Good morning and how is everybody today? We hope you all had a great weekend and are getting off to a good start for the week ahead!
You know our garden has come and gone, and it was kinda a rough spring this year in regards to our garden. We just had little to no rain, but it looks as if now we are indeed getting into our normal afternoon rain pattern. It was a long time coming this year for some reason.
I guess since the rains are starting now, we’ll begin prepping our garden for some okra. This is really all we’ll be planting as we’re coming into summer, and this means…HOT!
This week, we’re going to till the garden deeply a time or two, then start covering it again in cow manure. Once we get it covered, I believe I’m going to pick up a few bales of hay, and just lightly spread this over the garden area.
Then, we’ve had a compost pile in the makings for the last 4 months or so, and we’ll spread this over as much of the garden as we can. We’ll then turn this in, maybe a couple, three inches deep, and see what happens. I’m looking forward to checking this out as we go along.
I’ve mentioned this earlier, but I’d never had or used compost before, so this was all new to Deb and I. We built a little holding area for our compost, and this stuff is really beginning to look really very good. I don’t know about anybody else we know, but I’m sure impressed with the progress of our compost.
Quickly, and I’m going back some, I believe we started with newspaper, then a layer of soil, then a layer of hay, then cow manure, then fresh grass clippings. We were mowing our lawn and bagging the green grass as we cut it. We then took it to the pile, and layered it as well.
We also had a ton of oak leaves at the time, so we raked these up, put them in small piles, and ground them up with the lawn mower too. These were layered into our compost heap just like everything else.
We ended up with about 5-6 layers of each material in our compost heap.
Every time we mow, we add the clippings. As we shelled our beans for canning, we put all bean hulls into the pile. We did the same with all our tomato stems, the ends of our peppers we threw out, all squash, and cucumber waste, actually just any vegetable or fruit kitchen scraps we acquired.
Just like our juicing we do. Again, we do 22-25 fresh different fruits and vegetables daily…every day. After juicing, we usually have two small bags of pulp, and these are spread out into the compost pile daily, as well.
Let me just throw something in here about the juicing’s we do. We’ve been doing this what, over a couple, to two and a half months now? In Deb’s blood work, her white and red blood cell count is really pretty high, plus her blood platelet count is really high, too.
With this being said, we also had one nurse tell her, and I was standing there too, that she couldn’t believe that Deb had cancer, on account of she couldn’t believe how high her blood platelet count was. She was pretty much saying her count was incredible, for having cancer in her body…
I’m not telling anyone what to do by any means, but I am telling you that Deb and I both have become firm believers in the power of juicing, that’s all. We do know through this nutrition, and it goes into your system very quickly, that we are both getting a tremendous nutritional boost from this. We drink three 16 oz. glasses daily. This was just a “for whatever it’s worth,” few statements.
We’ve both noticed lately, that since we started putting the leftover pulp from the juice into the compost pile, that when we walk by the pile, strange things seem to be happening??
For instance, just last week Deb and I were sitting on the porch and heard a little commotion out by the compost pile.
We walked over to it and were amazed by what we were witnessing…an earthworm was standing about halfway out of the compost heap, and had wrapped it’s other half around a Robin’s neck. This earthworm was body slamming the poor bird one way, and then the next.
This went on a couple-three minutes, then the earthworm stopped, turned him back loose, and the dazed Robin walked off, not flew.
Is it the pulp from the juice…we don’t know, but it could be though, I guess.
We’ve also noticed several different species of birds with hernias lately as well. We’re not positive as to what is causing this for sure, but we’re beginning to believe those little earthworms have gotten so “pumped up” from the juice pulp, that the birds are getting them from trying to pull those strong little suckers out of the ground. This too is only theory.
Back to the compost pile…
One thing we’ve done is keep it turned often, and watered well. At first we did this every week to week and a half, but for the last couple months, we’ve done this about 3-4 times a week. You wouldn’t believe the difference this has made! It’s night and day versus when we started.
All material used is breaking down just great, and mostly now it’s just a rich, dark material that seems to just shout to you, “Put me in the dern garden, and get back!” This stuff really looks good.
I wish we had much more than what we’ve composted as of this minute, but I can see the compost pile being enlarged…probably about the time we get this one into the garden. I’m pretty sold on the compost now, from a how rich this material, or final product looks.
It is impressive to us, but the response from the vegetables in the garden themselves, will supply us with the knowledge of… is it worth the effort to compost? I believe we’ll soon see that yes, it is. I’ll be shocked if not.
Plus, the first area we’ll be using this is very sandy. The ole white sand, sandy. Very, very poor soil, that we have been amending with the cow manure, and commercial fertilize once the vegetables are up. The commercial fertilize doesn’t amend the soil, but it does shoot nitrogen and other trace minerals to your plants, thus giving them a boost.
So, hopefully in the next couple weeks we’ll have our original compost pile utilized in our garden, and okra planted! I’m anxious as I can be to see the results. If this indeed supplies us with the results I’m expecting, then what a blessing for us this will be. Most, if not all the materials needed for composting are already right here, on the place!
