Gardening in January

I know, I know, I owe you an Eco-Saturday. I had one in the works, but I’m being treated for insomnia, which has created some obstacles to my usual blogging patterns. (The tradeoff: I might finally catch up that sleep deficit I’ve been running since 1988.)

Anyway. I’ll make it up to you next weekend, but in the meantime, I want to show off the work we did for the garden today.

I’ve spent most of the winter buying a galvanized metal fire ring every couple of weeks and rolling it into the garden to use as a raised bed. I now have six rings — five lined up in the garden, and one tucked into a shady corner next to the garage door, ready to be inoculated with the morel mushroom spores Ron ordered for us the other day.

I had some good intentions about using the rings as composters, but I haven’t had time to pick up horse manure this winter, so we just took advantage of a pretty afternoon to cruise up to Lotus NatureScapes, where we picked up seven big Rubbermaid tubs full of compost for $10. You read that right: $10 for all the compost we could haul home in my station wagon. A similar quantity of prepackaged topsoil from a big-box store would have cost at least $75, and I’d have had a mess of non-recyclable plastic bags to deal with when I finished. Such are the merits of bulk purchases from mom-and-pop businesses.

Anyway, we filled two beds and got a good start on a third. If the weather cooperates, I’ll try to pick up a few tubs of manure next weekend and start cooking up some thermophilic compost in the remaining rings. We’ve still got plenty of time to make a couple of batches before spring.

While I was moving the fire rings into position in the sunniest part of the garden, I repositioned the walkway slightly and put a thick layer of leaves — which Ron has been piling back there since November — between the beds to keep the weeds down. Here’s how it looks now:

They should be more impressive come July, when big, healthy tomato plants are growing out of them.

When I finished with my outdoor gardening, I came inside and set up my planting shelves so they’ll be ready to start seeds next month:

I borrowed an idea from Ron’s mom and outfitted each shelf with growlights. I’m keeping the shelf in the basement this year so I won’t have to spend all my time chasing the cat out of it. (I should probably tell the guy next door that I’m starting tomatoes down there so he won’t mistake my Tigerellas for weed and call the cops. I love our local K9s, but this house is altogether too small for an enthusiastic German shepherd to go dashing through it in a futile search for nonexistent contraband.)

Emily

Belated Eco-Saturday: DIY rain barrel

Sorry I’m late with this. We had to wait for the weather to warm up so we could finish this project.

One quick way to reduce your water consumption is to collect rainwater for the garden. You can buy prefabbed rain barrels, but most of them are ridiculously expensive, and it’s easy to make your own for less than $50 worth of materials. Here’s how to do it:

Materials
Large plastic trash can with a lid
3/4-inch hose bibb (a.k.a. spigot)
3/4-inch metal washer
Two 3/4-inch female-threaded unions
Three-inch-long, 3/4-inch male-threaded nipple
Teflon tape
Small tube of silicone caulk
Bungee cord(s) long enough to stretch around the top of the trash can
Cheap mulch cloth*
Three 18-inch square pavers
Flexible downspout extender

Tools
Drill
3/4-inch hole saw bit
Tinsnips or utility knife
Scissors
Hacksaw

Start by using your hole saw bit to drill a hole about 4″ from the bottom of the trash can.

Wrap the threads on the barrel end of the spigot with Teflon tape. Slip the washer over the threads, put a bead of caulk on the washer, and push the threads through the hole as far as possible.

Reach into the trash can and screw one of the unions onto the threads from the inside.

When you’re done, caulk around the washer just to make sure you’ve got a good seal. I’d have used clear caulk instead of white, except I’d already screwed up and tried to seal it with pipe dope a week earlier after I discovered all my old caulk had dried up. I forgot that pipe dope never dries. Oops.

Yours will look better, because you won’t have pipe dope residue smeared everywhere.

Drill another 3/4″ hole about 2″-3″ from the top on either the left or right side of the barrel, depending on where you want your overflow pipe.

Teflon tape helps make a tighter seal.

Wrap one end of the nipple with Teflon tape, insert it into the hole, and screw on the other union from the inside. Use caulk on both sides to make a watertight seal.

Once the caulk cures, cut a piece of cheap mulch cloth big enough to cover the top of the trash can, with about 4″-5″ draping over the sides, and secure it with bungee cords. (You may need to cut a small hole in the cloth to accommodate your overflow pipe.)

An extra pair of hands helps with this part.

