Saturday, July 11, 2015

Actual work outside

As always, I should be doing some weeding outside, although I don't really feel like it.  I might try to weed at least the front bed, because there are a lot of weeds and they're right in the front.  I might do that tomorrow, maybe?  Probably not.  I've given up on the sidewalk bed.

I do need to plant all this basil soon.  If the tomato dies, that's obviously where they are going.  If not... I don't know, maybe I'll put them in a pot.

My herbs are not doing well.  I  haven't watered it, because we got so much rain I wasn't thinking about watering.  But of course those are under the roof and never got any rain.  I'm not sure the Mint is going to survive, which might be something no one has ever said.  Actually, let's bring those poor bastards inside and soak them in the sink.

Let's talk about these containers.  The Gladioli are done, I think.  I'm not getting any more flowers.  And the ones I got weren't all that great.  I kind of like the way I did it, packing them into a pot as bulbs early in the spring, because I don't have to deal with them in a bed with other plants.  I guess I'll leave them through this season, because they aren't bothering anyone.  But they're not that great. The Hibiscus is growing fine, and I think it's healthy, because he keeps putting on more nice green leaves, but it shows no sign of flowering.  I have read that some hibiscus don't reflower.   And some say you need to prune the roots.  I don't think I can do that.  That's insane.  I don't really want to throw it out, because it looks so healthy and I took care of it through the winter.  But if it doesn't flower, I don't really see the point.  It would not be that expensive to just buy another one.  I'm not going to rip it out or really do anything to it, because I don't have anything to put in its place.  When it gets cold, I won't bother ti bring it in.  Or maybe it would be smarter to just pull the plant out instead of having to deal with it later.

COMPOST

I need to finish emptying the compost tumbler outside.  I've done more than half of it already, and it's not that hard.  I've been putting it all through the sieve, which is nice but of course takes some time.  The stuff that I'm filtering out seems to make a nice mulch; it's just a slightly less broken down version of leaves and some stemmy things.  I've almost filled the plastic tub, I think it's like, the 11 gallon kind?  I don't really know what to do with all this nice compost right now.  I can't get to the base of most plants to compost around them.  I can put a nice layer on top of anything in containers, including the herbs.  And if I have to pull out the sick tomato I can back fill that area with compost.

But anyway.  Once I empty that thing out, I need to refill it with all the stuff in the garbage bin on the patio.  I think the only way to do that is to just take a tub over there, fill it up with handfuls, and dump it in.  And of course I will mix in that big bowl of coffee grounds I've been saving.  My hope is that if I get this done early enough, like this weekend, it will finish up by the fall.  There are a lot of leaves in there, of course, but also some other dried out plant stuff.  It's not shredded, of course, so it won't be that fast.  If I'm industrious, I could try to chop up the big stuff, like the longer grassy stuff.  Now, it won't break down into perfectly smooth soil looking stuff.  But it should get pretty far along, right, if I have a lot of coffee grounds mixed in with a lot of dry brown stuff.  I could also throw in a few handfuls of stuff from the worm bin to try to move it along faster.  And if it gets mostly composted but there are still chunks of leaves and stuff, it will make great mulch.

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