June 10, 2010: Erin Showed Me Hers!

Yes, Erin showed me her composter, so I'll show her (and you) mine.


Pitiful, isn't it? I've never hidden the fact that I'm a failure at composting. When we moved to town, and my garden went from about a quarter acre down to maybe 15' x 25', and I no longer had a nice neighbor who raised horses and brought me pickup loads of straw and poop when she cleaned out her stalls, I bought this black monster from the county. They were selling them for something like $5 to get more people interested in composting. So it's had over twenty years of use, and has made exactly one good load of compost for me in all that time. That was last year, when I filled it with chopped leaves from my neighbor's yard mixed with my grass clippings. The top half broke several years ago, so Mr. Granny drilled a few holes on either side of the break and wired it together. It was warped enough that the top and bottom wouldn't fit together, but the lid fit so tightly I had to break it off with a hammer last fall.


I told Erin I'd thrown the top away, but I lied. Well, I didn't exactly lie, but I forgot. The top is sitting inside the bottom. I think the idea was that I could slip the bottom off of the top, then turn the contents into it. Of course, it may be a while before anything needs turning, as this is the only dry spot in my yard and I've neglected to remove the lid so the rain could saturate the pile. And my hose doesn't reach.

So there ya go, Erin. ;-)

It's a good thing I'm a better gardener than I am a composter. I had just pulled all the bolting spinach and was planting bush beans in its place this morning, when my neighbor's yard man came to the fence and told me I had a very lovely garden. That made my day, so when he left I ran for my camera and went over to Pat's yard to take a new photo from her perspective.


You can click on the photo for a larger version.

While I was at Pat's, she hollered out at me, asking if we'd had a bad windstorm last night. I said no, but we'd had lots of rain, with some thunder and lightning. She said "Look at the tree out back"....so I looked.


Sure enough, her old mulberry tree was down.


It wasn't the wind, it was the rot. There wasn't a bit of fresh wood showing where it was broken, just old black rot. It's probably a good thing it went down in the night, as her great-grandchildren play back there a lot, and it could have fallen on somebody.


Back in my garden, I checked on the peppers.


I had given them a bit of fertilizer, then wove a few little bamboo stakes horizontally, for extra support when they get larger. Then I watered them deeply, and put about an inch of grass clippings mulch around them. These raised beds dry out so quickly, you'd never have known we had a rainstorm the previous night.

Then I checked on the snap peas, which have finally begun to bloom.


It doesn't look like I'll get a huge harvest of these Sugar Lace peas, the germination was probably just over 50%, but I will get some! This variety bears the pods way up on top of the vine, so they will be easier to see and pick.

Of course, it wouldn't be a trip to the garden if I didn't bring back some more lettuce. I'm trying to harvest one of the rows behind my tomatoes in the north garden, so I can replace it with carrots.


One huge head and one smaller one came out, and made enough room for carrot planting tomorrow.


After it was all trimmed, washed and spun dry, I had another 14 ounces of lettuce to put in the refrigerator. But not in the same crisper as......


The four one-gallon bags of washed, trimmed and spun dry lettuce that were already jammed in there.

Back out to the garden to find something else for dinner.


I pulled some of the "small" Walla Walla sweet onions, a few carrots, and the first of the shallots. I didn't think I was going to get shallots this year. When I checked them last March, they looked all mushy and slimy, but I dug them up and moved them to another part of the garden, and they really took off. This bunch was about half of what came from one small bulb, so it looks like I'm going to get a really good harvest from them after all!


Everything got washed, trimmed, weighed and bagged for tonight's dinner. So what did we do? We went out for 12" Subway sandwiches this afternoon, so we just had a snack (with a large salad) this evening. This harvest will feed us at our next dinner, and I'm salivating for a big pan of sauteed onions.



22 comments:

  1. Those are "small" onions? Can't wait to see the full sized group then!

    Your compost story made me laugh. I love that you keep trying, even after 20 years of failure. It seems like your grass clipping mulch works better than the compost anyway. If I mowed my own lawn instead of mowers coming in and bringing who knows what from other yards, I'd use the clippings as mulch too. I'm just scared to put fresh stuff down and risk something nasty coming from somewhere and ruining my hard work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well Granny, you may not be much of a composter....but you are a great gardener!!

    I think that my snow peas are about finished. I have only harvested a handful in the past three days. They have only been producing for about two weeks. Is that normal?

    Oh, I posted my bins :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ha! Last week I did the same thing. Lots of veggies to eat in the fridge, but I just kept going out for dinner instead. This week I'm doing so much better especially as the week wears on.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I had to laugh at your composter! I have a nice big (expensive) composter that sits off the ground and you turn the handle a couple of times a day......and, it makes compost in 14 days....I have yet to get compost from it. LOL! Isn't that the way?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gran, I chuckled at your compost story! That is really hanging on til the bitter end isn't it?! I have a few contraptions around here that I am still using past their usable dates! Horse manure sounds amazing, I don't have a source for that... (did I just say that, LOL?) And your garden looks great, I often wonder what ours looks like from our neighbors upstairs bedroom window and what they think of it all. (The only reason I know it's the bedroom is because when the townhouse was built, I ran over there during the open house to see what 310,000 buys you in my dumpy neighborhood - not much, let me tell you... I'll keep my happy little homestead!)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Poor tree, but I'm glad it didn't fall on anyone or anything!

    Everything looks wonderful, Granny. Your harvests always look so tasty.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ok, first of all - That looks like a potty chair to me, not a composter. Why don't you "man up" and build you a big operation. Ha!

