haiKupiec

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more azolla

Originally uploaded by Jake_Kupiec

I ordered “5″ of these–only it’s more like 5 million. I didn’t know how small Azolla was when I placed my order.

(Read more adventures in gardening, in water and on land, in my Northern Nevada Gardening blog.

I decided to start a garden journal this year. Still a work in progress…needs more garden-y headers, but still…check it out

You may remember a post from last year about my purchase of Steve’s Earth Engine Composter. A couple of weeks ago, we braved the elements and for the first time in my 5 (6?) years of composting, I turned the pile. I have always been a minimalist when it comes to composting — I just like to dump stuff in the bin and let it do its own thing. But the level hadn’t budged in weeks and the spring, summer, fall stratas were clearly visible though the sides of the bins. So we took off the front slats and forked out all but the bottom 10 inches or so. (I love my compost bin. Love it. It’s well designed and it’s held together well.)

Not too surprising for the high desert, both bins were a bit on the dry side. The good news was both had hot spots: compost was definitely cooking.

We re-layered the compost, watering it well and alternating with Gardener’s Supply Super Hot Compost Activator and Starter and some fresh kitchen scraps. Within a few days the pile sunk a good 8 inches. Yeah! Today we added several bins from our auxiliary piles that we created in the old dog run last fall plus free coffee grounds from Starbucks, more kitchen scraps and shredded paper and paperboard.* And a little more activator for good measure. I will report in after a few weeks.

* The most recent Sunset magazine has lots of tips for readers, one is composting shredded paper. I discovered that may heavy duty shredder will shred paperboard, too (alas, not recyclable in Reno). So it’s an experiment!

This is a plug for the Great Basin Food Basket and CSAs in general. I signed up last year and every week was an adventure even for this long-time vegetarian. The food was great. Each basket came with stories and recipes–and sometimes vegetables I had never seen or heard of before. We had delicious blackberries, beautiful squash, and more peaches than I think I have eaten in a decade. It was a significant investment and a lot of food so it might be better to share in the future.

Last month, I got some new fish. 3 Koi: Blanche, Snowy and Scorpio. Sadly, Snowy didn’t make it. It broke my heart. We found her* on the day that we discovered that our pond pump stopped functioning. My koi are pretty small and they take a long time to reach their full size (thank goodness–the pond isn’t that big!)

The good news is that Ellison, our elusive goldfish (we had not seen him in weeks), has come out of hiding and become good friends with Blanche.
(* I can’t tell the difference between boys and girls in the fish world so gender has been randomly assigned.)

We have a fancy new pump and pond skimmer and a bunch of new plants to keep our fish cool and give them places to hide. Life on Pond Haiku is looking pretty good.

My new compost bins from Steve’s Earth Engine are fully operational. Yep, got the double-wide. Well-made and ingeniously packaged. And now full to the brim.

I admit to rescuing some of my neighbor’s grass clippings from the curb on trash day. The clippings were in a clear bag, tempting this wannabe composter…what can I say? I needed more greens (grass) to go with browns (leaves). I dragged the bag home after a dog walk. Brin thought the grass monster was chasing us and attacked the bag.

I hope no one was filming…

Found a really handy site that lists what can and cannot be composted: www.compostthis.co.uk.

In Arizona I could probably tell you. In Nevada, not so much. Lots of pine trees here! I wouldn’t mind a book of pine trees if I could find one…

Last week it was warm enough to contemplate gardening. This week it snowed. Somehow afitting as I find myself turning from Master Gardener to Gardening Newbie just one state over.