designed for seed-starting per se, I decided to give them a try for this purpose anyway. The clear covers that I use with my other trays did not fit snugly, but did an adequate job of providing humidity.

The tray ostensibly has a half-gallon reservoir, but I can't honestly tell the difference between this tray and any other tray that I use for seed-starting; they all have channels for extra water. Perhaps the difference is that the capillary mat provides better access to the water in the channels? I'm not certain, but as long as my little plants are happy, I'm happy, too!

Counting Cardinals and Other Feathered Friends

At the prompting of fellow blogger Kylee at Our Little Acre, I decided to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend.

Next to gardening, watching the birds might be our favorite backyard pastime. We have several different types of feeders to woo different types of guests: a platform feeder for the cardinals and jays, a tube feeder for the chickadees and purple finches, a mesh feeder for the goldfinches, a suet feeder for the woodpeckers (like the Downy Woodpecker in this picture), and so forth.

Most of the feeders are within view of the kitchen table, and as we have breakfast or dinner, we look over periodically to see who's joining us for the meal. Doing the count, however, was a rather different kind of experience. Instead of just fleeting glances, I had to focus for at least 15 straight minutes at what was happening outside my window. I pulled up a comfy chair, dusted off the binoculars, dug out the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds, and carefully tried to identify exactly what types of birds were out there, and how many of each.

Some species, of course, are easy to tell. Since the cardinal is the state bird of Ohio, I think I'd be deported if I didn't recognize that pretty boy.

For others, I had to look more closely. Did that sparrow have a white throat or a black one? Was its breast plain or speckled? I must admit that, even with the field guide in hand, I don't think I could tell a Carolina Chickadee from a Black-Capped Chickadee at 25 feet away, especially when they come and go so quickly. But I did the best I could.

And then there was the counting part. When there's just one or two of the same species at the feeder, counting is easy. But when you're suddenly engulfed by a flock of starlings who won't sit still while you do your sums, it can get a little tricky. I was able to say with confidence that at one point I had 18 starlings fussing and fighting over the suet. But if they had descended en masse like they did earlier in the season, it would have been like trying to count the grains of sand on the beach.

Anyway, here are the highest number of each species from my two counting sessions:

• European Starlings - 18
  
• Northern Cardinal - 6
  
• Mourning Dove - 3
  
• Song Sparrow - 3
  
• Chipping Sparrow - 2
  
• Purple Finch - 2
  
• Carolina Wren - 1
  
• Downy Woodpecker - 1
  
• Blue Jay - 1
  
• Dark-eyed Junco - 1
  
• Carolina Chickadee - 1
  
• American Goldfinch - 1

I was a little disappointed not to have seen the red-bellied woodpecker or tufted titmouse that usually visits, but even if I couldn't count them for the event, they still count with me!

Taking Blooms Where We Can Get 'Em

I've mentioned before that one of my husband's gardening goals in life is to have something in bloom in the yard every month of the year, which is pretty ambitious (if not downright delusional) when you live in USDA zone 6. This year he harbored the hope that our new hellebores might bloom in January, but it did not happen. The only flowers we saw that month were on our windowsill: the paperwhites...

...and the amaryllis...

...and the kalanchoe...

...and the primrose.

Although we're fairly adept at growning plants outdoors, we are abysmally bad at growing houseplants, and the little primrose has been a "canary in the coal mine" for me. When its leaves start to wilt, I know that I need to water everything!

Anyway, a few weeks back, when I was out and about, I spied some galanthus (snowdrops) in bud, and thought that perhaps if we planted a few bulbs in a sheltered part of our yard next fall, and had a few warm days at just the right time, then we might actually have something blooming in our yard in January 2011.

And if not, maybe the kalanchoe will still be alive by then, and blooming on our windowsill. But given my track record, I wouldn't count on it.

Community Garden Update

When you plant a garden on your own, you never have to worry about things like whether your cantaloupe will encroach on someone else's green beans, or whether your corn will block the light from reaching someone else's peppers. So it was interesting to sit in on my first committee meeting with eight fellow gardeners to discuss how to move forward with a community garden and figure out how we can all just get along.

I had initially thought that the garden was going to be in a local park. It turns out that it's going to be adjacent to the Miami Township Civic Center, which is not quite a park, but certainly is public space. In fact, when I went there to attend the meeting, I was surprised to see how many cars were in the parking lot, and how many folks were there to attend various classes and activities. So the garden will certainly have visibility.

About an acre of land has been set aside for this effort, although we might prepare only half of that the first year. At the first committee meeting (which I missed), there apparently had been talk of raised beds (my own favored way for growing veggies), but at the meeting I attended, they ended up opting for a simpler solution: four-foot-wide rows with paths in between. Each row would be subdivided into eight-foot plots, which I assume we would mark out with stakes and twine.

You can't put a bunch of gardeners in a room without some lively discussion. Should the rows run north-south or east-west? How wide should the paths be? What kinds of amendments should we add to the soil? What's the best way to install the deer fencing? Will we allow the use of hoses to bring water from the nearby building, or have folks haul watering cans? What do we do if someone allows their plot to get too weedy? Do we permit perennials?

Aside from the practical concerns, we also had the opportunity to dream a little. How can we provide information about the virtues of organic gardening and composting? How can we share some of the land (or our produce) with folks in need? How can we help people who might be growing a garden for the very first time? It was perhaps during these moments that we realized that a community garden was as much about community as it is about gardening.