Getting Lots of High Quality, Free Dirt - My Compost Heap Problem

Two years ago we had to cut down our 100+ year old Pin Oak tree because its roots were compromised after a storm that went through our village. The tree was just magnificent and we really miss it. Every fall it would drop loads of leaves that I would collect and add to my compost heap. The leaves added with other organic matter would provide me with lots of high quality dirt. 

Well, 'If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain'. When my neighbors clean up their yards guess who's collecting their bags full of pure gold. Of course I return their bags and help the environment is a tiny way. 

I have set up several bins made of free wood pallets at the end of our yard and I add the leaves there. After you add the leaves and the bins seem full add little water and some mixing with the pitchfork and I get what I want, free dirt. 

You need to have at least TWO bins. You'll add material in bin #1 and then a week or two later you can toss bin #1's contents to the other bin. My local coffee shops, DunkinDonuts and Noble Roasters, help me by providing spent coffee grounds. Worms love coffee grounds. Making high quality dirt is easy and effortless. When I toss the contents of one bin to the next, I sprinkle some coffee grounds. As I do that I can hear the worms say "yum yum, yum".

If you don't mix your compost matter it will take about two years before it decomposes and it's usable. 

I always add my kitchen scraps there. I have a bowl next to the kitchen sink and throughout the day as I clean the vegetables, add the scraps in the bowl. The first two years the method worked like a charm. We consume lots of supermarket purchased fruits and vegetables and the scraps go in the compost heap. So far, so good. Supermarkets, though, add these stickers on everything to identify their goods. As you can see the avocado shell below has one such sticker. Quite the conundrum. YOU HAVE TO REMOVE THEM OTHERWISE YOUR FUTURE DIRT WILL BE FILLED WITH THESE STICKERS! They are made of some sort of material that will be in your garden for many years to come. 

By the way, out squirrels love to eat the material left on the avocado shell. We all have to live...

On my way home today I saw one of my neighbors had chopped down several small trees as he is working on a project. Well, tomorrow morning I will pay him a visit and get a few buckets of those wood chips. It will be such a great addition to my compost heap.

Keep on mulching!

I just planted a few potatoes the Ruth Stout way, the lazy way

Ruth Stout,  (June 14, 1884 – August 22, 1980) she was an author of gardening books and a "lazy" gardener. She pioneered the deep mulching method that basically eliminates watering and weeding gardens. I learned about her method by watching a film strip, remember them?,  back in the early eighties while I was attending ECCC in upstate NY.

Here is a quick-and-dirty video that demonstrates her way of "planting" potatoes.

The soil in this garden bed is rich in nutrients and has already been used for three years. Basically, you place the potatoes on top of the garden bed and then you cover them with lots of hay. Hay was Stout's prefered milching material. She didn't like leaves and she didn't use straw either. She said NOT to pull any weeds that may come up, but to just add more hay on top of the weeds to kill them.

You can find "bad hay" very cheap if you check your local Craig's List or at any local farms. Usually they go for $2 per bale and I use about four bales every year. 

Processing My Newly Arrived Celeste Cuttings

Celeste is commonly referred to as sugar fig due to its sweetness and it's considered a dessert fig, but can be used for drying and making preserves. It produces fruit about medium in size and has light brown to purple skin and bright pink flesh. One great advantage of this variety is the fruit is closed eye which discourages fruit beetles.

The trees are very cold hardy down to HZ 6. I do live in New York state and this is VERY important to me. Our winters are cold and we get quite a bit of the white stuff. 

I bought these cuttings from an Etsy seller. They advertised 10 cuttings for $16.00 plu shipping. I thought the price was reasonable and I went for it.  It took them two days to ship them, I thought that was reasonable, and then two additional days for me to receive these cuttings. If I had a penny for every time I tracked the package I'd be a rich American. 

The package came via USPS and it was clearly marked that it contained live plants. Sweet! 

I opened the outer package and inside I found the cuttings wrapped in a plastic bag. The bag was securely sealed with easy to open ties.

Inside the bag I found 12 cuttings! The original offer was for 10 cuttings. At that moment I knew they were working hard for a good Etsy review. The bottoms of the cuttings were wrapped in a wet paper towel. They do that to keep the alive during shipping. 

Using a mat knife I removed from the bottom of each cutting the bark to expose the cambium layer in order to promote root growth. 

After I removed the bark of the cuttings I set them in three separate plastic containers that were 3/4 full with regular tap water.

The cuttings need to be near light BUT NOT in direct sunlight. 

Cover each bucket with plastic to keep the cuttings nice and moist. Change the water one a day RELIGIOUSLY. In about four weeks you will see roots growing. Watch out for an update in a month or so. 

 Cloning figs with cuttings is a very slow process similar to watching elephants mate. Be patient...

Taking advantage of great supermarket bargains

Recently I was shopping at my favorite supermarket, Adams in Newburgh, NY, America, where they have a very nice vegetable section where I saw the "bargain" cart loaded with packages. Normally that's the first area I go to because I always find great bargains there especially after holidays. 

This time they had bundled organic dill with spinach, leek and parsley. Each package had my name written all over it and it was very generously stuffed. Just the dill had an original price tag of $3.79 on it. I was buying $19 worth of stuff for $3. 

Most times I cook whatever I buy from that bargain cart the same day, but sometimes I choose to either freeze or dry it. The dill is already tied up with string and hung outside on the grapevine trellis to dry in the sun. At night I bring it inside the house because of the morning dew that will rehydrate the herb. If it's sunny and not too humid it will dry in 2-3 weeks. Then I take it indoors for further processing. I made a good video about processing my own dried herbs and you can watch it here. This time I will dry enough dill to last me sever months. I will add it to my world famous spinach pie and fish recipes. 

The point I'm trying to make is that you should take advantage of these special offers in order to stretch your money to its fullest. 

Language barriers from an Immigrant's perspective

 This is the quintessential immigrant video. I talk about problems that I've encountered in my American life with my accent and mispronouncing words. 

I forgot to include the difficulty I had with the Spanish name Jesus where in Spanish it is pronounced "hay-SOOS". 

Here is my YouTube video where I talk about three different situations I've encountered as an innocent immigrant.