Here's what a truly organic garden looks like

I thought I would post some pictures of my garden (veggie and flower) so you can see what no pesticides and no chemical fertilizers look like.

I water the veggies once a week for 3 hours. The flowers get watered every couple of days, but the flowerbed was just planted in July so it needs time to become established.

That said - here we go -

The first picture is our new front walkway with our new landscaping. The rich black soil is merely composted horse manure and sawdust.




Next up are the Yellow Brandywine tomatoes...nothing, not downpours nor deer can stop these heirloom tomatoes!



Every year we have mystery squash of some sort. This year are some strange looking pumpkin type devices. It's like Christmas...with err squash...



Our neighbor dug a hole in our yard to get to his water meter. He never filled it in so we did with some nice dirt from an old Swiss Chard bed (died 4 YEARS AGO!!)...I guess seeds last that long exposed to the elements...I have never watered nor placed any poo around these lovely plants. I am however, planting more Swiss Chard there now and will start caring for it.



Ahhh, the next item in my garden line-up is not a plant at all, but a little sweetheart who loves to touch and taste (nearly) everything in my garden. I couldn't let him do that if I used nasty chemicals.



MMMM Sweet 100 Cherry Tomatoes...'nuff said.



This pile of plants are 4 Lemon Cucumbers. They are crazy big and producing a ripe cucumber every day now. We had a late spring so this is very exciting.



I hope you enjoyed a little peek into our world.

Composting is for sissies

I have been reading a book written in 1955; but its message is very timely. It is called "How to have a Green Thumb without an Aching back" by Ruth Stout. It's really hard to find...in fact I bought mine at a yard sale about 15 or 16 years ago for a dime.

In the book, Ruth talks about buying a 55 acre farm with her husband in the early 1930s. She tackles a huge space for a garden and basically wears herself to a frazzle every day trying to keep up.

I have read this book many times and still seem to glean new knowledge from it.

I have clung to my compost pile for years...and it's never really finished, nor have I gotten anything from it...I just keep piling garden and veggie scraps in.

We have some resident Raccoons and they knocked my compost bin flat last night. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last...and strangely enough I just finished Ruth Stout's book again...

So today, instead of dumping the contents of my bowl on top that disaster of a pile, I lifted the straw mulch that covers my garden and poured the contents underneath. Then I tucked the mulch back into place and voila it was perfect.

I am no longer going to make a compost pile. I am going to 'layer compost' on the spot in my garden from now on.

If you lack straw, you can use shredded leaves, or mulch, or even some topsoil. Just scratch the soil enough to have a place to put your compost items and cover with something. Worse comes to worse...tuck under the edges of the Zucchini.

Apparently RS mulched this way for 12 years before she wrote that book...and she seemed pretty happy with it.

Oh and did I mention - she stopped tilling, weeding, fertilizing, and using any pesticides when she started mulching.

The only fertilizer I use is organic (horse poo etc), and no chemicals EVER enter my garden - and we practiced the no till method this year. Our mulch needs to be thicker because I have had a few weeds, but not many!!

So, yeah, composting is for sissies. Do it layer style :)