The new chicken run

Thought you'd like to see the new chicken run Jay built last weekend.

 

Today I found a secret garden in my neighborhood

Shortly after moving to our home on Mifflin Street, and expressing my interest in neighborhood community gardens, I began hearing about an abandoned garden just down the street from our home. I've heard it called "Marge's garden," and people have given me various instructions on how to find it.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a walk around the area I thought people were talking about, but found nothing but a few scraggly trees, certainly not worthy of being called an abandoned garden.

I again heard someone describe where this was at a community meeting a couple weeks ago, and tonight I further investigated the area and found it!

All I know so far is that a woman from the neighborhood actively gardened this area guerrilla style, and the city didn't seem to bother her or the garden. Even today, it's an overgrown mess with lots of wonderful evidence that someone had done a lot of work at one time. I'll let the following photos tell their own stories.

The approach, doesn't look like much at first

Chive

Looks like a sunken bathtub

Peonies

Irises

Rhubarb

Hundreds, or more, walking onions

Tomato cages in a raised bed

Looking at the neighborhood from the garden shows how close it is to the street.

The joys of discovering something for free

Last autumn, I found, hauled and shredded leaves from my block to make four large compost bins. I mixed the leaves with coffee grounds and let them sit over winter, mixing several times this spring, and had beautiful compost mulch for nearly all my gardens.

Nearly...

I was so pleased with the resulting compost that I wished I had hauled more leaves home last autumn, as dry leaves that don't contain grasses and weeds are hard to find in the spring and summer.

A treasure of shredded leaves waiting for me to haul away.

The other day while eradicating Canadian thistle in my community garden, I wondered over to our compost pile where I was sure to find some. Indeed, I found the mother of all thistle colonies. While there, I also discovered a beautiful pile of shredded leaves. It must be where the landscapers for the surrounding area dumped them.

I immediately recognized the solution to my lack of leaves problem. Today, while running errands around Madison's east side, I backed my car up to the pile and dug in. The leaves on top were crispy and not very decomposed, but just a few inches into the pile and they were wet, decaying and smelled wonderful. I filled two collapsible containers and the trunk (which I had lined with a tarp).

Passengers, you can't see in the photo, but they are belted in!

I stopped at the two Starbucks that are on my way home from work and one of them paid off with four bags of coffee grounds. Not enough for all the leaves I had collected, but a good start.

Back at home, I filled a compost bin, put down a layer of coffee grounds, then a load and a layer of too fresh horse manure, then a load and coffee grounds. I'll add water (or let it rain, whichever comes first) mix it up a few times and it will be a steaming pile in a few days; and should be beautiful compost to put my beds to sleep with this autumn.

My plan is to repeat leaf and coffee ground collection until all four of my bins are full. This should be enough for autumn mulching. After I empty them this autumn, I'll fill them again with leaves from the block. My ultimate goal is that I don't need to buy hay for mulch any more. I almost made it this year, but ended up buying two bales at the last minute when I ran out of my own compost.

Microblogs on Twitter or Instagram?

In an unusual co-mingling of my day job (social media specialist) and my passion (urban gardening) I found myself wanting to post pictures with one or two sentences that didn't seem to fit here, in my blog. And since I use MailChimp to broadcast recent posts (an extra step after writing a blog) that wasn't particularly handy as I walked around San Francisco this week.

So I'm wondering from you all, if I were to "microblog" any thoughts on which platform, Twitter or Instagram? One pro for Twitter is it can accommodate both photos and links. Your thoughts?

Widespread public composting!

The picture says it all.

Nasturtiums as weeds?

It appears that mild and long growing season affords nasturtums the opportunity to become weedy.

Brief gardening notes from san francisco

This is just one of the series of brief observations well I am in san francisco. I'm well aware the growing season here is greatly extended from we have in wisconsin, but still, a few notes about what possible here are in order.

For example, I think that fennel is a weed here. This appears to be on abandoned lot where final has run around and. I can hardly get a few to grow in Wisconsin.