How to build a compost barrel

Rotating compost barrel

Composting at home: Today, everyone is conscious of their carbon footprint and it's impact on the Earth's ecosystem. Many cities and towns have introduced composting programs that collect and recycle your kitchen waste by turning it into compost and re-selling it back to their taxpayers! H'mmm can we get a discount on our property taxes? ;) 
So why not compost at home since you have the bi-product at your hands. A rich sweet smelling compost can be used as a top dressing or mixed into your garden soil to benefit your plants, and its free.  
Leaves, grass clippings, weeds, dead flowers, plants, food scraps, fruit wastes, coffee and tea grounds, dryer lint, newspaper, shredded paper, corrugated cardboard and manure are some of the ideal products to compost. The formula is roughly 8 parts brown and 1 part green (carbon to nitrogen) chopped up and mixed with some earth. Keep the compost damp and let it sit for a few days. Then rotate it every day for one week and twice a week for the next 2 weeks. The compost pundits say you can produce compost in 3 weeks! If the compost smells add more brown and if it does not heat up add more green. Since this is my first barrel I will report back to you later in a few months on its effectiveness. Also, drill lots of 3/8" holes in the barrel because compost needs plenty of oxygen, water and heat to decompose. This post is dedicated to my buds, Jean-Yves, Wayne, and Doug who have taken great interest in this project. ); Take a look at the quick paced slide show demonstrating how to build a compost barrel. Put on your dancing shoes, turn up the sound and click play! Reduce, reuse and recycle, my friend!  

 

How to grow Portulaca flowers

Just look at those blooms!If you are looking for a flower that keeps on blooming and requires little watering, thisnative South America beauty may be for you! The flowers growing in the 5" eavestrough attached to my garden shed are Happy Trails Mix variety.   It grows 9-10" high, is self-cleaning and the colours are amazing. It's also available in solid colours: yellow, orange, pink, white, red, or peppermint. Portulaca pundits say it grows better in poor soil that is sandy and drains well. A word of caution, do not over water them and water lightly when needed. That makes sense since it hails from the hot South American climates of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Also, keep in mind that it blooms best in 10+ hours of sun. If you grow them from seed, do not cover the seed because they need light to germinate. I buy plants at the garden centre and save my grow lights for tomatoes. If you have not grown this flower it's time to take a leap of faith. In the words of Brazil-born novelist Paulo Coelho "Be brave. Take Risks. Nothing can substitute experience."  Now,  get out your dancing shoes, my friend and watch "Window Bob Bee" drinking his Portulaca nectar in "The Bee Project".

You Tube video link:  https://youtu.be/f5AF6MEyZIA

          

Growing tomatoes from seed v2

Two week check-up: It's time to give you an update of the tomato seeds we plants a few weeks ago. The seeds took about 6 days to germinate and they just starting to develop their true leaves which means they should be re-planted into individual containers. Click on the video and take the tour, my friend.

Two-week Ultra Boy Tomato seedling

You Tube video link:  https://youtu.be/rlP9PfehcIs

                                     

 

Window Bee Bob

Yellow Jacket Hornet Wasp

Mother nature at work: Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Window Bee Bob!
Early one morning Bee Bob landed on our kitchen window and stayed long enough for this striking portrait. A great looker with big black eyes, spiked gelled hair, groovy arms, clingy legs and two long antennas on it's head. It's really apparent where they get costume ideas for the Star Wars Trilogies!
Actually, Bob is a Yellow Jacket Hornet wasp, not a bee, and he plays an important role to control pest insects in your garden. As spring arrives, the pregnant Queen wasp will awaken from her winter hibernation to build a new colony of workers. Similar to our pesky mosquitoes only the females will sting you while the male is off drinking nectar! Go figure! (Go Sens Go!)
Camera details, Apple iphone with close-up lens.
To quote our Canadian TV game show host Alex Trebek, "If you can't be in awe of Mother Nature, there's something wrong with you." appreciate Mother Nature, my friend.

Selecting Your Apple Tree

Dwarf 5-N-1 Jonagold, Liberty, Yellow Delicious, 
Melrose and Gravenstein varieties 

