Monthly Archives: June 2012

Elsewhere: Worms Eat My Garbage …

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My fellow Saturday6 blogger, Kylee Baumle over at Our Little Acre has a great story on getting started with her own worm composter. It sounds like it was quite an adventure, but one that is destined to return great rewards.

I haven’t really investigated vermicomposting much as I have so much of all types of green and brown garden waste that I simply add them to my standard top-down composters in the back yard.

Kylee worms

Worms Eat My Garbage … and Then They Poop
from Our Little Acre by Kylee Baumle

[…]

The Worm Factory 360 arrived about a couple of weeks ago and I unboxed it and looked everything over. I read the manual that came with it and started getting it ready for worms. The worms don’t come with it, so you have to either find a local source or order them online. I ordered them from Nature’s Footprint and was surprised at how much worms cost. (About $35 for a pound – that’s about 1000 worms – which works out to about 3½ cents per worm. I found that to be a typical price.)

[…]

I did a video with a local vermicoposting company back in 2010, Urban-Worms.com. They had a booth at one of our local farmer’s markets and I took the opportunity to talk to one of the owners on video.

Can’t see the video above? View “What is vermicomposting? by Urban-Worms.com” on YouTube

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Look what I got in the mail! Troy-Bilt Tools!

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Troybilt equip

As part of my association with Troy-Bilt’s Saturday6, I am allowed to select several review and giveaway items each year.

My most current choices were these cordless tools from their product line. My garden is small enough the I really don’t need gas-powered tools for the light work I do, so these tools fit right in. I have most of Troy-Bilt’s other cordless tools and I have found them to work quite well, so I look forward to putting these tools to work.

Watch the blog in the next few weeks for reviews of these tools and also the announcement of a giveaway of these, or other, Troy-Bilt tools.

Satsix small


** Troy-Bilt provided these tools as part of my participation in the Saturday6, but they do not control my opinions or reviews about these items.

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Event and Photos: Altadena Community Garden and Farmers Market

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Sunflower in Altadena Community Garden

We stopped by the Altadena Farmer’s Market today and ran across the adjacent Altadena Community Garden. We got a short tour of these amazing gardens and also found that this weekend they will be having their 38th annual Altadena Community Garden Picnic & Resource Fair.

“June 30, 2012 marks the 38th annual Altadena Community Garden Picnic & Resource Fair. The members of the community garden invite the public to join them for a barbeque lunch, self-guided garden tours and a community education and resource fair from 1 to 5PM in the community garden and Loma Alta Park, located at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Palm Street in Altadena. Lunch tickets are available for $8 in advance, $10 at the gate.

Gardeners provide hot and cold foods, many made from locally grown fruits and vegetables. Several gardeners will tend bbq grilles for 24 hours prior to the event, preparing ribs, chicken, beef hot links, veggie burgers and hot dogs for diners. Lemonade and sun tea, as well as sodas and bottled water, will be served, too.

The picnic is located inside the gates of the garden. Tables will be set up and decorated with seasonal flowers. The resource fair will be staged outside the garden gates in the circular roundabout south of the Loma Alta Park tennis courts. Featured events will be garden tours, Altadena Farmers Market, yoga and tennis demonstrations, local botanical gardens, blood pressure screenings, community safety and alert information, plus representatives from Lincoln Avenue Water Company, LA County Sheriff’s and Fire Department and other public and private agencies.”

Read more on the Altadena Community Garden web site

Here are some pictures I took as we strolled the garden today.

Can’t see the slide show above? View all the photos on Flickr.

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Photos: Friends in the garden Part 2

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Sunday was our annual summer garden party, which we have held each of the 16 years we have lived in this home.

It is always great to have our friends by to sit and talk in the cool shade of the garden.

Can’t see the slideshow above? View the entire set on Flickr

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Photos: Friends in the garden

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Yesterday was our annual summer garden party, which we have held each of the 16 years we have lived in this home.

It is always great to have our friends by to sit and talk in the cool shade of the garden.

Friends in the garden 2 - JUne 24, 2012 - 04

Can’t see the slide show above? See all the photos on Flickr!

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Video: Garden Scene June 24, 2012

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A short scene from our garden today.
garden-scene-2012

Don’t see the video above? Watch “Garden Scene June 24, 2012” on YouTube

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Photos: Pumpkin Flowers

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A few months ago I smashed a pumpkin into a newly made hole in the garden. We had had a tree removed and the pit where the stump had been seemed a good location to build up a garden bed. I added some compost to the whole, dumped in the pumpkin, chopped it up to release the seeds and let it be. We saw one, strong plant rise from the pumpkin a month or so ago and today I noticed it was showing several flower buds. The plant seems awfully small to be thinking about flowering already, but who knows exactly what we will get, based on the haphazard method of its planting. We shall see.

Pumpkin

Pumpkin Flowers

Pumpkin Flower

Pumpkin flower

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Photo: Bug-bitten kale

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It didn’t take long for the bugs to find the kale transplants I put out 2 days ago. When they had been in the shade the butterflies really didn’t take much notice, but once I moved them into the sun, bingo! I noticed a Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) fluttering about the plants and it looks like she (or another one) got some eggs down on the leaves.

Perhaps it was something else the chewed on these plants, but the coincidence of the sighting seems to make sense. I hope that the plants can fend off the bugs and leave us something to eat, but only time will tell. These transplants were pretty stressed, so it only makes sense that bugs would find them a good host.

Kale with bug bites

Kale with bug bits closeup

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