July 2012

Regardless of the inclement weather,  every thing from fierce wind storms, the month of May the wettest month on record and then days of unusually hot weather, my garden is really producing a beautiful crop. Their is corn of course, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, scarlet beans, strawberries, melons, etc.  For just a whim I planted some flowers including nasturtiums.

WHAT A JOY !

2012 - A New Gardener Year

A New Gardener Year is upon us...2012.

Tree that was removed

 Basic layout of bricks for Garden

 Various views during 2011

 Rhubarb, Beans, Strawberries

 Corn, DayLily 

 From Road looking Opposite Direction

O how I miss that beautiful tree !!!  Of course I was told that my first year would be a waste of time as the soil was full of contamination from the 50 or so year old evergreen tree. Here in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada, we call these majestic trees Pine trees and Fir trees and Spruce trees. 

So I followed the advice given in my eBook, using the soil acid test and general tips for success. While digging the soil by hand to remove the huge quantity of roots, the gravel mixture that was used by the developer was very evident. Not to be discouraged, and after a lot of spreading and digging and spreading, an almost reasonable soil mix was managed.

The asparagus was a failure...too dry I think. The beans and corn flourished! My hope is that the strawberries will be better this year. 

At first it was impossible to find worms but by the end of the year there were lots of them. It pays to work the soil with compost.  

The effort to water efficiently sure paid off for the tomatoes. I put a small water trickle seeper at the base of the plants. No water on the leaves and lots of pruning back.

The ebook author really knows her stuff !!  Gave me a base or foundation of ideas to get started with and made it easy to ad my own ideas. After all, my life profession has been fixing cars!   Give me an email if you would like the eBook ...Fre*e 'cause I think you would like it tooo!

Barrymor3@gmail.com
(ask for the book and I will email it to you)

Kelowna, BC, Canada

Worm Castings | Your Kitchen Gardener

 Strumelia's blog

Worm composting....it's vegetable Reincarnation!

Written by Strumelia

Sun, 05/16/2010 - 8:20pm

I keep a bin of red wriggler (Eisenia fetida) composting worms in my basement.  All the very choicest discarded tidbits from the kitchen such as fruit and vegetable peelings and scraps, egg shells, tea bags, banana peels, and used coffee grounds with filters, and shredded brown paper, all go to the worms, and the rest of the kitchen and garden scraps just go into our regular outdoor compost bins. In return, every few months I get a nice big 10 or 15 pound tray full of pure black earthworm castings for my garden.  For free.
I hadn't harvested from my worm bin since the Fall, and today I refreshed their bedding and rotated out about 25 lbs. of wonderful rich castings.
I purposely harvested today because today I prepared the tomato patch.  After deep digging the whole bed, I pounded in the stakes.  Into the ground around each tomato stake, I hoed in about 12 cups of earthworm castings.  Tomorrow I am going to buy the 16 tomato plants at my favorite local growers' stand.  Tomatos are the one vegetable I buy already potted as plants....everthing else I direct seed into the ground in my veggie garden.  I just don't want to get involved with starting seed indoors under lights, and our short growing season doesn't really give enough time to start tomatos from seed outdoors. I've already put in the stakes and planted my cucumber seeds. So now the tomato bed is ready as well.
I like to think about how so much of what we used to throw into the garbage to eventually wind up in landfills now instead gets re-cycled back through our two simple home composting systems and helps us grow our vegetables. And how amazing to think that some of the scraps from those vegetables will yet again go back to the worms to travel another cycle.  It's vegetable reincarnation!

Your Kitchen Gardener-Naturalized

Hello again,  here is an example of a naturalized kitchen garden that some of you may have the exact place for.    Remember to come back to these articles often 'cause as information of interest is found, I will continue to make lots available for you.
See you at  Your Kitchen Gardener!