Drill a 3/4″ hole in the trash-can lid. Using the tinsnips or utility knife, enlarge the hole until it’s big enough to accommodate the downspout extender.

Put the lid on the barrel. Stack your pavers next to the downspout, set the barrel on top, and cut the downspout off about a foot above the top of the barrel. Install the downspout extender and direct it into the hole.

Fact: Convex lids are a pain in the arse to work with.

Finish by attaching a hose to the overflow pipe and directing it away from the house or into another barrel.

Emily

Pond maintenance

See my goldfish? Six for a dollar. Comets, man. You can’t beat ’em.

Today was warm enough that I finally had a chance to clean out the pond. It desperately needed it; that cold snap we had a few weeks ago came on so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to rescue the floating plants, so I ended up with a thick layer of decaying vegetation floating on top of the pond. Yecch.

I’d been planning to wait until spring to change the water, but once I’d scooped out most of the dead plants, I could see how nasty it was, and I was a little concerned the decaying organic material would compromise the oxygen level in the water — endangering the goldfish — if I left it all winter, especially when it gets cold enough to warrant shutting off the pump, so I went ahead and swapped out about 30 gallons of water, which Ron poured onto the garden.

I also hosed off the top of my homemade filter, which had gotten clogged with roots from the dead plants, and used a quarter-inch drill bit to enlarge the holes, which instantly improved the flow rate on the pump.

Water lettuce and water hyacinths are pretty, and they definitely kept the algae down this year, but those long roots kept clogging the fountain this summer, and I suspect they were responsible for its premature demise. I’ll swap them for duckweed next spring. It’s just as good at preventing algae bloom, but its roots are shorter and less likely to clog up the equipment.

I am pleased to report that my goldfish are thriving. I found the body of one very small fish caught in the roots of a rotting hyacinth, but I couldn’t determine the cause of death; it might have frozen, but given its size in relation to the other fish, I suspect it simply succumbed to the law of natural selection. The dead fish was only two inches long, and the three survivors are all four or five inches long, so I’m guessing they just out-competed the little one.

BTW, there is no need to spend ridiculous money on fancy goldfish for your pond unless you just have your heart set on a particular breed. Koi are fine as far as they go, but they’re expensive ($12 to $150 or more) and require more space and better water conditions than plain old feeder goldfish — a.k.a. comets — which are cheaper (25 cents or less), tougher (I’m pretty sure these guys could thrive in a mud puddle), and IMHO, just as pretty as their fancier counterparts. They’re just as smart, too; I’ve heard koi owners brag about how their fish come right up to the edge of the pond to greet them when they come outside, as if that’s some amazing feat of intelligence. I’ve kept comets on and off for years, and I’ve yet to see one that wouldn’t swim to the surface and beg when it saw me walk outside. These guys know a gravy train when they see one.

Bonus: Because comet goldfish are marketed as food for larger species, when you buy one to live in your pond, you’re saving a life.

Yeah. Comets. Getchu some.

I love it when the water is clear. The pump is aerating the pond nicely, as you can see from the bubbles.

One happy side effect of getting the flow rate up on the pump is that it’s aerating the water better. The fish spent a lot of time playing in the ripples near the surface this afternoon, so I’m assuming they liked it, too.

Don’t forget to install artificial landing strips for pollinators when vegetation is scarce. Wine corks are ideal for this purpose.

The bees — who were very active today, thanks to the warm weather — were none too pleased with me for messing with their water source and taking away their landing strips, but I’ve been saving wine corks to serve as replacement perches, and I threw a few out there today.

In other news, the quail have quit laying. I could use artificial lights to get them going again, but the whole point of raising my own birds was to ensure they weren’t subjected to the kind of evil crap that goes on in factory farms, so I’ll just trust Mother Nature and let them set their own schedule. If they need the winter off, they can have it.

Hope you had a productive Sunday, wherever you are. I think I’m going to wind mine down by bottling some pinon-infused beer we started a couple of weeks ago and racking a batch of cider. (Homemade hard cider will be an Eco-Saturday one of these days if I ever remember to take pictures of all the steps. It’s a little time-consuming but very easy to make, and the end product is magnificent.)

Emily

Eco-Saturday: DIY pond filter

The motor in my pond’s all-in-one pump and filter burned up a few weeks ago, as motors are wont to do. Rather than spend $120 to replace the whole unit, I decided to install separate components this time around so I’ll be able to replace individual parts as they wear out.

