A Random Thought on Composting materials

I've been reading a lot lately on how to get compost materials for your compost piles.
Suggestions are asking neighbors and municipalities organizing community piles where you can go get leaves, grass clippings etc.

These are great ideas. However, I want to tell a story as a little warning to make sure you find out the lawn/gardening practices of whomever you may be getting your materials from. I wrote this up some time ago for a newsletter for a CSA I belonged to once... but it's worth retelling:

Years ago (never mind how long :) ) when I was in Middle School my Dad went organic. We lived in the suburbs and pretty much became the laughing stock of the street. There are a lot of interesting story/lessons from back then besides the one I'm telling. (like getting grubs in the lawn and the neighbor with the perfect lawn telling Dad I told you so; only to have a family of skunks come through; eat the grubs and move on. We only had to fill in and reseed the holes they left. But we never had grubs again.)

Dads pride and joy was his compost pile. It was pretty simple; just throw stuff in, cover it under and turn it once in awhile. It made beautiful compost. The worms loved it.

And while we only had a 1/5 of an acre of lawn and gardens there was never enough.

So Dad asked the neighbors if they would bring him their leaves and grass clippings.

The guy with the perfect lawn was amused and said sure: you can have my clippings just come and get them when I put the bags on the street for the garbage men. So Dad went and got them and put them in the compost and turned them in.

Next day he came in at breakfast time, after going out to turn the compost.... I took one look at his face and asked what was wrong? He said... they're dead. All of them. Every single worm in the compost was dead.

Why? Because the neighbor with the perfect lawn used not only weed killer but pesticide on his lawn. It went directly into our compost and killed every single living thing.

So Dad had to dig out, bag up and throw out his compost and moved the pile. He never asked anyone for extra material again.

It was a great lesson for a young gardener (me) to learn (and an old one too) and really pointed out to me why going organic was so important for the long term (that and we were the only known garden on the street that had toads).

So, please, if you use other peoples lawn and garden materials in your compost; find out what they use in their own garden practices; otherwise whatever it is they use will be in your garden too.

Seed Catalog Advice, Garden Planning, Black Squirrels and Happy Imbolc/Candlemas/Groundhogs Day

Happy Imbolc/Candlemas/Groundhogs Day! Or whatever your Religion or Lifestyle calls this Cross Quarter day. :)

It's the Celtic New Year for me; when the Light begins to return as the days start to noticeably become longer. And this is the day I've been waiting for as my personal New Year this year. I've always loved Imbolc and it seemed the right focus for me to see as the day I leave behind all the bad aspects of the last year for me. I still have some healing to do; and treatment in the next few weeks; but I'll get through it.

The work we're doing this month at Creative Awakenings is on “Presence – the Sacred Moment of NOW” (a new, small but growing group working on Spirituality in Creativity (and vice versa)). This works well with where I am at the moment in my healing. While I'm much better I'm not far enough along to just start running around and while I have my moments of frustration I see having to restrain myself and Be Here Now (to quote Ram Dass); a good way to start my new year.

That's not to say I don't have things to Do. But much time needs to be spent simply Being still.

One of the things I plan on doing this afternoon is to start planning The Garden. February is a good time to do this here in the North East USA. Even in a mild Winter as we are having now.

As always most of my seed will come from High Mowing Farm. A small family owned organic company in Vermont.

Beware many of the catalogs out there; most are no longer owned by the families that started them in the years past and are owned by huge companies. Some by the same company. If you suspect your old seed company isn't living up to it's past qualities then you might look into who their parent company is.

I know people who are having issues with older and/or bigger seed companies in recent years who are now turning to smaller family owned companies. One of the most common issues is wrong varieties in packets. Nothing like giving garden space for a eating tomato only to find you're growing nothing but sauce tomatoes.

While Vermont may be a long way from you I'd suggest you give them a try but if you want to find something nearer to you there are some guidelines I'd suggest:

* Buy certified Organic. (I no longer get seed from companies that aren't 100% organic. I've dropped some folks I've done business with for years because I noticed their organic line is getting smaller as is their open pollinated. If Organic seems like an after thought then it probably is. Better to focus and support/vote for those that are totally dedicated to organic seed production.

* Buy open Pollinated when you can.

