Gardening

The second installment of the Kitty Litter Bucket Worm Bin series is out. In this installment I will tell you about harvesting the castings from an established bin.

Finally got around to making a new video. This one is on making a kitty litter bucket work bin. These allow you to get rid of your waste fruit and veggie scraps while getting great compost in return. Using kitty litter buckets makes since to me, since there are always so many of them around the house with nothing to do.

With all the snow and ice out there, I started thinking about winter sowing. You can't do much gardening with all that cold out there, but if you have done some winter sowing, you are sitting back, happy knowing that you little seeds are working away right now, getting ready to pop out of their shells and join you this spring.

I had every intention of doing some winter sowing. Have some big trays I was going to use and everything. Unfortunately for me, the only thing under all that snow is soil and weeds. I can still get some together, if I choose. Nothing to stop me from putting the seeds out there now. Except that I don't have time, with Christmas and all. Heck, look at the time stamp on this and you will see that I stayed up late to write it. Since tomorrow is Christmas, I'll be up early tomorrow playing with my daughters new toys. I'll even let her play with them!

Yes, I should have started winter sowing in the fall, but I've looked up some information on winter sowing, and some seeds can be winter sown as late as March, so I'm not too worried about it. I'll get some out in January... maybe.

I earlier mentioned that I was working on a comparison shopping program for gardening needs. I've gotten it well under way and you can now use it. It still has some work, but I consider it to be beta now. I'll be working on it more and releasing tweaks to it as time goes on. Of course, the more you use it, the more I'll do to update it. Let me know here, if you like it, even if you don't buy anything from the links. I need to know it is going to be used before I dedicate a lot of time to it.

Yes, I know it is not the right time of year to be buying all your seeds. But, let me know if it is something you *will* use and I will dedicate more work to it. If people will use it, then it will be worth my time and energy to make it a great product for the spring time seed buying. If people don't use it, it might not be such a great use of my time.

Thanks in advance for any input! You can use it with the search box below.

For a while I've been wanting to build a database of plants with seeds and bulbs and whatnot so that if people are looking for a particular plant, they can search in one location and get results from a bunch of nurseries. I'm often seeing people on the various groups I either participate in or just read asking if anyone knows where to find such and such a plant. Well, this catalog would help.

There are numerous on-line nurseries. Each one of them has their own catalog and each of them has different products for sale and different prices. There is no standard id (like ISBN for books) to differentiate the different seeds, but still a search for "June Strawberry" with results for all the plants that say strawberry and June in the title or description would be a lot better than going, individually to 10 different nurseries looking for June bearing strawberries and comparing the prices.

In the results I plan on including links to informational sites, like Wikipedia, the USDA Plant Index, The International Plant Name Index, and more. I will also include results from Amazon on books that match the results, and possibly other places as well (eBay?, YouTube?). Originally I wanted to house an informational index myself, but that is a huge task. There are millions of plants out there to index and even if I just picked a single plant family (say Cucurbitaceae) you are still talking a huge task. Cucurbitaceae has about 125 genera with 825 species. Doing justice to that would take a really long time and other places have already done a good job. I've decided that instead of trying to do it all myself, I'll just be a middle man and connect you to all those places.

I hope this is a tool that people will be interested in. I've started work on it and should have an alpha version ready in a week or so. I am trying to have it ready for you to see, in beta, in a month. If you would be interested in testing this product for me, let me know and I'll give you a link to the test site. Right now it does nothing useful, but when it does anyone who wants to be a tester will get first crack at using it.

I have a small "orchard" on the side of my house. I call it an orchard, really it is 3 apple trees and something I think is a pear but has not fruited. I want to get good fruit off the apples so that I can make jams and pies and apple sauce and other great apple treats. I don't know much about apple trees, so I headed to the nursery and asked for information on them.

It turns out that apples are related to the rose and that care of apples is very similar. Disease can be crossed between the two, including fungus and rust. You should never let leaves or fruit stay on the ground as if there are and fungi in them, they will contaminate the ground, making it harder to kill.

Pruning scares me. I can do it, but I'm always afraid I'm not going to make a clean cut, leaving it open for attack. I also don't want to prune too much or too little. So, what's a guy gonna do to get his "orchard" cleaned up and producing properly? Well, I found this great little PDF put out by the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension called Caring for Mature Apple Trees. Its main purpose is to teach how to prune apple trees that are years past needing and to keep them looking good. I've read it. I actually read either this or something just like it a few years back, but then hired someone last fall. They did not do as good a job as I'd like, but they got them started. I'll need to continue it and keep them looking good and get them producing better.