After some online research, I decided I could make a biofilter a lot cheaper than I could buy one. Here’s what I came up with for our pond, which has a capacity somewhere around 50 gallons. A bigger pond obviously will require a bigger bucket and more pot scratchers and Scotch-Brite pads.

Materials:
1-gallon tub with a lid (I used an empty ice-cream bucket)
10″ long PVC pipe, threaded at both ends (in plumber parlance, these are called “nipples”; you’ll want to take your pump along to the hardware store to make sure the nipple you buy is the correct diameter to fit)
Teflon tape
12 plastic pot scratchers
6 Scotch-Brite pads
Pond or fountain pump

Tools:
Drill
Hole-saw bit the same diameter as your PVC pipe
Good-sized drill bit (at least 1/4 inch)
Utility knife and/or sharp, heavy scissors

Start by preparing the bucket lid. Cut a hole in the center of the lid to accommodate the pipe, drill holes all over the lid, and cut a notch at the edge of the lid to accommodate the cord on the pump. (Note: The holes you see above are much too small. I used a 1/8-inch drill bit, thinking it would be sufficient, but the holes clogged quickly, dragging down the flow and putting unnecessary strain on the motor. The pump and filter functioned much better when I enlarged the holes to about 1/4 inch.)

Wrap one end of the nipple with Teflon tape and screw it into the pump.

Slide the free end of the nipple through the hole in the lid.

Set the pump in the center of the bucket and tuck the pot scratchers and Scotch-Brite pads around it. These materials will serve as a medium for growing the good bacteria your pond needs to break down organic material and keep the water clear.

Snap the lid onto the bucket, running the cord out through the notch you cut.

Set the pump in the bottom of your pond, holding it down if necessary for a minute or two to let it fill with water so it doesn’t float back up to the top. Plug in the pump and watch the clear water come out the top. (Note: You may need to adjust the flow rate on the pump to control the height of the spray.)

If you have a yard, and you don’t have a pond yet, I highly recommend building one next spring. Our bees love ours, as do the local toads, who bred out there all summer.

Emily

Eco-Saturday: Darwin gardening

In the Southwest, xeriscaping is popular, as it involves planting only native and/or drought-tolerant species in your garden so you don’t end up draining every aquifer west of Amarillo in a misguided effort to keep some delicate green thing alive.

Here in the Midwest, I practice a variant I developed by accident, which I call “Darwin gardening.”

Sage is a reliable perennial for a Darwin Garden.

The original Darwin Garden was located in our backyard in Belleville, Illinois, and it happened by accident: I started with a neat garden divided into four-foot squares delineated with old bricks I’d found in the garage, with neat mulched paths between them, and by the time we left, my laziness and absolute refusal to coddle weak plants left me with an unruly but outrageously productive tangle of perennials and vigorous self-seeding annuals that included echinacea, parsley, Roman chamomile, chives, dill, sage, spinach, cilantro, mint, marjoram, oregano, carrots, blackberries, and waist-high collards that thought they were perennials.

The Darwin Garden wasn’t neatly manicured, but it was healthy, low-maintenance, and completely organic. When you let natural selection dictate your landscaping design, you don’t need pesticides, heavy watering or other environmentally questionable practices to keep your garden thriving. You also don’t need huge blocks of time to take care of your garden, because your plants will be sturdy enough to survive without constant coddling.

Arugula — a vigorous self-seeder if allowed to bolt — has replanted itself all over the center bed and beyond.

We have a similar garden here. When we moved in last year, I planted a small garden, watered it occasionally, and otherwise ignored it, knowing the fastest way to find out which plants were suited to the local growing conditions was to neglect them and see whether they survived.

That’s not a yellow Easter egg. It’s an overripe cucumber I’m leaving to rot over the winter. Come spring, it will put out a whole clump of seedlings.

A year into that experiment, I’ve got sage, strawberries, mint, basil and Shasta daisies that came up with no help from me, and next year’s arugula and cucumbers have already planted themselves.

Late lavender blossoms. Lavender is known as a reliable perennial, though this is the first year I’ve had any luck growing it.

If you’re a little bit concerned about the environment and a lot lazy, consider planting your own Darwin Garden. If you can tolerate the frustrations of that first year, you’ll find it pays big dividends in subsequent seasons.

Emily

Eco-Saturday: Vermicomposting

Redworms are excellent little gardeners.