* Buy Heritage seed when you can; keep these delicious well producing species going before the big companies kill off the varieties in the name of easy marketing and GMO promotion.

* Buy untreated seed.

* Make sure the company is really owned by a family. No parent company is involved.

* The company really is small. I'd rather do business with several small companies with small inventories then one huge one who gets their seed god knows where.

* When you call with a question a human answers the phone. A better sign is when you have to leave a message for the person who can answer you because he or she are in the fields.

* It's as local as possible. Vermont is one state up from me so HM Farm is a good choice. Check out whose closest to you that fills the above criteria.
High Mowing Farm isn't the only seed company that covers the above and more so look around.

I'll report in a few days or so on how the plan is. I'm hoping to get my order out in, at the most, two weeks.

I leave you today with a photo of Shadow. His story is a few years ago we had a black squirrel show up at our winter feeder. Turns out they are the same squirrel as our gray squirrels but have some gene pigment that shows up sometimes. I've seen the black squirrels in Toronto; where gray is the rare one. But never seen one anywhere else.

This year I have three black squirrels amongst about ½ dozen grays. So the population is growing. Since I can't tell one black squirrel from another: I call them all Shadow :)

Sorry the photo is of such poor quality but it's taken with an iphone.

I'm back. (no pun intended; really!)

On the other side of the spinal surgery... but not over it by any means.

I'm afraid there is no Garden or Studio update but I thought I'd better report in for those of you who have been asking (or wondering) how I am:

I'm very glad, again, that I have a sense of humor as I find myself rather amusing. It would seem one of the life lessons I'm not getting (and so Life must keep trying to teach me) is that you can't predict what's going to happen. Both the good and the bad.

The surgeon warned me “This is going to hurt”. I figured I've been through a lot in the last ten years: 7 cancer surgeries and one radiation treatment. So I figured I was emotionally and physically prepared for the surgery to remove two tumors off my spine. I've hurt before and gotten over it and moved on.

I was both right and wrong. I'm actually doing well when you consider what I've been through in the last couple weeks. I've already weaned myself off the prescription pain meds. Just the occasional OTC as needed; mostly at night.

But I'm having some trouble dealing with being physically immobile to the degree that I am. Mostly all I can do is sit in a recliner. Any activity; including trying to draw or anything more can't be done for more then a few minutes.

Getting my supplies set up and ready to work is about all I've been able to accomplish; much less actually do something with them. :)

I had all these plans for my recovery. I had a stack of Art magazines I'd saved up for months. Seed Catalogs piled high to go through and plan the Garden with. Simple things I was shocked to find I couldn't do.

I signed up for Traci Bautista's Doodles Unleashed workshop and Jan Fox Designs 52 Play Dates. I saw myself sitting, relaxing and following their lead so that I could stay creative. Only to find (can we say Duh? :) ) my arms are attached to my back and it hurts to move them and I have to move my position every 5 minutes or I'm in agony.

(hopefully I can play catch up soon on both workshops that, btw, look great: good job to the teachers and the students.. at least I can watch :) )

The good news is I have a short attention span so it's easy for me to move from one thing to another but a big part of me loathes not being able to do what I want, when I want and for how long.

And better news: I can now sit up for a bit with the keyboard in my lap (where I am now) and communicate to the outside world and I've started on the magazines and catalogs some. I'm even walking around the house a bit.

So there is a light at the end of this tunnel and so, I feel that once again, I am ready to Get Over Myself. In short increments. :)

Hopefully, in the following weeks I'll have some reports of results of some kind of Creative expression... as well as the plans for The Garden in 2012.

(the above picture is from one of my Art Journals and seemed appropriate for me relearning to Soar!)

Happy New Year

At last! January 1st 2011! Aside from the concept of a new start that New Years brings us it's the day I allow myself to start looking at my garden catalogs.

Up here in the frozen northern mountains we can have Winter from November to sometimes late April. April being the "tease" month as you just never know if your going to have sunny warm days or 5' of snow. But even in a shorter Winter year it can seem to go on forever. I have found if I start looking at seed and plant catalogs too early it makes the Winter seem even longer so I made a rule long ago: no garden planning until after the Holidays and the new year starts.

 And today is the day!

So, tea pot at my side, the garden planner I created myself (more on that later), pens, erasers and left over Christmas Cookies (thanks Barb and Alex!) I'll sit by the woodstove and start planning and making my lists.

