Paper Pots

I employed a little child labor to help with paper pots. It was mostly an experiment and it went really well. Drop dead simple, too. We just rolled newspaper strips around a can and folded in the ends. We made six pots. We planted seeds from a grocery store apple. Long odds that they'll sprout or grow or ever fruit, but the kids wanted to try apples. Why not.

I also added more chicken wire to the leaf pile so it can reach a height of about six feet. It probably has about 200 cubic feet of leaves with capacity for that much more again. I'm piling up leaf bags at the open end so they can keep the volume contained and I can add from them as the pile settles. Turning it might be a hassle but I plan to leave it for a few years before I start mining it. It will be leaf mold, not finished compost. It should be a suitable fall dressing on fallow soil or mulch for winter crops.

The best part--I didn't rake any of these leaves. I stole them all from curbside.

Heirloom tomatoes

Planting has begun. I have a few overwintered tomato and pepper plants in the west bed. Today the girls and I went to Goodwood for the heirloom tomato sale. We got a Concord (little yellow fruit) and a Green Zebra (exactly what you would imagine) and a Hank (pert little red guys). I told the girls to leave the little label sticks in the tiny pots, which they of course removed. So we won't know which is what until they fruit.

The nursery is mostly full of hot peppers of different varieties and sprouting seeds that I mostly remembered to label. It should be worth photographing in a few weeks.

On the craft front, I researched making newspaper pots, which is quick and easy and lets you make lots of pots (which I am running out of) for no cost that you can stick right in the ground (just like a peat pot). So that reduces the shock to the roots of removing the plant from a pot. It should also be a fun activity for the kiddos.

In the world of soil improvement, I've shifted most of the kitchen scraps into the worm composter. To make up for it, I've started randomly pulling weeds and shoving them into the Earth Machine. Today I grabbed a bushel of galium aparine, also known as Sticky Willy because it is covered with velcro-like hooks. It's fun stuff for a weed and it has medicinal value, too.



Also, I have kicked big leaf pile into gear. Last week I pulled the idle chicken wire from the strawberries where it failed to serve its intended purpose. I used it to start a leaf pile in a scraggly, dark corner of the yard. Today, I borrowed a truck and swiped a few dozen bags of leaves from curbside to fill it up. Dump, water, repeat. Now I've got another roll of chicken wire to make the pile taller. Pictures when phase II is complete.