Compost.

Today was another awesome day. Tim got up before me and got the coffee going which is always a nice surprise. We then had our typical Sunday morning big breakfast and then Tim and I went to work in the gardens. I planted all of the marigolds around the tomatoes in the patio garden and Tim planted his six pepper plants on the back side of the tomatoes, closer to the driveway. The exciting part of this was that we finally got to use some of our compost. Have I mentioned how much I love composting?

When we moved into this house we asked Nancy if we could build a small compost bin area in the back of the yard because we has such great success with our other compost area in our other house. She said she didn't mind composting but the grumpy, nasty neighbor behind our house didn't like the smell of it and was kind of jerky about it. So we decided to get this:

It's called an Envirocycle. It's much smaller than the big thing we had built before but it works for us now. I'm pondering if we should get another one because once it gets cooking you don't really want to add anything else to it. I think for now we are just going to dump out what is in there and start a new batch of yard waste and kitchen scraps going. When we planted all of our plants in the garden in May I dumped out the base which catches the "tea". It was nasty gross smelling and brown in color but I think it has done it's job on the potatoes and the radishes, beets and carrots. Today when we planted the peppers and the cabbage we dug holes down deeper than we needed and through a shovel full of compost into the hole and the placed the plants in.

compost aka black gold.

What else did we do today? Well, we got the peppers planted and the marigolds in the patio garden. Over in the bed where I had planted spinach and gotten nothing to sprout, I put the four cabbage plants. I hope they will get enough sun over there. That is the one bed that gets the least amount. After that was done, Tim went in to play with the kids and Nancy and I reworked the flower garden part of the patio garden. We put the geraniums in clay pots and set them into a plant stand and the begonias went into a big pot as well. We moved a nice looking hydrangia that was hiding under the Japanese Red Maple. We got rid of the huge Queen Anne's lace plant and trimmed back some of the lilies. We scattered the snapdragons all over the place and put the Gaillardia over in front of the Hydrangia. Once it's all done, I'll take some pictures (not that I don't take enough already). By the time we had weeded out and planted everything that I bought yesterday I was ready to go in. I had not realized that I had been out in the sun for 3 hours and was starting to feel it.

tomatoes, hot peppers and marigolds

After coming in and resting for a bit, I called Nancy up to see if she wanted to go to Herolds with me. I wanted to get one more pink geranium so it would even out the plant stand. She was game and so we went shopping again. I'll post more about that later. Let's just say that we scored!