What to Do With All Those Leaves?!

What to do about the leaves….rake them? Bag them? Ignore them? Leaves are one of the best things about fall. It’s much easier for me to say that now than when I was a kid. I grew up in dense woods with old growth trees that towered over our world. Every fall my parents expected my brothers and I to help rake up the multitude of leaves that rained down on our yard from those great giants. I don’t know how they did this, I can barely get my own kids to clean up their rooms. The leaf pile in the back of our property was the size of a small house. Somehow the fun we had jumping in it never equaled the misery of spending your entire Saturday dragging sheets full of leaves to the pile.

My own kids love leaves. When the leaves finally fall from the woods that skirt our property, it’s time for “leaf sledding”! You’ve never heard of this sport? C’mon over, my kids would gladly introduce you to it. It helps that our entire property is a hill. There is virtually no level ground, which has forced me to be a creative gardener and eliminates the possibility of us ever renting a moonbounce, but as far as sledding goes – it’s a three season sport at our house. In the winter it’s the traditional snow sledding, helmet required because any piece of plastic carrying a small child can reach speeds well over the “oh-my-gosh-she’s-going-to-kill-herself” level. Come summer, we have the longest, fastest water slide in town. But in the fall it’s “leaf sledding” season. 

My husband uses the mower to maneuver all the leaves into a single thick lane for sledding. Any plastic tobagon or saucer will do. It’s a great way to spend a fall afternoon - great exercise for the kids and hours of entertainment. My kids like to sled down while holding a small video recorder in front of them and when they finally wear out and come inside from all the sledding, they watch these videos endlessly. The results are pretty funny, especially when a cat, chicken, sibling, or unsuspecting adult gets in their path.

Get It Started!

I’m late getting my seeds started this year. The basic problem is I’m thinking too much. This is a common problem for me. Too much thinking/dwelling/considering and not enough doing.

Initially, I was so ready to get going with the garden that at the first sign of spring (75 degree weather in the middle of February!), I went out in search of soil. The problem is that my local gardening place wasn’t open yet for the season and the only thing Home Depot had was “Organic Choice” by Scott’s Miracle Gro. In my zest, I bought it, carted it home, and left it on my porch. Where it still sits because a) I became extremely skeptical that anything made by the Miracle Gro people could possibly be organic and b) even if it is, the Scott’s company is responsible for law suits against organic competitors, not to mention the poisoning of more lawns and gardens in America than anyone else.

Everyday as I walked past the big yellow bag, I felt guiltier and guiltier. This past week I realized that I’d spent so much time wallowing in my guilt and indecision that it’s less than 8 weeks away from Tomato planting time and I have yet to start a single seed. So I went to my computer and googled “Organic Choice by Scott’s” and low and behold it is actually certified by OMRI (Organic Material Research Institute). OMRI is the non-profit organization responsible for certifying gardening materials for certified organic growers. They keep a database on all the products they certify.

The skeptic in me wonders how a non-profit agency that is funded by donations, grants, and the fees it charges for the certification process could possibly keep tabs on the tens of thousands of products out there, but the trusting soul in me figures there’s really no other option but to go with it. Still. Scott’s is a pretty lousy company. If their product is so superior why is it they have to wage legal and financial war on small organic companies to eliminate the competition? I haven’t opened the bag.

My usual practice is to mix sphagnum peat moss and vermiculite with potting soil to start my seeds, but now that my potting soil is giving me such mental fits, I decided to try something different.

Seed starter is exactly what it says it is – a medium for starting seeds. Typically, it has very little nutrients in it because seeds don’t need nutrients to germinate. Once they have their first true leaves, however, they need some food. So that’s when it’s recommended that you transplant them to potting soil. I’m a lazy gardener in a hurry, so I combine the seed starter and the soil to begin with and skip the whole transplanting step, except for my tomatoes, the royalty of the garden. I do transplant my tomatoes to bigger pots somewhere along the line.