I built my first worm bin on New Year’s Eve in 1999. No, I wasn’t drunk; I was just bored at the office (holidays tend to be slow in a newsroom) and decided to kill time on the Cityfarmer website. I’d made a resolution to shrink my environmental footprint as much as possible while living in a second-story apartment in town, and when I ran across an article telling me I could install a functioning compost bin under my sink, I knew I needed one RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

One might reasonably question the feasibility of acquiring redworms at 10:30 p.m. on a holiday in the middle of winter, but at the time, I lived in Belleville, Illinois, where a nice older couple ran a 24-hour bait shop out of their house. I called, and the lady said of course I could stop by on my way home to pick up 200 red wigglers for my New Year’s Eve vermicomposting project.

Worm bins are an awesome winter project, because they allow you to do something nice for the garden without going out in the cold. Worm compost is great for starting tomatoes.

Here is what you need to construct your own worm bin:

Plastic storage tub with a lid
Container to use as a drip tray
Small blocks to elevate the tub
Drill
Shredded newspaper or wood shavings (don’t use cedar; worms hate it)
Water
Small handful of potting soil
Redworms, sometimes called “red wigglers”
Fruit or vegetable scraps

Any excuse to use power tools….

Drill holes in the sides and bottom of your plastic tub for drainage and aeration. I drilled about 50 holes in mine.

My drip tray is a storage basket with a solid bottom.

Put a couple of wood blocks in the drip tray and set the tub on top.

Get the worms’ bedding wet.

Put the newspaper in the tub and douse it with water until it’s about as wet as a wrung-out washcloth. Add the worms at one end and the fruit or vegetables in the other. Don’t feed your worms anything too harsh, like citrus or hot peppers.

I fed my worms apple pulp leftover from making cider. Chopsticks are handy for moving things around.

Don’t overload the bin. Start with a couple hundred worms (this should cost about $10 to $15 at the bait shop) and a handful of food. Check your worms once a day to make sure the bin is still damp inside and they have enough food. When the bin contains mostly castings (a fancy word for worm poop), shove all of it over to one side and put some food, fresh bedding and potting soil in the other. The worms will all go to the side with the food, so you can scoop out the castings the next day and use them in your garden or on your houseplants.

Ignore the scribbles on top. I used storage tubs as packing crates when we moved.

Your worms will breed. If you end up with more than the bin can handle, you can build a bigger bin, start a second small bin, sell the excess worms to a bait shop, or put the worms in the garden and let them aerate the soil.

If your worm bin smells weird, it’s probably too wet, or you’ve put too much food in there.

Emily

Fall

Gratuitous lavender photo. Every time I think it’s done blooming, it puts out another blossom or two.

I spent part of today working on my pond filter and starting a few small indoor projects, including some sprouts and a worm bin.

While I was outside, I took a few pictures of the garden in its more-or-less dormant state. Fall and winter always make me sad, because I hate saying goodbye to the garden, but I’ve got a few projects planned out there for this winter, and I think we’ll be in good shape come spring.

These fire rings will spend the winter serving as compost bins before becoming raised beds next season.

So far, I’ve bought four 36-inch fire rings to use as compost bins this winter, with the intention of planting directly into the compost this spring to make incredibly rich, easy-to-manage raised beds for my tomatoes.

This pond has come SO far in the past year. It sheltered at least two rounds of tadpoles this summer.

That pond filter I built out of an ice-cream bucket looks as if it’s going to work pretty well. Time will tell, of course, but so far, it seems to be working. I’ll have a tutorial for you in an upcoming Eco-Saturday entry. The picture above delights me; I can’t believe how big that lemon balm has gotten. The oregano, meanwhile, apparently thinks it’s an aquatic plant — I found some of it growing roots right down into the water. Leave it to a mint to be audacious enough to try to compete with water hyacinths on their own turf.

The arugula I allowed to bolt this summer has scattered seeds all over the small bed in the center of the yard and halfway across the yard around it, so I’ve got salad growing all over the place without having to do any late-season planting. The sage and chives are still hanging in there, too, although my Genovese basil succumbed to the light frost we had the other night. I’ll have an Eco-Saturday entry on Darwin gardening sometime in the next month or so. If you’re willing to let Mother Nature run the show, you can have a remarkably productive garden with virtually no effort.

Hope your day was good, wherever you are.

Emily

Sprouts

We have 16 tomato sprouts coming up in the flat I planted the other night. I expect the rest will be up shortly.It’s been cold and gray out today, but I found a good way to cope with the lousy weather: I spent part of the afternoon at Green Country Feed and Seed up at Turley. Great little place … Maybe even a suitable replacement for the late, great Country Store.Hope your day was good.Emily