The Compost Bin

If you're thinking about building raised beds for your vegetable garden, definitely go for it. Plants do better in deep soil and as long as you don't walk in the beds, you'll also avoid soil compaction. Now what root wouldn't want to grow in nice loose, deep soil? If I was a root, I'd tell all my root friends, "Hey come on guys, nice deep, loose soil over here, let's go!"

But this weekend, I had my first bad experience with raised beds. You see there was a root invasion from trees that were pretty far away. The closest trees to my vegetable garden are at least 30 feet away but I guess that's just a short hop for tree roots. It's almost as if one of these roots said to all his buddies, "Hey come on guys, nice deep, loose soil over here, let's go!"

So on Sunday, I was planning on planting some more salad greens but wound up spending the afternoon digging and pulling roots out of my beds. I always wondered why Mel Bartholomew in the book Square Foot Gardening advised to build a bottom to raised beds. At the time, I was like, why build a bottom, what is this guy crazy? I want earth worms to tunnel up from underneath my garden beds and munch on all that compost that I loaded in there. More like Square Foot Craziness, no bottoms on my raised beds.

Well, I was wrong about that. After pulling a few giant piles worth of roots out yesterday, I made an executive decision. Whenever I build a new bed, a bottom will be a mandatory feature. I don't think I'll use a sheet of plywood for the floor as suggested in the book, but at a minimum, I'll load the bottom up with landscape fabric. Usually, I'd layer newspapers to stop weeds and because I know they'll break down and feed those earthworms that I was talking about. But since I want to avoid future root invasions, I think I'll pass on the newspapers. Do they make landscape fabric out of steel?

Mr. Bartholomew, sir, I'm sorry about the Square Foot Craziness remark. You were right and I should have listened. It won't happen again.

Go, Tomatoes go! If you're going to start tomato seeds indoors, I really can't recommend the APS-24 Self Watering seed trays enough.

This year I didn't buy any new tomato seeds and just used leftovers from previous years which I keep in a box in the garage. And look at the germination that I get with these trays. 23 out of 24 have sprouted and I still have hope for that last guy.

You may think these sprouts are pretty small for April and you're right. I like to plant outside when all possible chances of frost are gone and that usually means June 1st. Our last frost date is mid May but I give it an extra two weeks just to be safe. I don't trust myself to get my plants covered in case of a late frost so that's why I like to wait until my rhododendrons flower before I move my tomatoes outside. So according to that schedule, these tiny seedlings are right on track.

This year's tomato selection:

• San Marzano


• Black Krim


• Brandywine


• Brandy Boy


• Little Mama


• Big Mama


• Supersteak


• Mortgage Lifter

I usually get my first tomatoes (and first tomato sandwich) sometime around the end of July and that's fine with me. Good luck with your tomatoes this year.

This year, to celebrate Earth Day, I ordered a big pile of Earth and had it dumped in my driveway.

What...? Isn't that what your supposed to do?

Just in case you thought my Planting Peas video was nothing but a bunch of Hollywood special effects, I have a follow up to prove that my advanced pea planting technique is for real.

Nope, nothing but a real live pea sprout in this picture, no CGI, no wax models, no fancy artist rendition.

Just the peas, ma'am.

And the winner of the first garden fresh food ready to get eaten in 2008 goes to chives. Tell him what he's won, Johnny.

As the grand prize winner, Chives, you'll receive a wonderful spa day which includes resting on a luxurious bed made of baked potato.
Oooooooohhhhh.

But that's not all. We're also going to slather you with the finest sour cream.
Aaaaahhhhhh.

The big mess that's in this picture is going to turn into a big bucket of blue potatoes. Last year, I picked up a pound of blue seed potatoes and planted them not expecting much. But at the end of the season, I had about 30 pounds of them. I like when a vegetable under promises and over delivers.

So I saved a few pounds worth and stored them in a cool, dark place all winter. When I planted them a few weeks ago, as you can see in the picture, they were already growing eyes all over the place.

Do you know what potatoes like? Compost. As the potato plants grew, I kept adding compost to the beds and was eventually rewarded with a big bed full of potatoes. Think I'll do the same this year.

They say that there's no such thing as bad press but after reading this article at the BBC, I'm not so sure anymore.

I've always said that the more we hear about compost in the news, the better it is for everyone. You know, to get the word out that it's good for the environment and all. Well I may have to retract that statement now.

Apparently this retired 70 year old gardener was using his compost pile to store the heroin that he was dealing from his garden.

Umm... so is heroin a green or a brown?

At the end of winter or in early spring, it's a good time to trim your ornamental grass. Cutting away the dried up grass makes room for new growth.

You can trim your ornamental grass with hedge clippers, a very sharp knife or even plain old scissors just like I'm using in this video.

If you're like me and save every leaf that falls in the entire neighborhood, you may be looking for a way to speed up your composting. And the best way to do that is with a compost tumbler.

A compost tumbler is just a compost bin that is designed for easy turning. Remember that turning your compost is the best way to let the pile breathe. Don't forget there's billions of microbes in that pile and they're working hard to give you the best garden in town, so pay them back with some air.

Most compost tumblers are a variation of a big drum on rollers with a crank that you can turn. Put your greens and browns in the drum and give it a turn every once in a while. Much easier than climbing into your compost bin with a pitch fork.

My parents own the Urban Compost Tumbler and that's a beautiful piece of equipment but it was like $200. With a few college funds to save up for, I can't spare $200 for something I'm going to be putting garbage into.

And so I decided to build one out of a garbage can. Where's the crank or the easy turning mechanism you may ask? I'm the crank. You may have seen my compost tumbler video where I just roll this thing around my yard. That's all it needs. And a bungy cord keeps the lid in place.

So take a garbage can and drill holes in it. If you're worried about little creatures climbing into your bin, then screen over the holes. It's actually a pretty easy garden project.

I've promised a few people, detailed instructions on how I built this homemade compost tumbler and they're coming in a future post. But in the meantime, I've got to go and roll my garbage can around my yard.

Everyone seems to be jumping on the compost bandwagon lately and that's a good thing. Imagine my surprise, during one of my usual lunch breaks spent wandering around stores with my camera, when I saw these bagged coffee grinds in Borders Bookstore.

The sign says, "Free coffee grinds to add to your garden's soil. Plants love it!" How cool is that? Now I know that Starbucks has been doing this for years but it's good to see some other stores following their lead.

And my 4 newly acquired bags of coffee grinds have already been added to one of my compost bins. I think they had some more in the cafe section of the store but I already took a picture of their display and then swiped it so I wasn't going to be too greedy.

I'm not a big fan of putting the grinds directly in the garden as they suggest so of course I composted them. I really have way too many leaves and need to get my piles cooking. Free coffee grinds are a great start. Thanks Borders.

Colleen at In The Garden Online recently put up a quick post asking if anyone was on Twitter. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is a micro blog where you post short little updates of what your doing or working on. Lots of people also use Twitter as a form of instant messaging. Unfortunately because of this, they have blocked it's use from within the office of my 9-5. But it's a good thing that I have an iPhone. Yes, the man won't be keeping me from my Tweets.

I've added a badge over there on the right that displays my last few Tweets.

Now thanks to Colleen there's an explosion of Garden Bloggers on Twitter. Nice work. I was getting lonely on there by myself.