Home

Composting – Making a Difference

April 25, 2012

Bishop Gardening 5 Comments

If you have been reading my blog once in awhile….you know that I do a bit of composting. The link below takes you to Hot Bin Composting…a UK blog touting the wonders of the Hot Bin product. It seems to be a good product but my fascination is with the good advice that comes along with the blog and the difference we can all make.

I am a bit more of a laid back composter but slowly becoming more precise with my “recipes” for the compost mix. My bins are big – a twin 4X4X4+ set-up…. I usually just pile it in in any order, the summers very heavy in green material. This past fall/winter I invested in a big leaf vacuum/shredder. I loaded up on leaves – the “brown” component of the composters recipe. The 64 cubic feet plus of leaves in the right hand side have been incorporated into the grass clippings going into the left side. I am looking for more leaves as we speak. I took some rotted produce out to the bin today and pulled back the top layer – wow-  the steam just boiled out of the pile… it was so hot that I couldn’t keep my hand in the middle of the pile. My guess – 140 to 150 degrees F. The proper recipe must work!!!!

My advice… listen to the advice – we can take a huge bite out of the compostable trash that goes to the land fills and feed our families so much better. Just Let it Rot!!!!!

Compost Awareness Week – 6 – 12 May 2012.

My Double Compost Bins

 

PS….I have also been using an activator and I add some dilute agricultural molasses as food to jump start the little bugs decomposing the composting materials… no meat, no fat and no bones…..just vegetative material.

TTFN

Bishop

My Second Mistake of the Year

April 24, 2012

Bishop Beans, Gardening, Philosophical , 3 Comments

Well, maybe that is an exaggeration…… I really just lost count and started over. Sometimes a mistake or an error can lead to a learning. I set up the poles in my garden for my pole beans just a few weeks ago. I  planted both a purple variety and what I thought were the Blue Lake pole variety. The purple variety are up to the 8 foot level and setting blossoms. My green pole beans acted like they were stunted. Guess what, those stunted beans are just 12 inches tall and loaded with blossoms…. You probably figured out my error….I planted bush beans!

It will be OK though. The bush beans will be done shortly and the poles are still there waiting to be wrapped up with the vines of the pole beans –  so into the ground went the “real” pole beans.  I should get an extended harvest…may have to remember to do it again in the late summer for a fall harvest. If CRS doesn’t overwhelm me I will plan it for next spring…seems like a good idea! – CRS is “Can’t Remember Shtuff” I run into it on an increasing frequency now… When it gets real bad it won’t bother me because I won’t recall that I have forgot whatever it was….

The example below is one of my pole bean teepees from a couple of seasons ago….prolific is an understatement!

This is an example of pole beans doing what pole beans do best! Obviously much more than a 12 inch bush bean plant!

Blossoms, Berries, Buds and Bounty

April 22, 2012

Bishop Beans, berrries, Gardening, pollination, Vegetables , , , 8 Comments

Wandered out this Sunday morning with my new tool – A Nikon J1 camera – all of the photos were taken this morning except for the bees….their results are shown first in the line of photos busy bees and the end of the line. Click on the image to see it full size…

 

TTFN

Bishop

Sweet Serendipitous Salads

April 22, 2012

Bishop Beans, berrries, Gardening, Vegetables 5 Comments

Serendipity is not a term that rolls off the tongue of a good ole Texas lad but I have been exposed to folks that have majored in and studied English – a bit of their mastery of the language has rubbed off on me. Reddish, redolent, Royce Hall reminiscing’s!!!!

A simple explanation that even I can understand – serendipity, the accident of finding something good and useful without looking for it.  So, let’s laughingly and lovingly link this term to me and my garden.

As I wander through the garden, checking on plants, pulling the weeds, thinning the carrots – I always seem to fall behind on that one- , staking the tomatoes and snacking on the various fresh veggies. I realize that I consume what could be called a “salad” in the course of 30 minutes or so of futzing around in the garden. Succulent sugar snap peas just seem to be much sweeter when picked and consumed within seconds. I didn’t realize how sweet the arrows of aromatic asparagus could be until I chomped on one just after snapping it off. The crunchy and crispy carrots are so sweet but the do require a bit of preparation…..thanks to my Valentine’s Day gift of a garden sink (see poll run in one of my February Blog postings) I can field rinse the dirt off.  I can reach down and pick a few fresh luxurious luscious leaves of lettuce and add a few super sweet strawberries into the mix and I have just had a great salad – quite by accident. Healthier too…..no dressing drenching the delicious offerings needed – just good as grown and grabbed.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

My bountiful backyard blackberries are blossoming beautifully. I will soon be able add some sweet blackberries to my sweet serendipitous salad serving’s. The peas have plodded past their prime but the green beans – not as sweet but tasty nonetheless – are blooming, carrots continue to produce as do the strawberries…… I will have to wait another 5 weeks or so to consume the crunchy climbing cucumbers in my garden munching madness. Oh, and the tasty and tempting tomatoes…..homegrown in the garden are so good…the Celebrity variety has a few on the vine now and I noticed the telltale  tint of turning pink beginning to spread… I may have a new personal first, a ripe tomato well before May 1st. Wow, a wonderful garden windfall! Is it Global Warming?

There could be some benefits to Global Warming! I may be able to triple my tomato tonnage, enjoying their great taste and as a side benefit…. the plants are consuming the carbon dioxide and adding oxygen…. “gardeners of the world unite!!!!! Let’s solve the greenhouse gas issue and feed ourselves well! Grow gobs of good gas (oxygen) generating & ginormous greenhouse gas gobbling greenery! (Yes ginormous is a word recently added to the dictionary).

Just a side note, over the last 400,000 thousand years the rise in CO2 and temperatures has been followed by a deep freeze cycle……are we scaring and/or legislating ourselves into the freezer? I do agree that we can do a much better job conserving our energy resources but we can’t stop global warming and flat-line both temperatures and CO2. Mother Nature is much too big to manipulate. Hmmmm……I will stop there – I think I need to write down my prediction for Global Warming. Coming soon….. Carnac the Magnificent will predict the future( for the youngsters and foreign friends….the comedian Johnny Carson used to do a bit as Carnac the Magnificent . Check out the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Carson#Comic_characters

TTFN

Bishop

%d bloggers like this: