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Any gardeners among us?


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I know it is right smack in the middle of winter, but I am already plotting what I will plant in my, although small, garden. I long for the taste of home grown tomatoes and peppers. What is being sold in the stores taste like cardboard.

Do any of you have a compost pile going? I started on in September. I don't know how it will be come spring.

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We have a tumbler. In my experience, ad event volume of rich compost will take more than one season. Just continue to aerate it. You will have something to work with, it may not be as

Much as you hope.

Do you make compost tea? If not, consider devising a way to collect the liquid that finds its way to the bottom of your compost pile. Nice addition to watering your plants at every stage of growth.

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I have four compost bins - they take a long time to break things down but break things down they do.

I never paid gardening any attention until about ten years ago when I decided to turn the Somme landscape outside my back door into something a bit more attractive. Have had great fun with raised borders, two ponds (the annual frog porn show is due in the next few weeks) and experimenting with all manner of plants. I think of myself as a free jazz gardener - I just try things out to see what will happen rather than studying what plants should go where.

A couple of years back I bought a cheap frame/perspex greenhouse. I like to plant tomatoes, sunflowers and various plants there at Easter and see them grow; then put them out in late-May.

Amazed how much pleasure I get from it.

Edited by A Lark Ascending
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Do you make compost tea?

My dad swears by compost tea. He gets pretty good results. (I'm personally not much of a gardener. More of a trimmer and mower.)

Making the "tea" can be made simple or complex (some people use aquarium pumps and aerators). My dad does it this way, in the least steps possible:

compost-tea-equipment.gif

After some Googling, it turns out (I didn't know this) that you can just buy the stuff if you want to skip all the steps:

compost_tea.jpg

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When I had a garden, my compost took two years to ripen. Shredding everything helps considerably, and using the right place, slightly shaded. It digested shredded orange peels and the like.

Tomatoes aren't easy to grow .... consider a small glass house, which elongates the growing period considerably. The best tasting brand is Black Krim tomatoes, which I luckily can buy from an organic gardener in town.

TF-0063-2.jpg

https://store.tomatofest.com/Black_Krim_Tomato_Seeds_p/tf-0063.htm

Edited by mikeweil
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Black Krims are wonderful. In this area there is a Black Brandywine that is as good, similar flavor, easier to grow.

I usually plant around 20 varieties of Heirloom tomato yearly. Always plant several "black" types. We usually try to plant at least a couple that we haven't tried before, just for fun. Since we don't start from seeds, we are subject to whatever is available from the local greenhouses, but it's always good, and interesting.

I'm a lazy composter - three bins cobbled together from old shipping pallets. No particular system, I just throw in a lot of waste (we don't do weeds that are prolific- I fear that my mounds don't get hot enough to kill the seeds) and dig from the bottom. Works for us.

We will do sweet peppers, sugar peas, heirloom string beans (Mountain Greasies from my home state of North Carolina), bush beans, cucumbers, collard greens, cabbages, strawberries, raspberries, onions, carrots, and various types of leaf lettuce, plus anything else that we get a notion to try out.

Can't hardly wait for summer!

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