I searched OMRI for commercial seed starting mixtures that are certified, and found only one brand which isn’t available at my gardening store. I turned to OrganicGardening Magazine’s website (highly recommend this site to anyone with gardening questions or anyone just starting out gardening – super helpful articles). They recommended a home-made seed starter recipe of screened compost, vermiculite, perlite, and sphagnum peat moss. Their potting soil recipe was simply compost and vermiculite. I decided to split the difference and create something that has all four ingredients, but is heavy on the vermiculite and compost. We shall see.

In the interest of my own completely non-scientific research, I’m also going to mix vermiculite, compost and my own garden soil for some of the seeds.

It’s also time to start the peas. Because my hens are not completely finished tilling the garden for me, I decided to try germinating the peas myself in wet paper towels. This will give the girls a couple extra days, but keep my peas on schedule. I’ve never tried this, but have heard from old-timers that it works great.

Stay tuned for the Seedling Update and the Pea Report next month!

Have you started any plants yourself? The ground is warm enough for lettuce, spinach, and carrots, so scatter a few seeds. It’s also safe to put in your broccoli plants and cabbages. You don’t need a designated vegetable garden, just find an open piece of soil in one of your flower beds and have at it. No excuses for no garden. Plant something!

Worms From Heaven

It wasn’t manna from heaven, it was worms from the garden gods. All week I have been contemplating purchasing a few wiggly helpers for my compost. When I finally pulled out a catalog, I was shocked to discover the prices. Our compost isn’t composting fast enough and I’ve decided that what it needs is more worms. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that worms are not cheap! In fact 500 worms (the smallest increment available) would set me back $39.95 (plus shipping). This completely goes against everything I believe about gardening, which is that it shouldn’t cost much. Growing vegetables is supposed to save you money, ditto for compost. I pushed the idea aside for more desperate times and moved on to other projects.

One of those projects was moving the hay delivered during the blizzard from where it’s been sitting under a tarp on the driveway (the only place accessible for the hay guy at the time) to the barn where it belonged. I was tired of lugging the 50 lb bales of hay up the hill to the barn every day. The big storm we had over the weekend had pulled the plastic tarp off the hay so now the bales weighed much more than 50 pounds, soaked as they were. Lucky for us the storm also washed away nearly all of our mammoth snow fall. So my husband and I loaded all the hay in to our little pick up and after several trips had the hay neatly piled in the barn. The miracle occurred when we picked up the pallets that were underneath the hay pile. Below the pallets, squirming all over our driveway were hundreds of worms! Free! All we had to do was scoop them up, which we did, loading them in to the back of a plastic dump truck that was handily abandoned in the driveway by one of the kids.

We laughed at our luck. There was only one moment when I was kind of grossed out at the idea of touching all these worms. That happened when I was holding the worms for the picture my husband took and I felt several worms “worming” their way between my fingers to dangle below my hand. Ehhh! I deposited the worms in the compost bin and could almost hear them shriek with happiness. They had spent the previous month under a pallet on our cold cement driveway and now they had been dropped right in to a larger than life smorgasborg. They must have felt like the messiah had come and carried them right to the Promised Land. Another win-win in the natural world.

If you compost you need worms. I don’t think you need to store a half ton of hay on your driveway to attract them. I bet you could leave a piece of plywood on your driveway through a rainstorm or two and you’d find plenty. Worm catching would be a great “chore” for your kids too – I’m sure they can find a few hiding under rocks or under the leaf layer in the woods. (Just be sure they aren’t harvesting worms from your garden!) When you consider that worms cost about eight cents each in a catalog, I think you’d be getting a bargain if you offered five cents – and the shipping would be free!

I’ve been shaking my head and smiling to myself ever since we received our worms from heaven. It’s very easy to spend your fortune on garden gadgets. In fact, that’s kind of second nature to us Americans. We always want the latest, greatest, quickest fix. My husband works for a tool company so he’s all about having the “right tool for the job”. And having the right tool for the job does make it easier. But all those tools, gadgets, boxes of worms, etc., add up in terms of the money you spend, the piles of stuff you accumulate, and the disappointment you feel in your soul. Why do we always need more/new/better stuff?

