Oh I love trash...

In the words of wisdom  by Oscar the Grouch, "Anything dirty or dingy or dusty. Anything ragged or rotten or rusty. Yes, I love trash." And I think about my beautiful red wiggler worms devouring all the composed organic matter from our kitchen. What a wonderful job these red wigglers have..turning garbage into gold. Gold, gold, gold for our depleted garden soil. The decomposed bio-material and worm castings will give the needed nutrients to our deprived soil so that we can produce more viable and stronger crops. Oscar you had it right! You are even the perfect color. My red wigglers squirm with delight as they hear your song.

Harvesting rain...snow

It is amazing how much snow we still have in our north and south facing yards since the huge snow storms in January.  Over a year ago we added rain basins to our north facing front yard to hold the rain on our property (rather than it filling the water sewers). The ideas come from http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/, a totally amazing approach to harvesting rain in arid environments.  We plan to add more basins this spring.

We are also planning to cut our curb. The curb cut will capture some of the street run-off into our yard. Secure a city permit and re-mark the public utilities (and rent equipment to cut the curb), and we are set.  We purchased a metal culvert last year, and it sits until we can afford to convert it to a rain water cistern above ground. If only large sums of dollars landed magically in our lap -- then we could move forward with these great projects. I dream...

I can't wait to see this spring. The slow melting of the snow should give our growing season a great head start. 

Soak it up

Four years ago Paul installed a soaker hose system in our vegetable garden. That was our best growing season by far. However, the last three growing seasons we did not reinstall our soaker hose system, which in my humble opinion has been the demise of our exceptional yields.

It goes something like this (information shared by Paul via master gardening program). Water your garden as if you are watering an inverted cone-like sponge. The idea here is that you saturate the wide opening of the upside down cone until it reaches the point of the cone (the spot near the base of the plant). If the cone is well-saturated then plants will be able to access the water even in very windy, dry, sunny days - a regular occurrence in Flagstaff. So what the soaker hose does is allows the water to slowly soak into the inverted cone. Surface watering evaporates too quickly and if you hand water you will not spend us much time on each plant letting the water soak the conical sponge.

Mulching the surface of your garden will also prevent the soil surface from dehydrating too quickly.

So this year, we are going to reinstall soaker hoses in combination with mulching. I will report later in the season if my revisted approach is correct.


Soaker Hose Image Courtesy of http://grow.ars-informatica.ca/grow_topic.php?subject=wat0

Ground Hog...Please

Lorraine Elder writes on Twitter, "Wondering how to bribe a groundhog mañana. I srsly don't want 6 more weeks of winter. Then again, spring in these parts is no picnic either."

I am dreaming of a yard without snow, begging for a chance to dig my hands in the soil while absorbing the warmth of the sun on my back. True, spring is no picnic in Flagstaff. The wind is fierce. The weather is temperamental. Nonetheless, I yearn.