Now, I just need to make sure I keep up maintenance on them. I found the following schedule for maintenance. This schedule should be followed every year for the best growth:

Prune late in winter or early spring (Feb to April around here). If you have to prune in spring or summer you can, but never prune in the fall. Pruning will cause new growth and you don't want it expending energy on new growth just before it goes dormant.

Around the same time, be sure to apply dormant oil. This will help to control the bugs. This should be done when temperatures are above freezing and will remain there for 24 hours, but tree is still dormant.

Later in spring (April) you should spray to control insects and fungus, but never spray insecticides when the trees are blooming, or you will kill the bees. We want to keep our pollinators pollinating.

In April or May, you can place pheromone traps to detect codling moths.

October is harvest time. Store your apples at about 40

Do you love mushrooms as much as I do? I've harvested them a few times. Many varieties are too expensive in the store, so I only get them when I find them in the wild. But how do you know which ones are good to eat? And once you do find them, you need recipes. Can they be grown in your backyard garden? I wondered about all these things. With the books I'll be reviewing now, we can answer all these questions.

Foraging

I've been foraging for mushrooms for years. When I first decided to do this, I was not going to just go out and start picking, I needed to know what was good to eat and what was not. I found two books that have been in my library ever since and I reference every time I go foraging. My favorite field guides to mushrooming are by David Arora: Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi and All That the Rain Promises, and More ...: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms. These are two great and very different guides to mushrooms. Mr. Arora is a bit of a hippy who loves to go out after a good rain and find all the best mushrooms he can. He seems to know about every type and his books are a must have for any fungi lover who wants to go hunting.

Mushrooms Demystified is a huge tome of a book. About 2 inches thick and 1000 pages, it has details on over 2000 species along with information about if they can be eaten, if they are hallucinogenics, how they are classified, where they grow and so much more. You will even find information about using some as dyes and medicines. This is NOT a field guide. It does not fit in your back pocket and would weigh you down too much if you tried to take it with you. Keep this book at home, then when you are out, with our next guide, if you find a specimen you don't know, you can bring home the specimen and it will have all the details you need.

All That the Rain Promises, and More ... is your pocket guide. It is made to fit into your back pocket and is used by people all over the world to find mushrooms. It has a key in the front and back that will guide you to the right place in the book to locate details about the mushroom you have found. It has the most popular mushrooms, with nice full color pictures and some information about them. In the notes, it tells on what page in Mushrooms Demystified you can find more information about it.

If you are only going to get one mushroom guide, I recommend All That the Rain Promises, and More ... as you are likely to carry it with you when you go foraging, and what is the good of having a guide and not using it? If you can get both, Mushrooms Demystified has more information, more species, and makes a great addition to have at home. For instance, if you run across a Fat Jack in the woods, you look it up in All That the Rain Promises, and More .... There you find out the important piece: "Edibility: Edible". You then take it home and look it up in Mushrooms Demystified. There you find much more: "Edibility: Edible. It is generally listed as mediocre, but one collection I sampled had a rather pleasing lemony flavor."

Use MD to get some details about a mushroom before hand, such as where to find Oregon White Truffles (MD p.858-9). "Habitat: Solitary, scattered, or gregarious in woods and at their edges, associated mainly if not exclusively with Douglas-fir (Usually trees between the ages of 8 and 65 years); found from California to British Columbia, but especially common in Oregon. Although it normally grows underground, I have found specimens on the surface." You can then head out to your nearest Doug-fir patch, with a shovel, and go digging for them. If you are lucky you will find some. Be careful though "widespread collecting can be destructive."

Cooking

You collected your Black Morel (Rain p.230, MD pp.790-1 & plates 199, 202) and your Lion's Mane (Rain p.200, MD pp.615-616) and now you need to know what to do with them. I headed to the library website and put a couple of books on hold. These two will provide you with a good collection of recipes to keep you busy for a while.

Mushroom Feast: A Celebration of all Edible Fungi, Cultivated, Wild and Dried, with Recipes by Jane Grigson was the first I looked at. It first tells you which are the "best" edible mushrooms and then has several sections on different types of foods. The book includes information on mushrooms in history, legends, and some recipes from the far past. Very nicely written book and a fun read, even if you don't try the recipes.

The Complete Mushroom Book: Savory Recipes for Wild and Cultivated Varieties by Antonio Carluccio is a combination of a field guide and a cookbook, or so it claims. It is beautifully illustrated and well laid out. In the field guide arena, I would not count it as very good since you can't easily find the mushroom you are looking for as there is no key. Besides, it is far too heavy a book to bring into the field, even if you cut out the recipe book and just took the field guide. As far as a recipe book goes, it is your standard fare. A little information about where the author got the recipe, the recipe, and a great picture of it. Nicely done, but I like the history and whatnot of Mushroom Feast even if it does not have all the great illustrations.