I learned that lesson all over again this weekend with the worms from heaven. Look around, open your eyes. Maybe what you need is already all around you. It may require a little work and resourcefulness, but it will feel much better on your wallet and your heart to use what you have – or what your neighbor has. We’re headed to a neighbors later this month to borrow his splitter for the trees the storm pulled down. And we’ve already begun trying to figure out which neighbor is most likely to have a pressure washer we can borrow. The father of one of my daughter’s friends called us up yesterday and asked if we wanted the cherry wood from a tree he had cut up for a job he’d just finished. (He’s a hardworking landscaper/do-any-job-outside guy if anyone wants a referral) We heat with wood, so the load of wood he dumped on the driveway (where the worms appeared!) will heat our house for a week next year.

Another great way to keep costs down when it comes to gardening is to swap seeds. Most seed packets hold way more seeds than an individual gardener needs. Nobody needs 25 zucchini plants. Order with a friend and share the seeds. Some gardening clubs organize seed swaps, but you could also organize your own. Our local library is having a plant swap this May. I’m already growing all kinds of extras to take and swap.

Gardening, and living organically for that matter, shouldn’t be expensive. It certainly doesn’t have to be. Look around you. Talk to friends, neighbors, and farmers in person and online. Offer to share your resources, labor, knowledge and you’ll be surprised how much stuff you can get for free!

Live an Earth Life, not just a Day

I’m having trouble writing something for Earth Day because truth be told, Earth Day frustrates me. It’s ridiculous that on one day each year we talk about the importance of reducing, reusing, recycling, and caring for our earth and then the next day we go back to business as usual. Why is it we feel driven to keep our homes immaculate and in perfect running order (some more than others I know), but we don’t feel the same way about our planet? Isn’t our planet truly our home? It’s our responsibility - each one of us, not just the hippy-leftover lady that picks up trash along the side of the road. We wouldn’t walk by a bag of trash lying on our living room floor, so why is it so easy to look the other way at the trash lying on the sidewalk? We wouldn’t throw away money, so why is it so easy to throw away recycling? I’m as guilty as anybody. I’ll throw out the jar of peanut butter rather than try to clean it out for the recycling.

We recycle when it’s made easy for us and when it’s not we look both ways and then pitch the item in the trash. It’s just one bottle, can, newspaper, envelope, whatever. But that’s just it. We don’t think just one of us can make a difference and just one of us can’t. But just one of us times a million makes a huge difference. My paper’s obligatory Earth Day article on the front page recited some interesting facts: Recycling just one aluminum can creates enough savings to power a TV for 3 hours. Now I don’t know how “they” get to that number, but think about it. It’s kind of like trading your carbon rights. You recycle that can and you can watch TV for three hours and not feel guilty. (although personally I think three hours in front of a TV should make you feel guilty or at least bored out of your mind.)

Another statistic quoted said that each person, on average, creates 4.4 pounds of trash each day. Wow! That’s nuts. But I’m guessing it’s fairly accurate. Just think what could happen if each of us changed a few habits – recycled all the envelopes and junk mail (or better yet called a halt to the endless junk mail by logging on to www.optoutprescreen.com and other sites like it and requesting an end to it), compost your coffee grounds and filters, filled a box for donations, recycled even the yucky peanut butter jar. Each of us could easily become less than average if we made one small change. 4.4 pounds per person is more than this earth can, or should, handle. So cut out the garbage.

On this Earth Day make a real change. Sit down with your kids and talk to them about Earth Day. They’re probably getting it pounded in to them at school so ask them what they learned. Make a pact to change just one habit. Let this Earth Day last longer than just one day. Maybe for your kids it can be an Earth Life.

Compost Happens

Compost happens. Good bumper sticker. Compost does just happen, there’s not much work involved other than gathering the right stuff and dumping it in. We’ve had lots of different compost set ups over the years; currently we’ve got two composts going. We have one that is specifically for the high rent plants (tomatoes, peppers, new perennials that cost a lot) and one for everything else. The high rent compost is kept in a fancy composter that I purchased from Gardener’s Supply catalog in a fit of this-is-an-investment-so-it’s-OK-to-spend-a-fortune. Really it’s not necessary. My friend Lisa got her composter free from the extension service by attending a seminar on composting. You can easily build your own and there are lots of plans out there. You can also simply designate an area and start piling. Depends on how seriously you take your composting.