Tree varieties: It's mid-April and the trees are starting to arrive at the garden centres so let's talk about selecting a tree for your yard. You may have noticed that apple trees growing in the wild are usually 40' tall, laden with branches and a huge ladder parked underneath. Thanks to root grafting today's apple tree is more manageable to prune and harvest. You will notice the graft at the bottom just above the ground where a non-apple root is grafted to the apple stock. The dwarf version, technically referred to as M7 and M9 rootstock will keep the tree around 8-10 feet high. The M26 grows 15' tall and is very popular in apple orchards. There are a multitude of rootstocks and over 7,000 apple varieties worldwide. Yikes! Speaking of grafting, one popular tree for us city folks is the M7 5-N-1 dwarf version. Firstly, the tree is grafted onto a rootstock and up to 5 varieties are grafted on the main stem. You harvest 5 different apple varieties growing on the same tree! The tree in the photo produced 20 apples in its first year. Also, because apple trees need another variety close by to pollinate and produce apples, the 5-N-1 meets that criteria! Keep that in mind if you are buying a single variety ie. a MacIntosh tree, you will need to purchase a second tree of a different variety to pollinate each other unless your neighbour has a tree. A nearby crabapple tree will also serve as a pollinator. Author Elizabeth Wright penned a dialect version of the popular apple rhyme in 1913: "Ait a happle avore gwain to bed, An' you'll make the doctor beg his bread; or as the more popular version runs: An apple a day Keeps the doctor away." Grow apples, my friend!

Growing tomatoes from seed v1

Heritage Brandywine, Cherokee Purple; Hybrid Chocolate

Sprinkles grape, Ultra Boy II and Better Boy Indeterminate

It's seeding time: Between April 1st to 15th most backyard gardeners seed their tomatoes. If you are a novice, this post is for you! Ordering your seeds online from a reputable seed supplier in January is ideal because they offer so many varieties. Otherwise, stop by the Home Depot or your garden centre and check their selections. Construct some wood boxes using plywood and pine (scrubbed and cleaned each year to avoid diseases) or purchase gardening containers for this purpose. Use fresh Miracle-Gro Premium Potting Mix dampened with hot water to warm it up. Mix well and fill your containers. Don't forget to mark the containers with plastic markers to identify the varieties. Once you have distributed the seeds, cover them lightly with soil and press down gently. Then using a spray bottle filled with warm water, spray the top of the soil. Now to find a warm room or window! A temperature of 21ºC/70ºF to 27ºC/80ºF is required to germinate the seeds in 5-10 days. To help preserve the moisture I cover the trays with 1 layer of newspaper. Check them daily and make sure your cat does not walk on the newspaper! Once the seedlings emerges, remove the newspaper and put them near a bright window or under fluorescent lights before they get too leggy. Under fluorescent lights in my basement, I reduce the temperature to 15ºC/60ºF to 20ºC/68ºF to check their growth. The first set of leaves are called seed leaves and the following are true leaves. When the true leaves start to grow you can re-pot them to larger containers filled with Miracle-Gro Potting Mix. Seed on, my friend.

Indeterminate vs Determinate Tomato Plants

Indeterminate Orange Zinger
Hybrid Cherry

Tomato plant varieties: Whether you plant from seed or purchase your plants from your local garden centre the question is, which type should you buy? If you are a backyard gardener I recommend you select Indeterminate plants that ripen gradually in the cluster; and continue flowering and growing over your gardening season. Most pundits agree they also taste better, however they will require a tad more care. Indeterminates do not have a growth plateau and can easily grow +6' tall so they need to be staked or caged. The plant height can be maintained by simply cutting the vine leaders to the desired height. In addition, the suckers that grow between the axils of the leaves need to be removed or the plant gets really big. Pruning suckers is a hotly debated subject and to be honest some gardeners don't sucker and end up with plenty of tomatoes but hugh plants. Determinate plants are self-supporting, and do not require staking or caging and only grow about 3-4' high. Also, pruning suckers is not required. The downside is they all ripen within 2 weeks! This may be ideal if you are processing tomatoes and require them to ripen at the same time. Commercial growers plant Determinate types so they can be machine harvested at one time. Garden on, my friend!

Pruning Your Apple Tree

5-N-1 Dwarf Variety Apple Tree

Today is April fool's Day and that's when I prune my apple trees. No kidding! To begin, this post is not intended to cover all the pruning knowledge that I have acquired from a small orchard of 12 trees and cramming Apple Growing courses at Kemptville Agricultural College. However, I will cover the importance of pruning and some tips. Firstly, pruning your tree will send a signal to the tree to prompt new vigorous growth. Without pruning, the tree will grow leggy and will become a mass of branches making the tree weak.
a) Trim 1/3 of last year's growth cutting in front of a bud pointing towards the sky,  (cutting the branch where the bud points down will produce a weaker new branch susceptible to breaking.
b) Remove any lower branches (it's a tree, not a bush) and make sure the tree guard is in place.
c) Remove any branches growing inward as all branches should grow outwards.
d) Ideally, the branches should run more parallel to the ground than upwards. If you only have one or two trees you can attach a heavy object like a fishing sinker to each branch to pull it down. However, this is not practical in a large orchard. If you think you have trimmed too much, you have probably done a great job. My apple growing Instructor always said "if a big robin can fly through the trimmed tree, it's perfect"!  I will cover tree selection, pollination and planting tips in a future post! Prune on, my friend!