As I posted about before, we decided to try a little vegetable garden this year. We knew it would be a fairly big learning curve, and so the first year we’re not expecting much results.
Which is maybe why I was so freaking excited to pick this lettuce…
…and then eat it.
Actually, I was a little more excited than any normal person should be. I think Amy might be a little worried. I mean, I took photos of the stuff after all. And it’s just lettuce.
Our spinach didn’t make it, and so far the cucumbers and melons haven’t done anything either. The squash and zucchini plants seem pretty robust, but so far no actual squash or zucchini. The tomato plants are growing well, but so far only two little green orbs have formed.
We might have simply started everything too late.
Except for that lettuce. That lettuce was good. (Though I think I might have overharvested, and we might not get any more leaves. I’ll have to look into that…)
The other thing we’re beginning to do is composting. We have under the sink a small metal pail that we empty non-meat scraps into (thanks Cynthia and Jim!). Declan has christened it the
earth bucket. Which is adorable.
But then what? I researched tumblers and bins and they were really expensive – a few hundred dollars, some of them.
And so partially because I don’t want to spend a lot of money, but also partially because, since composting is about reducing waste and exploiting available materials, I decided to focus on the
reuse portion of the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra.
I bought an old olive oil container for $25 from a guy selling them on craigslist.
I drilled a couple of small holes in the bottom for drainage and five or six more holes around the sides to encourage a bit of circulation. It becomes a tumbler when I knock it over and roll it around the back yard. Not elegant, no, but Declan thinks that's hilarious.
Per Jamie Beaulieu’s recipe, I’m trying to maintain the 2/3 carbon to 1/3 nitrogen mix. Carbon stuff has been hard to come by – I do have some dried grass and other clippings from last summer, but to be safe I got some straw from a neighbor who works in a horse barn. Now I think we’re good.
I’ll also confess that I’m probably unnaturally excited when I add more stuff to the tumbler and see the worms and feel the heat, realizing all sorts of cool biology, chemistry and physics things are going on in there.
Jamie said the tumbler is sort of short-term and we should have a longer-term bin as well. But we had a little problem with rats in the garage and I didn’t want to attract them back by leaving gooey stuff out there for them to root around in.
My retrofit solution? I took the pieces of O’Malley’s old dog crate and wired them together to be a bin skeleton with a hinged door on top – and then lined it with wire mesh.
Still have to trim off the excess mesh from the door. I’m not sure it’s 100% unrodentable, but at least it would be a pain in the ass for them to get in there. And hopefully they’d cut themselves, a lot, like I did building the damn thing.
By the way, if anyone sees that I’m doing something wrong, or has any advice, please let me know so I can get this system down right.
We want more than lettuce and two tomatoes next year.