I get tons of catalogs. Some I've been getting for years and years; others I'm not sure how they found me. The latter are usually very commercial corporate seed companies that buy mailing lists from who knows who; the former are old friends by  now.

I have very strict criteria for my seeds though which narrows who I actually buy from. That criteria is simple; 100% Organic and as local as possible. The last few years it's been High Mowing Farms in Vermont; a family owned organic seed company. If I can't find what I'm looking for from them I'll go to Seeds of Change

This is actually one of the hardest parts of gardening. No; not digging the beds, hauling compost or weeding. All of those things are hard of course, but making sure that you stay focused and most importantly: realistic but not so realistic that you stifle your imagination and dreams, when you plan your garden year and order your seeds is very very hard.

Every year I wind up with seeds I never got to start because I didn't have time or space or as organized as I thought I'd be.

In the start of the year we have this ideal we want to live in and create. Not just in the garden but in our lives. And this is a wonderful thing and a wonderful opportunity to "clean the slate" and remake our lives and selves as we see fit. But we can also be too hard on ourselves and expect too much of ourselves. 

I'm all for recreating and reinventing one's self: it's how I have survived "terminal" cancer for these past 9 years. But one can have the opposite effect on one's life if one has given one's self too high a goal to accomplish. Finding the right balance between Dreams and Reality can be the hard part.

Let yourself Soar but not higher then you can reasonable Fly. :)
We can be those Soaring Eagles but keep ourselves from being Icarus too.

My Garden Planner:

I've bought and have been given a lot of planners over the years. Some of them very beautiful with artists paintings or photographs of famous gardens. None of them seemed to fit how I wanted to approach it so I created my own.

It's actually very simple: I drew out the four garden beds on graph paper; outlined it in felt tip pen and then copied it in "color" so the graph lines would show. At the top I write in the year and season and put them in a three ring binder.

Six pages per year: Spring, Summer and Autumn Plantings and rotations in the garden and Spring, Summer and Autumn (for Winter) Plantings for the Greenhouse. In late Summer/ early Autumn I plan the following Springs rotations in all the garden beds.

For example, If I grew Tomatoes in bed one this year I'll move the Tomatoes into bed two next year; progressively through each of the four beds until on year five I'm back in bed one again.

This by the way is essential to avoid diseases in the soil left over from the previous years growth. As well as plants all use the soil differently and some; like beans, actually improve the soil by adding nitrogen so its available for another crop in that bed the next rotation.

Each of the graph squares is a foot square.

Years ago I read Square Foot Gardening  by Mel Bartholomew; which greatly influence my spacing and planting. While a bit too rigid for me it's a wonderful book for someone starting out who might need more organization as well as even experienced gardeners relearning that most seeds can be planted closer then presented in many traditional forms of gardening.

I don't use his "grid" system totally but I do use his spacing for seeds and plants in most cases.
Here is an image of last Spring/Summer plan:

You can see all sorts of chicken scratches on there as I take notes through the season. It's all done in pencil so I can change things as I go along as I see fit... or more often Nature sees fit. :)

I also have separate pages just for each bed for more detailed information.
As I said: same thing is done for the current single bed in the greenhouse (hopefully maybe this year I'll have a second bed put in there)



This Year's Plan (so far):

I try to learn from my mistakes. Again; not just in the garden but fortunately that's the subject here and we can skip my other mistakes. :) Making sure you don't make the same mistakes as well as remember the things that worked is another reason for your planner. One always thinks one won't forget these things but one does; so having a record is a big help. This can be as elaborate or simple as you wish. Years ago my garden planner was practically a journal or diary. Now I have this blog for the details. :) and so the planner is an outline.


As soon as I'm done (this will actually take at least a week or more) I'll post here what I've decided to plant and in some cases not plant again.

In the Kitchen:

I've not done a lot of serious cooking recently; I'm still dealing with a compromised immune system due to the anti-biotics from the Lyme Disease fiasco this fall but it's getting better.

I did saute some chicken last night with basil, garlic, white wine and (drum roll) tomatoes from the freezer from last years garden. Nothing like a taste of Summer when your looking out your window looks like the above photos.

And last: Happy New Year to you and yours and may all your dreams be fulfilled and fulfilling!