MAKE YOUR GARDEN BED WITH A COMPOST COMFORTER

Composting is a rich and fertile topic, and there  is always something more to learn.  I got my most recent lesson at a presentation on Sheet Mulching by Kate Heiber-Cobb, a Permaculture Designer and founder of the Madison Area Permaculture Guild.

The beauty of compost!

..(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/423508812/ )

Heiber-Cobb says that sheet mulching is also called a compost comforter, which I thought better describes the process.  What gets piled up is a lot thicker than a sheet.  It’s more like a Seven-Layer Salad for your soil.

FIGHTING BACK AT BUCK RUB

It seems I live in a bad neighborhood, roamed by a destructive gang.   The authorities are helpless.  The gang has become too big and too powerful.  When I see the wreck they are making of so many promising young lives, I am strongly tempted to buy a gun.

I’m talking, of course, about the deer herd.

...Tamaracks turn golden and drop their needles in the fall. How many will live to grow new needles next spring?

Deer have no natural enemies left, and their too abundant numbers are decimating native plants.   Each year, Doug and I lose most of the young native seedlings we put out in an attempt to re-establish a the balance used to exist here.

When deer get hungry, every plant with a tender bud is at great risk.  (See our previous prairie plant protectors here and here. )  With them, we can protect a few individuals, whom we hope will multiply.

OUR FARM THIS FALL

It’s been a hot, dry October.  Odd to watch the leaves being blown off the trees by such balmy breezes.   But fall is fall — and that means crazed squirrel time.  Winter is coming, and there are things to do before the ground freezes.

With Doug teaching biology at UW-Platteville this semester, we are squeezing in land work where we can, and we  have our third crop of 2010 underway in our greenhouse.

HOW COOL IS YOUR FRIDGE?

ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE REFRIGERATOR HUMS –

IT HUMS FOR THEE

If your fridge has ever been on the fritz – then you know what a truly handy appliance it is, and how messy life is without it.  My grandmother used to tell me how just about everyone in her little town and the nearby villages too would all gather at  a camping ground to hear lecture sunder a big tent for a few days in the summer.  Her mother would take along live chickens to keep them fresh till it was time for that day’s dinner.  Other foods were kept cool in the spring.  Everyone put their food in a sack with a string and their name on it.

Photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/beautifulcataya/4604877430/

My grandmother’s big brother worked at the ice house, delivering the big, frozen cubes cut from the winter pond for people’s ice boxes.  When he dropped dead in his early 20s, the medical consensus was all that going back and forth from the ice house to the summer heat had given him a brain storm.

Both medicine and refrigeration have come a long way since my grandma was a girl.

TUCK YOUR GARDEN IN FOR A LONG WINTER’S NAP

I attended a panel discussion by four Master Gardeners this week and listened to their take on the fall tuck in.

...Mother Nature's fluffy blanket (photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfduck/3005808959/

It’s so primal – the urge to tuck in one’s garden beds under a leafy blanket as winter looms.  I see a lot of similarity between the down comforter I curl up under and the blanket of leaves I spread over the ground.

Every gardener has his or her own mulch madness.

GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS GROW–SOMETIMES

I caught the end of a radio gardening show in the car last week, and heard the tree expert tell a caller that transplanting young oaks from the woods was a touchy business.  First you must dig under it and cut the tap root.  Then leave it in place for a year of two to grow the kind of secondary root system that we see when we buy trees at the nursery.  Even then, it may not take well.

He suggested it might be quicker to start with an acorn.

...An oak woods you can hold in your hand. (photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitzcelt/3036348795/ )

New project!

THE WEATHER OF THE FUTURE

I have just read The Weather of the Future:   Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen, and I want everyone to read it.

I’ve been following climate change closely and writing about its local impact for a while now. (see my posts: 6 Sites You Should Be Reading on Climate Change, Climate Change in My Back Yard and  Climate Change: What Experts Expect for the Upper Midwest ).

The most powerful thing I’ve read yet is Weather of the Future.  Cullen is a senior research scientist with Climate Central, a nonprofit research organization through which she reports on climate change for many news outlets.  She’s a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and associate editor of the journal Weather, Climate, and Society.

This woman knows what she’s talking about.

A SOLAR TOURIST SEES HER FIRST EVACUATED TUBES

Last Saturday was a day I wait for all year long –

The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) National Solar Tour .

...This evacuated tube system is beyond gorgeous!

This  great event happens every October, so put the first Saturday of October on your calendar for next year if you want to know more about what solar living actually looks like.

More than 5,500 buildings using solar energy in 3,200 communities across the U.S. threw open their doors for the day to share what they are doing with anybody who wants to take a peek.

Now in its 15^th year, the number of peekers has grown to 160,000.  Doug and I have been solar tourists for four years now.   At first we would try to see as many places as possible, but it is too good to rush. This year we made  our way to three sites winding along country roads through the beginnings of fall color under a sky of flying clouds.  What a win-win day!

SEEDLESS GRAPES IN WISCONSIN? MAYBE.

I like dried fruit.  It’s a great way to enjoy fruit all year long with minimal energy expenditure.  Doug and I have been hoping that we will be able to grow seedless grapes on our south-facing slope, solar dry them and put some local raisins into our foodshed.

..(photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lawtonjm/61698799/)

Last night I took the first step toward figuring out how to just that by attending an advanced master gardener class on growing grapes in Wisconsin.