Found on Pinterest today….
Source: littlegreenfingers.typepad.com via Barbara on Pinterest
Take 10 minutes to just sit and enjoy your garden…
Video: Women in the Dirt Landscape Architecture Documentary Trailer
Elsewhere: DIY shade finder tool takes the tedium out of solar surveys
Question: Garden Bed Refurb Ideas Wanted – What would you do?
Education: Southwest Yard and Garden Series – Season 1 from iTunes U
This photo is my impression of the “For the love of trees” design garden at the Southern California Spring Garden Show in Costa Mesa, California. This garden was created by Essence of the Tree: Trees for Gardens, Containers and Bonsai.
Click for larger image
Flowers at SoCal Spring Garden Show from A Gardener’s Notebook (http://WelchWrite.com/agn/)
I came across this picture of this lovely dry stream bed in my Pinterest feed a few days ago. I love this as a way of giving some defined character and flow to a garden. It is really a great point of interest for people to explore and enjoy. I would love a real stream in the garden, too, if possible, but this at least gives a sense of it even in the driest garden.
Source: mygardendiaries.com via Jill on Pinterest
Event: Los Angeles Cactus & Succulent Society 12th Annual Exhibit and Plant Sale Drought Tolerant Plant Festival
A Gardener’s Notebook Store
Amazing photo collection of Southern California gardens (and more) at turn of 20th Century
Event: Encino Cactus Festival To Highlight Fire Safe Vegetation
Photo: Toon Daffodils
Found this this morning while wandering around the garden…
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Update: 20120426: I came across this link on making your own seed compost today and thought is was a nice complement to this post. Enjoy! – DW
How to Make Your Own Seed Compost from My Tiny Plot
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Another project we accomplished the other day, using our own homemade compost, was some homemade, peat-free, potting soil. I am getting a bit of a “bug-in-my-ear” about creating my own versions of some of the things we use in the garden everyday. I knew that I had compost, but while my compost is very rich and fine, it is also quite hydrophobic (water fearing). It isn’t quite dense enough to retain water and also support new root structures for starting seeds. My experiments with this were quite disappointing.
After a bit of research on the Internet, which has a plethora of possible potting soil recipes, I settled on my own combo to try. It uses my compost, coconut husk coir and a little perlite. I was unsure on what proportions to use, so I started with mainly compost and then added the coconut coir in batches.
In this first batch I ended up with an equal mixture of compost, coconut coir and 1 part perlite. I did this by eye, so I won’t really know how well it works until the seeds we planted today, but from the look and feel of the potting soil, I think I am on the right track.
Recipe: (if you can call it that) (LAUGH)
I had thought about adding some sand to the mix and I might add some to a small batch this mix to specifically use for seedlings and for some cuttings that I am planning on trying.
(L-R (clockwise) – Coconut coir and perlite as purchased, coconut coir rehydrating, homemade, sifted compost)
You can also see here my new, ad hoc, potting bench. I have never really had a decent bench, so for this project I decided to thrown one together. This is just a recycled closet door over some sawhorses that weren’t seeing much other use. This should serve me our needs for the next few months. We start doing more potting, we might eventually build or buy something more permanent.
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We took some time today to harvest some compost for a couple of purposes. One is to augment a, hoped for, vegetable bed that needs some improvement. The other project is to create some homemade potting soil for starting some seeds for said vegetable plot.
I’ll have more to say about the potting soil in a future post. For now, here are a few pictures of our compost bins as they appeared when I opened them today. I like my Garden Gourmet composters, because there is no turning, no emptying, not much of anything really. For a lazy gardener like me, this is perfect. You put material in the top and eventually get you compost out of the bottom.
Here is my best producing bin, #1.
You can see the line across the bottom of the bin showing the area where compost meets material yet to be composted. I reach in here with a shovel and start removing the finished compost. Eventually, once I have removed the majority of it, the remaining material will slip down and continue the process.
This is compost bin #2
This might not look like much, but there was actually a good layer of compost just under those leaves and pieces of straw.This bin has always been more problematical. It seems to be drier and less productive, no matter what we might do to it. Fortunately, it looks like things are finally working. Although the compost is less refined, it is compost and quite useful in the garden. It is good to see things finally cooking in this bin as well.
Here is some of the compost as I sifted it out. I could sift it through even finer mesh, but I don’t mind a bit extra material. I am doing this for usefulness not show. You can also see here a collection of sow bugs, grubs and other insects. I saw a couple of large spiders, but they skittered off before I could take a picture.
Anything that wasn’t quite composted completely was set aside and will either be thrown away or put back into the composter for another trip, too.
Finally, here is a handful of the finished compost that we spread on the vegetable bed. i wish I could take credit for it, but it is really just a matter of natural processes, insects, microbes and time.
I hope your composting adventures go as well, if not better than mine. It really isn’t that difficult.