    Second, what kind of fert and how often is it applied to those onions? I only had one get that size....It appears that I need more education in this area...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Momma_S, we'll be staying in WA until after Christmas this year, so I'll have access to a LOT of fall leaves. In the years before I started going to AZ, I always just put chopped leaves on top of my beds, then shoveled on a layer of composted manure (bags or nursery) for the winter, then turned it all under in the spring. Works great for amending the beds.

    ********
    Robin, last year was the first in probably 35 that I planted sugar snap peas. The sparrows decapitated them, and I only got about a pint bag and they were finished. All those years ago, I got a lot of snow peas, but I had a huge garden back then. I don't remember how long they would bear. I can't even remember what I did this morning ;-)

    ********
    Daphne, it never fails, I get something special from the garden, and Mr. Granny wants to go to Jack in the Box or something. Oh well, at least I had half of my Subway sandwich left for today's lunch. Their new chicken salad one is pretty tasty.

    ********
    Anonymous, I've always wanted one of those! Works about as well as my ugly black barrel, huh?

    ********
    Erin, I've always wanted an aerial photo of my garden, so I could get the entire dog-legged thing in one picture. The "panorama" camera settings just aren't quite the same, but I'm not climbing up on my roof!

    My horse manure/straw/garden garbage compost piles were great. They'd heat up so well I would melt the soles on my tennis shoes when I turned the pile! Melted the hem edge of my polyester flare legged pants, too ;-) Yes, it was that long ago! I can remember playing my Bee Gees records at full volume, so I could hear them in the garden.

    ********
    Ribbit, so do yours! I don't have forty gazillion tomatoes on one plant. Sheesh, I think I have three, and the largest is about the size of a pea. I'm going to have to take gardening lessons from you and Thomas :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. EG, potty chair? Hmmm. That would be one way to add moisture and get it to heat up. Nah, I'll pass. I'm not man enough ;-)

    I added about 4" total of composted dairy manure and leaf & twig compost to most of the beds this spring, dug it in and then worked a handful of 10-10-10 into the top 2-3" of the onion bed. That's all, until this week when I scratched in a bit more 10-10-10. It seems to work pretty well, as the few onions I planted in with the broccoli and cabbage aren't even half that size. Those in the photo are smaller than my "big" ones, as they were planted closer together.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well Granny, I know what your talking about with not remembering. "The Italian" and I forget the same things. We have decided that within ten years we are going to have to wear video cameras around our necks all the time.....so we know what we did :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. What gorgeous pepper plants you have, Granny!

    My compost adventure is more or less a failure this time around because of time constraints. :( When we sifted it in the spring, the usable stuff was pitifully small, and the "needs another season" bit was the majority. I was fine with that until F. reminded me, uh, honey, we won't be here another season, so it's pretty much wasted effort! Argh!

    Anyway, the total would not be nearly enough for my garden needs in any event. I don't think we two persons make enough organic waste for the amount of organic garden I oversee. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Granny, I think EG was fishin' for that specific term of endearment you have for him. ;)

    I may have tons of tomatoes on one plant, but they're all smaller than my fist and don't look to be getting much larger. I don't think the poor plant can support that many at once.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I have Walla Walla onion and Pepper plant envy after those pictures! I was just thinking to myself that I needed to side dress the onions but after seeing yours... I KNOW I need to side dress them now! LOL!

    Glad no one was hurt by that felled tree and that is a GREAT view point of your garden from your neighbors side of the fence.

    We had a horse barn and lots of horses when we were in central Washington and I had a tremenous composting operation going there. No more horses on our property and so no access to the manure anymore. Sure do miss it!

    ReplyDelete
  14. C'mon granny, you know you wanna call me "the name"......

    ReplyDelete
  15. Robin, you know you're getting old when....it takes two of you to finish a sentence. When....your jeans fit better when you put them on backwards. When....You have to copy and paste a zip code, 'cause you can't remember five numbers in a sequence. I could go on, but I forgot what we were talking about ;-)

    ********
    Ribbit, you mean Old Poopy Head? Probably. He just loves it when I call him that.
    Thank you, Meredith!

    I have discovered the nursery down the street has a very good pile of compost, and I can buy an entire cubic yard for under $20. Works for me! I'll still pile up my vegetation, and rip up my newspapers for "browns", but they will all be buried, unfinished, somewhere in the garden before winter. It all turns to compost in the end.

    ********
    ********

    ReplyDelete
  16. EG, you're just a big old Poopy Head!

    There, big guy, feel better?

    ReplyDelete
  17. AG, I love the idea of grass clippings around the peppers! I'm going to have to try that. The tomatoes are going strong but the peppers are a little bit sad right now.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Kitsap, the day you have envy is indeed a good day for me, LOL!

    ********
    Kalena Michele, it does help retain a bit of moisture in the raised beds and the containers. Just don't start off with a thick layer, or you'll get a matted, smelly mess. I just put on an inch or less, and wait until that's completely dry before I add more.

    ReplyDelete
  19. That's a pretty big mulberry tree but at least it is not a 60' maple! I bet you could get the top back on that composter, they are a pain though, I use a screwdriver to pry it in place. I'm luck enough to have two of them now.... :-)

    ReplyDelete
  20. Great looking harvest, and I do like that bed of peppers and their supports. Maybe I need to go check my shallots now! I did give my onion bed some fertilizer and a drink of fish emsulsion. I still have onion envy after looking at yours...

    ReplyDelete
  21. Villager, remember when I said my shallots were mushy, and I thought they were just going to rot, so I moved them to an "unimportant" area of the garden? I actually threw about half of them away at the time, now I wish I'd just left them alone! They are absolutely lovely. At least, the ones I pulled are.

    ReplyDelete