We began our composting journey by reading the book, Compost This Book! By Tom Christopher and Marty Asher. It’s very readable and even funny. There are lots of other books out there. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to read a book, there is a great website that explains it very simply and clearly www.eartheasy.com/grow_compost.html. I’m going to steal shamelessly from the information found there, so if you want the complete scoop (so to speak), stop reading right now and just click on their site.

Compost needs green stuff (nitrogen), brown stuff (carbon), water, and air. That’s pretty much it.

Green stuff is fruit peelings, vegetables scraps, eggshells (crush them), coffee grounds + filters, and tea leaves. It’s pretty much anything that doesn’t have animal fat or meat in it. When we designed our kitchen we added a compost collector to our pull-out garbage bin. Before that we kept a fancy compost collector on our counter. It was porcelain and had a lid with a built in filter. Any upscale garden catalog will have lots of versions of these. Prior to that, we had a plastic bucket under the sink. Anything will work, but if you don’t want to be running out to the compost several times a day, I’d encourage you to use something inconspicuous and large, with a lid. When compost begins breaking down, it does smell a little, but it’s not a bad smell. If it starts to stink badly, think carefully about what you’ve been putting in your compost. It will attract fruit flies, so a lid is a good thing.

Green stuff is also manure of any animal that isn’t a meat eater. In other words don’t try to compost your dog or cat poop. Not good. But horse, cow, and chicken manure are all good. Chicken manure is especially good, and rabbit manure is even better. If you haven't got any of these animals yourself, make friends with a farmer. They'll usually gladly give you whatever you'll pick up. Grass and flower clippings are also green stuff. You can even throw in weeds if you’re sure they haven’t gone to seed. Otherwise you’ll be only creating problems.

You need 2 parts brown stuff for each 1 part green stuff. Brown stuff is generally dryer to begin with. It’s things like dead leaves (preferably chipped up so they break down quicker), newspaper (don’t use the glossy circulars), shredded cardboard, egg cartons, corn cobs & stalks (chopped up), wood chips, sawdust, wood ash (lightly), pine needles (go easy – they’re very acidic), straw, and shrub prunings (chopped up). I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but basically it’s anything that is organic and will break down. The more you can begin that process, by cutting up or chipping the brown stuff, the faster your compost will happen.

Your compost also needs air. This requires that you turn it occasionally. The fancy composter that I purchased is not supposed to need this turning because of its amazing design. Alas, that promise was too good to be true and getting a pitchfork in to its fancy design turns out to be pretty difficult. But we paid way too much good money for the thing, so we persevere and find our ways. If you layer your compost steadily with brown-green, it shouldn’t need too much turning.

The last thing your compost needs (besides time) is water. You can uncover it periodically and let the rain take care of that or you can manually water it yourself. Too much water and too little drainage will turn your compost in to a murky, solid mess. So make sure that there is a way for your compost to drain.

Our other compost pile is enormous and basically a free-for-all. It’s where we pile our yard clippings, horse manure, leaves, straw, miscellaneous paper, and cotton clothing. It is a long term investment. It is not covered, but is in the woods on a hill, so it doesn’t seem to be oversaturated and has plenty of drainage. Turning it requires our neighbor’s front end loader, so that doesn’t happen much. I’ve been saving it up to use in the terraced beds we are planning to build in to the hillside “some day”.

So compost happens and then what do you do? We use up nearly all of our high-rent compost each summer when we transplant the new babies. We will dig a hole much bigger than necessary for the transplant and then work lots of compost in to the bottom of the hole before planting. Our tomato plants were over six feet high last summer and produced, literally, wheel barrows full of tomatoes. Compost works.

And compost doesn’t just work for your garden. It also works for our world. It reduces waste and adds nutrients back to the soil. Start composting today – drill some holes in the bottom of a garbage can and get started. Teach your children about composting. There’s a great science lesson in all this nitrogen and carbon. It’s also a lesson in life. Everything is useful – even garbage and when you add in all the right garbage, you can make gold. Pass it on. Compost happens.