If you want one mushroom recipe book, get Mushroom Feast if you like history and reading. If you prefer to have pretty pictures to go with the recipes and a nice pretty layout on the recipe, take The Complete Mushroom Book. If you want a third choice, I found a copy of Wild Mushroom Recipes by the Puget Sound Mycological Society, but it is hard to find. It is just a simple listing of recipes, no pictures or anything. What I liked about it is that the recipes are grouped by genus of mushroom. This makes it really nice for finding a recipe specific to a certain mushroom you found.

Growing

Hooked yet? How about growing your favorites? Check out these two books on cultivating our fungal friends in your back yard. They want you to grow them! You know they do! And you want to grow them too! Pick up these books, they don't go boo!

I've wanted to grow mushrooms for a long time, but never have. I've never really had a place to do it. Still, I want to learn how. I checked a couple of books that are recommended in Mushrooms Demystified and read them. Like David's books, one is a tome, the other much smaller.

The tome is called Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home and is by Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton. It has all the information you need to grow mushrooms on any scale. It has great detail on every aspect it speaks of. I found it to be a little overwhelming, but if I was going to take growing mushrooms very seriously, I'm sure I'd want this book in my collection.

Growing Wild Mushrooms: A Complete Guide to Cultivating Edible and Hallucinogenic Mushrooms by Bob Harris is a much simpler guide. It is a good beginners guide and once you get more advanced, Mushroom Cultivator would be the way to go. Bob Harris only gives us what we need to know to get going where the tome gives us everything we need to know to have a very successful business growing mushrooms.

I've been wanting to put in a rain barrel. I found a barrel that had been used for compost at a garage sale. I paid $2 for it and a bunch of other stuff that they had in the free pile, like a bag a steer manure, another of lime and a couple other fertilizers. I made off pretty good. I didn't get it hooked up right away because I did not have a lot of time and never made it to the hardware store for a spigot.

I finally got the spigot. And now, guess what... It is raining. And I still can't install it. When I put the putty on around the spigot, it needs to cure for 24 hours, and I need to patch a small hole in the bottom. The silicone also needs to cure for 24 hours. By the time I get it all done, the rain will be gone and I'll be wishing I had it set up. Oh well. I have a couple of buckets out there, so I'll get a little rain water to hold. And then I'll get the whole thing properly set up and I'll tell you guys all about how to do it.

Rain barrels really are a great addition to your garden. Rain water is so much better for your friendly fauna than the chemical laden hose water that we normally put on them and it is also better for the environment. It can also save you some money, be a conversation piece, and if set up properly, add beauty to your home. I hope you get one too!

Mulch on your garden beds helps to cut down on weeds, makes the weeds that do come up easier to pull up, and helps to keep moisture in the soil. It can also make the beds look a lot nicer. When you have a lot of beds to mulch, it can be very expensive to buy a big bunch of bark mulch. By the bag is really expensive. If you have a truck, you can get it by the yard for around $30 in my area. Or if you need more, you have to pay someone to deliver it. I need about 4 yards for my flower beds, plus I need something to mulch my veggies as well, probably 2 or 3 yards for that. I have a lot of garden beds, so I need a lot of mulch.

What is a guy with no discretionary income to do? I had an extra $30 a while ago, so I got some bark mulch in a borrowed truck and put it on my rose bushes. Now funds have gotten tighter as I look at the budget till I finish school and wonder how I'll make it, but I still need to mulch the beds or I'll be spending too much time and money watering and pulling weeds. What choices do I have. I came up with some and thought I'd share.

Steal It

I don't recommend this method. By the dog park we go to the city has piled up lots of mulch and I could just go and grab buckets full. I could not get a truck up close to it, as they have it gated, but I would not do that any way.

Grass Mulch

I've heard of a lot of people that would put their grass clipping on as mulch. This works well if you have a good grass lawn to do it with. My grass is mostly dead right now and when it is not, it is mostly weeds. I think I'd get too many weed seeds in it this way.

Newspaper

Newspaper works as a mulch, but you really should put something over it, because it will blow away otherwise. Besides, it is kind ugly. I use this method in the beds that don't have bulbs because it helps more with the weeds, just like the fabric you can buy.

Yard Chippings

If you have a chipper/mulcher, you can take any brush you have, run it through the chipper/mulcher and viola, you have a good mulch. I looked for one new, and saw that they cost $500-$600. I almost choked on my tounge. I had talked to my wife and said "if we can get one for around $100 it will be worth it, because it will cost more than that to haul off all this debris, and we will get mulch. I was disappointed, I wanted the mulch.

