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Homegrown Flowers

July 30th, 2020

I mostly focus on growing vegetable with a lot of perennials mixed in. While I sometimes cut perennials and bring them indoors, I haven’t done that as much as I’d like in previous years. It seems the chores of gardening just take up lots of time. This year, I’ve been trying to take the time to cut flowers from the garden at least once a week.

This year, I’m especially loving the roses, most of which were planted over the past couple years. They’re all David Austin roses, with the exception of one heritage rose.

I’ve also been cutting clematis flowers to add to them, which I’m really liking. They last for a really long time and even when they drop the petals the little whirly interior stays and looks great. Many of mine have lasted for two or three weeks (I keep adding new roses to the bouquet)

As time goes on, I may incorporate more cutting flowers into the ornamental borders. I don’t usually grow flowers just for cutting, but this year I’m cutting most of the roses to bring indoors as I find I get to see them more often when I have them on the table than when they are in the garden.

Do you grow flowers specifically for cutting or just cut from your perennial borders.

Making Hot Compost

July 10th, 2020

This spring we started experimenting with making hot compost. I saved this article from Deep Green Permaculture years ago with plans to give it a try. Our first batch was 100% litter from the duck/turkey/chicken coop, which means it was manure and various dry garden material I add with lots of manure. We piled it up, turned it, then watered it well because it was super dry, and started turning it regularly (per article instructions). The results were AMAZING! Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos with my real camera, but I did create an Instagram highlight of our efforts since I started documenting the process, head on over and check it out.

We were blown away by the results from our first batch. In 28 days, we had a big slightly steamy pile of brown lovely compost. As a comparison, here’s a photo of the same material (duck room litter) that was composted using the cold compost method. Which means it was piled in the garden last fall and left to compost on its own with no turning. You can see the difference!

We tested the temperature of our compost pile after 15 days or so, it was 150 degrees, definitely hot enough to kill weed seeds and pathogens. I even added weed seeds to the pile to see if they’d be killed. So far nothing is germinating in the compost. Our final amount was probably about 3 yards of compost.

As the first batch was composting away, I started collecting things for our second pile. There were loads of grass clippings, garden weeds, and other organic matter produced in the kitchen and around the farm. We mixed it up, watered it, and left it to sit for the initial five days.

After the first turn it was already steaming and registering 125 degrees. Today we are on turn number 5. This pile is a bit cooler than our other pile, no doubt because it doesn’t contain any manure at all. I did add all of the comfrey from the garden to heat it up a bit (comfrey is a great plant to have to heat up compost piles and add lots of nutrients). It’s been a fun thing to do this summer, we are relishing having tons of compost for the gardens. We will never go back to cold composting! We are lucky to have a tractor to make big piles, but it can be done on a smaller scale. The smallest recommended size is 1 meter squared.

About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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