Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Gardens are magical aren’t they?

Gardens are magical aren’t they?


Having a good gardening system is working so well for me, everything just seems to flow at the moment. I walk out in the morning with a nice cup of hot joe and look around at everything going so right!
I am greeted first by a little wren that has quickly made a nest in one of my houseplants. Seems they found it the very day I set it out. She gets upset when my 19-year-old cat comes out for some sun, not knowing of course that Basil (the cat) is not so interested in her at all. Yet she still sits in a tree screaming at the cat until the cat falls asleep and then the little wren will quietly go back to her nest
I walk thu the veggie garden and look around for vole holes which now I have a remedy for that I think is sure to work. No holes, that’s good! I grab a little bit of some greens to take out to the chickens and tell them good morning. I watch them a while as they are such good entertainment and I wonder to myself, why I left the chair in there with the birds. (poopy chair)
With the price of soil amendments I am especially glad to have this wonderful system of awesome soil making in place.
Grass clippings to the compost pile and some to the birds
Bolted cabbage and other greens go to the chickens a little everyday
Indoor kitchen waste is split up between the worms and the compost
In the meantime the chickens are making up my nitrogen compost that I can retrieve at a later date.
I really like the use what you have method that applies to so many things, such as; I have lots of trees, lots of trees = lots of leaves. So I grab my big bed sheet and rake up about 4-5 big sheets full of leaves and they go in the coop for the birds. The birds get so excited to have something new to pick thru looking for bugs, and they do find a lot of them. In about 3-4 months I will have all that poopy enriched mulched up leaves and that will end up in the garden.
The worm bin is going full steam ahead. I actually think I have too many! So every now and then I will add a chunk of them to the garden. Say I have 4 plants square. I will dig a hole and throw in a chunk full of worm filled worm poo and cover it back up and then water it in real good.
The best way I have found to make worm tea is to put a spade full of worms and casting into a screen bag and dunk it in your bucket of water a few times. You will see it turn a darker shade and that is the good stuff. Pull the bag out and put anything left in the bag back into your worm bin. Don’t leave the bag in the water long enough to drown the worms! Please!
I use that water to give my veggies an extra boost.
So I don’t have to buy straw for the chickens as often cause I use a lot of leaves.
I don’t have to buy fertilizer at all!
Supplement the chickens’ diets with greens and grub specials I dig up and they don’t eat as much store bought food.
Out of all this I get fresh eggs and organic veggies and herbs
The best thing about having this system in place is that things are moving more smoothly everywhere in the yard. I have more garden space to have to work but its not taking as much time as before to do things. Some of the smoothing out I had to do was to get the chickens closer to the garden side of the house. This way I have my garden 3 steps away from my compost pile and the worm bin and the chickens’ house is only a few more steps away.
We have one rain barrel at the moment but are working on getting more. I do love my rain barrels.
I was going in this direction anyway as far as growing what I eat but I was on youtube and looking over peakmoment videos and there was one on a lady that said how much food could I grow on my land. And then I said to myself, “self, How much food can we grow on our land?” AND THEN…..AND THEN….. I decided that at least for this year I’m not planting anything unless I can eat it
So anyway, the whole point of this blog, is just to profess my happiness in this beautiful day and to share the feeling of things going right for a change!
If I get too old to garden ? OH NO!