Then I went on CriagsList. I found one listed for $125. Went over, checked it out, and brought it home. It claims to do 3 inch peices, but it bogs down so much, if they are still green, that I would not do anything near that. When they are dry, if runs them much easier. It is not as pretty has the bark mulch, but it works well.

Coffee Grounds

You can go to coffee shops and they will give you their old grounds. While you probably would not want to use solely coffee grounds as that might make the soil a little too acidic and might make your worms a little too hyper. Adding it to the mulch will help with color and give it a little fertalizer for you roses and other coffee drinking flora.

Leaves

Not as easy this time of year, but come fall when the leaves are all over the yard, you can pick them up and put them on your beds. This works great for garden beds as in the spring you can then turn the rotten mess of leaves into the beds for extra organic matter.

Raise your hand if you have mint growing in unwanted areas of your yard. I can raise both my hands very high to that one. I've gotten rid of a lot of it and my roses are now mint free, so I thought I'd share some of the methods I've used to get rid of the very useful and good smelling weed. Before we talk about getting rid of it, lets talk about controlling it.

control

The surest way to make sure you don't have mint in unwanted areas of your yard is to make sure that it is always in a controlled area. Use a pot of some sort and keep it above ground is a good method. Some people will bury a put underground. This will help keep it from freezing in winter, but mint is so hardy, I'm not sure that it is needed.

I plant mine in tires. Yes, I know I have plenty of mint all over the yard. It was here when I moved in. I don't want it in most of the places it resides, but I do have two plants that I want to keep: one spearmint and one lemon balm. Those two plants I don't want to go crazy and take over my yard, like the ones I've been removing, so I planted them in an old tire.

• Take an old tire and cut out one of the side walls.
• Lay it down with the cutout side up.
• Place some plastic sheeting in what is now the bottom of the tire.
• Place the cutout sidewall on top of the sheeting.
• Fill with potting soil.
• Plant

With this method, the roots can't easily get out of the tire, they grow too shallow to go under the plastic, but just in case, the plastic is there and held in place between the sidewalls and the dirt is holding it down as well. If the roots threaten to go over the tire, just trim them back. Be sure to water your tire regularly as all potted plants drain more freely and have less soil to get the water from. You should also mulch it to keep down evaporation. I also use this method with my sunchoke, except I use semi-truck tires.

removal

Ok. You didn't know better and you planted some mint in you flower beds. Or you just moved into a place and the former owners/tenants planted mint and it went wild. You now have mint everywhere. Time to get out the napalm, right? Hold on, before you get out the big guns,we can try to get rid of it with just a little bit of work.

Mint has shallow fiberous roots, so you don't have to dig very deep to get it. The problem is, since it is so fiberous, you miss some. The mint will grow back from those little bits of root you missed. So here is the method of digging that I found worked best. This works for many other weeds too. It requires a bit of sweat and some time, but it does work well.

1. Dig: Dig up what you can. You should get as much of the root as you can, but you don't have to go crazy. Just dig up the chunk, shake off the dirt, toss it in you curbside refuse bin (you don't want it in your compost). I just push the spade at a shallow angle under the clump and pull it up as I go.
2. Mulch: Around my roses I used a fabric barriar and then bark mulch. I did not dig up the mint as well here as I did in areas where I did not use the fabric. If you don't use the fabric, put down a good 3 inches of mulch. The mulch will choke out a lot of the little bits before they can make it to the light. It will also make it so that those that make it up have such loose mulch around their roots that they pull up very easily.
3. Weed regulary: Go out once every week or two and pull up anything you see that does not belong. With the mulch layer, you will get up a lot, very quickly. Not a whole lot will have made it to the surface, the rest will come up so easily you will wonder why you would garden without a think mulch layer.
4. Take it in stages: If your yard is like mine, mint in every corner (and vetch and blackberry and...) then you should take it in stages. I have three rose beds, so I started with the smallest. I got that under control, saw that it worked really well, so I continued to the other two. I also have gotten just the mint and vetch in a couple of areas, letting the other weeds take over, as I just can't get to everything yet. Now, I'm working on my azaleas and bulbs. Next I'll work on where my fruit buses are. Most of the mint is gone from these two areas, and I am working on the vetch. I hope to have them both under control by the end of summer.

I know it sounds like a lot, but I had a large area that I just dug up, never mulched, and don't weed. I have lots of other weeds, but don't get much mint in that area. So, if you take the effort to dig up a clump, get it out of your yard and you might be free of mint in that section for a while. Besides, digging is good exersize!