The Mystery of Compost

The mystery of compost. We have two compost bins one for all the fruit and veggie scraps where red wiggler worms eat the scraps and turn them into compost. The other where we throw yard and garden waste and just let nature take its course and break it down without any help.

In June when we planted three fruit trees, to enrich the soil we went to the yard and garden waste compost pile and added the compost to the hole where the tree was to be planted. Well I guess some seeds from a butternut squash must have been in the mix because we now have a butternut squash plant at the base of our Bartlett pear tree!!

Here is to a fall harvest of butternut squash!

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The Ants Go Marching Out Of My Yard!!

On June 1st of this year, we planted three fruit trees all was going well until a few weeks ago when we noticed the cherry tree was infested with big black ants. The ants were feasting on the cherry tree leaves!

We wanted to find a green way to rid ourselves of the ants so we turned to the internet and found several solutions. The one I thought held the most promise was garlic. It was simple, I had it in the house and I felt it just might work.

We just sliced up a few cloves of garlic and off I went to the back yard. I shook off all the ants from the tree sprinkled the garlic on the grass then for a bit of insurance I took one piece of garlic and rubbed it on the trunk to act as a barrier. Now the back yard smells like an Italian kitchen and the ants have vacated the tree!!

As you can see on this photo the new leaves have not been eaten, they emerged after the garlic was used.

Garden Update 7.26.09

More rain and some sun this week. Our squash plants look very water logged and I’m not sure we are going to get very much of anything out of them this year. The tomatoes, carrots, peppers and cukes are looking great. The second planting of beans, peas, radishes and beets are looking just fine. What I can not get over is one of the grape vines we planted last fall is growing very fast the other three vines are doing ok but the Niagara Grape has officially reached the top of the pergola; 11 feet high. The other vines do not get as much sun as that one so maybe that is a factor. It is just amazing to watch.

Took some photos of the fruit trees as well. The cherry seems to be growing the most and the pear tree has some sort of squash growing with it. It must have been from a seed that was in our compost pile, we amended the soil with our compost when we planted the trees. So we will have to wait and see what type of squash we are growing.

One of the many mystery tomato plants is most likely a roma tomato by the looks of the shape, can’t tell the variety of the other mystery tomato plants we will just have to wait and see.

This week I have started to keep a log of how many pounds of produce we are growing in the garden; this weeks take a 7 pounds - we harvested Cucumbers (2 ¼ pounds), raspberries, purple pod beans, green beans, purple potatoes (1 lb 1 oz), red bliss potatoes, lettuce, radish, yellow and white carrots and banarama peppers. Next year I will keep track from the first harvest…don’t know why I did not think of this
sooner!!

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Garden Update 7.26.09

Garden Update June 27, 2009

Here comes the sun! After weeks of rain, drizzle and overcast days we finally have a sunny day and it looks like we have a few in a row with just threats of thunderstorms. Over the past 2 weeks, we have harvested peas, strawberries, lettuce and radishes. I am anxiously awaiting our first tomato!

The tomato plants have tons of flowers and the ones that had been fed worm tea from our vermicomposting bin have taken off as well as the petunias that are planted in the top of our upside down tomatoes. We also rotated the hanging baskets to ensure they all get a good dose of sun!

As I photographed the garden today, I noticed that the cucumbers that I sowed directly in the garden are doing much better than the ones I had started indoors. I guess I will not be starting cucumbers inside again. They mystery tomatoes are doing well and have found several more in the lettuce patch I am going to let them do their own thing and hope we have a very bountiful tomato harvest.

The fruit trees we planted in June all have leaves on them and seem to be adjusting well to their new surroundings. I put a treatment of calcium fertilizer on them this week so we will see if this boosts the growth rate.

Hoping that Mother Nature has shut off the steady supply of water and she sees fits to only rain occasionally for the rest of the summer!

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Garen update 6.27.09

Fruit Tree Planting

Our fruit trees finally arrived. We ordered them from Gurneys on May 7th!! Could not pass them up as they were 60% off but who know it would take almost one month for them to arrive. The three trees came in one large and long box with all the supplies you need to get them off to a good start.

We had pre dug the holes since we knew they were coming, so all we needed to do was put them in the hole and fill in with dirt and our fresh compost!! We gently placed them in the holes began to back fill and sprinkled with 2 ounces of pelletized calcium. Then watered well!!

The trees are about 3 - 4 feet in height right now but should reach 25 feet at maturity. As soon as we start to see some leave we will fertilize with a fertilizer made just for fruit trees. Keep your fingers crossed in a couple of years we should be able to eat some Granny Smith Apples, Bartlett Pears and Stella Sweet Cherries!

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Tree Planting