Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I went out back to get some basil for my lunch only to discover the squirrels had dug up one of my cauliflower plants. Seriously little furry dudes?! I throw birdseed on the ground under the feeder for you so for fork sake, leave my plants alone!!!

I have a composting question for those who know composters.

I have a standy-uppy Green Johanna plastic composter that works pretty well. Today, for no particular reason other than that I was bored of weeding the garden, I fed it four or five probiotic capsules (opened) and a packed of icing sugar that had egg white in and has been sitting around the cupboard for ages. I also poured in 2.5 litres of very diluted vinegar, because it was sitting around and I'd read that composts like slightly acidic conditions and it was annoying me that all the sugar was just sitting on top and I can't leave well enough alone.

Then I gave it a good stir to get the air in.

So, will this be the world's best compost, or have I created a monster?

Do you have plenty of carbon to balance it out? I thought that pouring extra acid in was a bad idea because it puts the ph off balance.

I don't know, I've become super obsessed with my brown/green compost balance lately. I feel like it could probably use its own thread.

Lifehacker recommended putting flat coke into your compost as a starter, as the sugar and acid together can be beneficial, and it was on the internet so it must be true.

I started worrying about the green/brown ratio, then stopped caring and just piled in all my food and whatever weeds were to hand. It's probably about 70% food, so it that probably means it's too green. I'll give the garden weed purge and chuck all that in when the weather has dried up again (we just had rain! Very welcome rain!) and stir it up and see what happens. It has probably taken longer than it should have, but we don't have very much brown available to add, without letting the garden get overgrown and weedy.

There are about a million billion worms in there and food vanishes and turns to earth relatively quickly, so I might be doing something right. It emits quite a lot of heat, which is probably a good thing?

Throw some cardboard in there?

Then lets make out in front of the hot compost pile.

Wigged in my heart.

I don't worry about my compost much unless it starts to stink. I actually emptied it for the first time last week because it was getting too heavy to turn.

Haha, autocorrect! It's funny so I'll leave it.

Yes!! It totally worked for me last year and this year I've moved to a new apartment and it's working great here, too. We just collect sticks from the yard. I make a border of sticks that are at least a foot tall around each bed, a couple inches apart, then put random sticks inside the beds where there's nothing growing yet.

That kind of cracks me up. I wonder why that works? My cats will sit anywhere in anything.

We were given a little wicker basket in a gift set thing, which ended up in the garden because it's really useful. My cat, Albert, likes to sit in it.

I'm mad at my lettuce because I put it in a shady spot and the sun still kills it! My chard, too. Very annoying! Other than that, my garden has been the most perfect place in the world so far this spring!

Leaf miners have been mining my swiss chard. I am sad about this. I want to mine my swiss chard.

But I'm a little excited because I have identified my first garden pest?

Our chard grew and grew and grew and grew and grew. It did pretty well right up until the frosts got it. Give it a little time? Maybe it hasn't decided it's time to grow yet.

As a side note, we will probably not grow chard again. There was just so much of it!

I did that gutter on a fence thing, and birds ate all of the spinach and all of the lettuce but a tiny tuft, and left the collards. So I added more seeds to two pots and there are like three leaves in one pot. The fork.

I think the sticks get in the way of all the fun digging.

It looks kinda odd. I've been brainstorming ways to make it look more decorative.

I just saw a cat walk into my garden, so I go out start yelling at it. It stares at me while it shiitakes in my spinach, then casually walks away. crasshole cat.

Please meet my amphibian friend at the all-you-can-eat bug buffet.

I had to dig up two of my tomato plants because they weren't growing at ALL, it turns out that those biodegradable pots that you're supposed to plant them in? Weren't breaking down at all, and the roots weren't busting through at all. I usually rip at least the tops off (carefully), but I neglected to do so this time. Hopefully they will bounce back, but even if they die, they weren't growing anyway and I can replace two plants.

Also, randomly, one of my cucumber plants bit it, the other two are great (and the two that I found growing in my compost and planted for funsies are growing, but I haven't seen a bloom yet), and one of my cilantro plants withered and died like it was getting zero water. forking plants, how do they work.

Yeah, those bio pots don't make plants happy unless removed completely. It's pretty dumb for the makers of those to even pretend like they work. They should just market them as a petroleum-product-free way of packaging and thats it.

Ah, good to know about those bio pots! Maybe that's why most of our cucumbers are still so teeny tiny.

Shae left the sprinklers on ALL forking NIGHT and now the 2 big cucumber plants look totally dead. I hope it bounces back because I'm already getting used to eating garden fresh cukes!

I generally don't have any problems and just rip off the very tops, but I swear those things never go anywhere. You can put herbs in a pot and then the next spring the bio pot will still be there.

I'm not using a sprinkler this year, but get a timer! Since the garden is all the way at the back of the yard, I have trouble remembering to turn the water off so even with a hose, I set the timer so if I forget, it'll shut off in five minutes anyway and we don't have to worry about little hose leaks going all night.

A timer is a good idea, we'll probably do that. We've been mostly setting a timer in the house to remember to go back out there, but he forgot to do that too. Oopsy.

I think my garlic's died. They're all limp looking. It's probably because the weather's been so wonky.

After thinking my lemon tree wasn't going to get over it's transplant shock it finally added some new leaves and a flower!!!!