We’ll only plant maybe a third of our garden area in okra, because of the heat, so the rest of it we’ll be amending the soil in until about August, when we put in peas, and boy oh boy, do we love them dern peas!
We take Deb today for a shot for her immune system, and this is supposed to cause bone pain for some reason or other. The nurse told her to take a Tylenol an hour prior to arriving for this shot.
This too is a new experience for us in Deb’s journey, so once more I have apprehension, but then again, who wouldn’t in regards to their wife? The main thing is simply this is one more step in Deb’s road to recovery!
Thank you all once more for your prayers and support! They are so appreciated, and I promise you that you all are in ours as well!
Thank you again for coming in to visit with us this morning. God Bless you and yours!
Remember too that Deb always says, “To keep a smile on your face, and one in your heart!”
Dub and Deb
I’m starting my own gardening too. Unfortunately, composting will probably be taxed or, made illegal; due to the carbon footprint of a natural process. Obama just created a White House Rural Council, to regulate all usage of rural property. So home gardens will soon be outlawed.. GMO’s will also be the only food source soon. I hope you don’t let that happen in Canada. Good luck!
We live in Central Florida “Tea Patriot,” not Canada, but we have many good, good friends who do live in Canada! How bout a link to Obama’s Rural Council…I’d like to read on it. Thanks for reading, and taking the time to comment. We appreciate both!
Dub
GOOD GOING ON THAT JUICING! You keep that up, using those fresh veggies, and you’ll both get a clean bill of health before long… Been there ‘n done that! (You think maybe our Creator is smart enough to design the PERFECT fuel for our body?)
GOOD GOING on the COMPOST… You’ll be glad you did!
DEB, I’m so glad you have a DUB to hold you up when you’re pert near down…
…and to do all that labor intensive gardening. Many of us have dreamed of the successes you are experiencing. And the rewards for all that WORK!
I was real careful not to learn about farming while growing up… and it showed when I’ve tried off and on, to have a decent garden through the years. But in between growing up on the farm, and returning to said farm in my “Golden Years,” I began studying Mel Bartholemew’s Square Foot Gardening, and knew in my Knower, I could one day, finally taste gardening success… Now, Mel’s latest book — after some 27 or so years of perfecting his system — ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDEN, has set me up for success!
For me — by now an old lady with no tractor and no Dub — the only labor concerned in this system, has been to build my boxes (mostly waist-high) from scrap lumber, drag from the barn, an old leaky water trough, a dilapidated pickup tool box, and a bull panel to support energetic vine veggies… then the mixing of a bunch of compost, and Sphagnum moss and vermiculite.
THE EXPENSE? Buying the “dirt contents,” and watering just the PLANTS — not the whole dang however many acres of ground it would take to produce a similar crop!
NEXT YEAR’S WORK? Year after year, all I’ll have to do to said “dirt” is add one scoop of compost per square foot, and poke in some more seeds, remembering to rotate my crops!
Oh! And reap the harvest promises to be the major ‘labor intensive’ ! Even starting this late in the season, (mid-June) and with all this oppressive three-digit heat in West Texas, those little buggers are green and growing!
No tilling, no thinning, no weeds, little stooping and bending… The Start-up Costs are a pittance compared to buying a tractor and hiring a DUB!
‘Course, DEB, if you’d hire out your DUB and his tractor, I’d look around the place, and find something I could barter with!
Keep up the good work — and keep updating us on all your concerns and victories.
Love and Shalom from “the South Forty” — Texas Gal
Yes indeed, that juicing thing really works, everyone should give it a shot ill or not.
Impressed about your compost heap. You know the heap is official when earthworms move in. To new heapers just starting out, to help your heap get started buy a little box of fishing worms and throw them in. Makes a difference.
Gonna plant okra? Gumbo! My Aunt Ida that passed away in the seventies at age 95 gave me a secret to planting okra. She soaked it in bleach for a little while and rinsed them before planting. They came up in no time. My alternative is to soak in warm water overnight. Works just as well. Gee I sure do miss gardening but not the hard work.
Texas Gal looks like a keeper.
Excellent post Dub&Deb. Kudos to Deb on her test and scores.
To Texas Gal. Daughter called all excited coupla weeks ago about some earth boxes. Could get them off the net for 39.95+s&h. Looked them up and laughed. Plastic, little grid in bottom with a piece of PVC for watering. Kids, just don’t know about them. It does not work unless they pay big bucks for something. Told her dig a hole for flowers, recycle some pots, use some old lumber from somewhere. Think I will direct her to the Texas Gals comments on “ridin” so she can get some pointers on how to do stuff. Nothing like the East and West Texas Folks. Oops. Gotta go water leak at the kitchen sink and my expertise is needed. Laughing!
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/37812
Here’s a link for you on the Rural Council. And if you really want to have your mind blown, google Agenda 21.
Best to you and Deb. Love your site and you guys are my prayers.
Those are some mighty tough worms ya got there mister! LOL
I need to get busy on making myself a compost pile. I did start a worm composter this year and I must say, that worm poo is excellent for making compost tea. Now if I can just get my wife to stop feeding the chickens all the worms, I’ll be in good shape.
Happy composting my friend and Deb, you hang in there! Keeping you guys in my prayers.