from 'comunity garden' - into 'first try at a garden'..

[canesisters]

Well thank you.

I guess this weekend when I'm tearing Rotmore down for a good and thorough mixin' and some dirt additions, I'll be adding a bit of N to it.
I have to pick up a little bit more wire so I'll investigate those big pallets of 'bags' at the back of the 'Lawn & Garden' department.

 

[897tgigvib]

go for the meal type stuff, please. i fear you may make your compost too strong. attend a meeting first!

 

[canesisters]

Haha, sorrry, no time for meeting just now. Besides, I don't need them.... naming my heap is normal, lots of people do it, right?

 

[vfem]

I buy plant tone fertilizers... its actually broken down into a 'dirt' type application and not pellets or powder. It's organic of course too, so bonus. But I love it! It smells like poo... and not chemicals.

I add it directly to my garden or to the compost before I add it. I also side dress plants while they are growing every couple of months.

HOORAY FOR DIRT!!!!!!

 

[bj taylor]

have enjoyed this thread. 100 x 100 was ambitious, but your ambition is admirable. i read an article on homesteading that showed how this guy put his chicken coop & run in the midst of his garden (fenced). it was a kind of garbage in/garbage out system where he tossed garden waste into the chicken run & later put chicken waste into the garden beds. the proximity to each other made it very workable for him.
just as a note, i had a large area beside my house that was all bermuda grass. if you know that stuff, it's practically impossible to irradicate. i laid thick newspaper down & covered that with mulch & just forgot about it. anytime i saw any bermuda peaking through, i would add paper & mulch to that. in one year i had an area ready for me to landscape without fighting that wretched grass.

 

[canesisters]

Thanks BJ. It has certainly been a learning experience (and I'm not even growing anything yet!). One day - if this summers garden works out - Im hoping to expand my chickens run to cover that original 100x100 space - and have several fenced circles inside it. Like you said, during the summer - bad veggies out, and in the winter - chicken tillers in.
But I should probably actually PLANT something ... and have it get to harvest before buying any posts and wire.

By the way,

 

[canesisters]

Rotmore update ~ she's cookin now!!!

Last weekend I picked up a bag of Plant Tone Organic, but never actually got around to adding it. How much progress should I expect with the bag sitting next to the pile? Some, I'm sure......
Anyway, last night I started digging some holes to give it a stir and work some PTO in, and it was HOT in there! I mean HOT! Once I had dug out a space to add the fertilizer, I could feel the heat from several feet away.

You know what!!! I bet that if I wrapped a roast up real good in foil and buried it down in there it would roast real nice!

 

[vfem]

Hahaha... Puts new meaning to 'meat pit'. Maybe you could get a whole pig in there for a pickin'!

 

[897tgigvib]

Cane, Rotmore's compost is surely going to be the concentrated and very strong kind.

Really. Your compost from Mt. Rotmore, careful with using it. It'll be almost like using fertilizer, so spread it thinly.

Know what? Save off a portion of it when you do use it. Tha part you save off can be used as a STARTER for your next Mt. Rotmore...which of course will need a new name

Son of Rotmore?

By then you'll have made a deal with the local landscape maintenance (lawn mower folks) to have them bring fresh lawn clippings, and the local ranchers to bring piles of poo poo, and you'll grow things like Sorghum and Corn so...

Son of Rotmore will need to be listed by the USGS, as a 7,400 foot mountain, the highest point in your 7 state region...ski outfits will want to place ski lifts on it...you'll have a new job as guide for mountain climbers...astronomers will want to put giant mount palomar telescopes on it! Local highways will need to be enlarged to handle the capacity...

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME!

Mt. Son of Rotmore will need to have it's own Major League baseball team!

 

[bobm]

Be very carefull in creating anything like Mt. Son of Rotmore . Marshall is still delerious from his bubonic fever ( or eating a few too many Alice B. Toklas cokies) . You see, the heat buildup in the very center will get so hot :rainbow-sun that it will then have an EXPLOSIVE eruption and scatter it's compost over the next 15 States, row creating lush jungles of vegetative growth while leaving you with just ash under a sterile, burned out desert like landscape.