New garden toys = more garden joy

Of the toys, but mostly of the progress. Our garden had a setback. We tilled it Friday, but Saturday we had torrential rains.
Hard rain + bare dirt = Lots of soil in my yard instead of my garden.
The rain carved two gullies 4-6" deep across the width of the garden, leaving behind only the rocks I'd like to get out of the garden. How annoying. I thought I was about done with the earthmoving, but no. I'm not sure how much of what ran into the yard I can recover; it's spread in a shallow layer and the grass makes it difficult to dig up. We'll see.

Great deal on the compost bin lumber! I have a Green Cone composter, which I really like. If you're working with heavy clay, though, make sure to dig a bigger hole for it and line it with gravel. I didn't, and water tends to sit in mine. I get smelly sludge instead of nice black compost, but the plants don't seem to care that much.

Can you get some tarps to cover the dirt for the next time it rains? Would that even help?

That green cone composter is amazing, it looks basically like a submerged worm bin composter except you can put in more kinds of stuff. Are those even available in the states? Couldn't tell from the website, though apparently they're making headway in Spain!

My soil is practically pure garden loam. The river (Columbia, I presume) used to run through here and the soil drains beautifully in most spots in the yard, stays moist, digs up easily except for the river cobbles and pebbles we encouter everywhere we spade, and is, in general, great stuff. Some places in Portland along the Willamette River have solid red clay for soil, but not round these parts.

And if you think my soil sounds good, you should see Lynn's. Man. Plus now she's got chickens fertilizing it, you've never seen happier grass or dandelions. Or wild carrots or cowslip. It's like a feral meadow out there, I love it.

Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally

I think (hope?) that the erosion was the result of the rare and unfortunate alignment of the very recent tilling and very hard rain. It was pretty bad--roads were flooding all over the place, which is unusual here. Just one of those times when it keeps raining and raining until everything's waterlogged and the water has nowhere to go. I've gotten my low wire fence dug in at the back of the garden and I'm hoping the trench I dug for it might divert some of the water around the garden. When I get a little further I'll put down landscaping fabric, and that should help, too. I still have to put the dirt back before I get to that, though.

Yep, you can get a Green Cone in the U.S., though they seem more popular in Europe. This site has them, along with a lot of other composters. I also found it on eBay and here for a little less. I read they're widely used in the UK, too. Sounds like you have great soil there, so drainage probably wouldn't be a problem. I really like that I can dump almost anything in there except fats--they apparently don't break down well. Large bones and corn cobs tend to stick around a while, too, but I put them in anyway. It's also hard for animals and/or children to get into the composter, which is great. It doesn't produce huge amounts of compost and doesn't deal with yard waste, which could be drawbacks, but it's nice for all the kitchen scraps that I don't want to carry away to the dump myself. Clearing it out is a little bit of a pain, though. It has 6 screws to join the upper and lower baskets, and you have to line the holes up just right to put them back. Not exactly easy when the basket is sunk into the ground and the composter is kind of gross after use. Still, I manage.

The soil there sounds marvelous. Here we just have this heavy red clay that stains clothes and compacts to the point where we had to get a pick/mattock to break it up. Wish you could send me some nice dark loam!

I have the smallest yard in the world. It's literally about fifteen steps from the kitchen door to the end of the yard, and it's triangular. The fifteen steps are to the furthest point! The front yard is about the same length, but square. I love gardening, though of necessity it is on a small scale, I do have several beds and an array of containers every summer. I'd love to make my own compost, does it smell much? I am worried that if I had a compost bin it would be smelly and there isn't anywhere to put it that's a long way from the house

We have two compost areas.

One is a big pile contained by chicken wire, maybe about 10 sq. feet (a little more than 3x3). Very rarely does it smell -- only when we turn it after a long sitting still time, and then only for a moment. This is where yard scraps, fall leaves, spring leaves (i.e., leaves that didn't quite get off the ground before the first big snow), and kitchen scraps go.

We also have a Smith & Hawken composter, the kind with tiers that you rotate somehow. (I am not the gardener in this family.) At this point we kind of use this as the 2nd stage composter. Like after the big pit has broken down some, and we've taken some out of the S&H model, we move some of the big pit compost into the enclosed S&H composter.

We've never worried about ratio of green to brown, but then again we always have sooooo many leaves, branches, etc., that it is hard to overwhelm them. That and we don't compost during the winter -- everything is packed to the top with leaves, and most of the time everything is covered with snow.

We live in a moderately humid climate, but I don't know what the drainage in our yard is like. Pretty good, I think.

Shaun
www.homeschoolblogger.com/shaunms