Hi! I’m Jenn from over at the Crazy Life blog. I’m a busy momma of four beautiful children, who works full-time outside the home, teaches dance lessons on the side and loves to garden, dance, scrapbook and read. Our family is into all kinds of natural and green things. My blog is full of recipe ideas, natural/green living ideas and well, just the plain crazy day to day details of life.
We’ve been gardening now for almost ten years and each year our garden gets a bit bigger as we add plants, space, animals, fruits, and more to it. Currently our main garden is 25′x120′ and our small garden is 10′x10′. This year’s new additions are going to be the cold frames Mr. Crazy Life has been promising me for about three years! We grow everything from potatoes to carrots to corn to strawberries, beans, and lettuces. And everything in between. And we keep chickens! (we’re looking to add ducks and geese this year, maybe)
One thing we’re always asked at the end of the gardening season, as we share nature’s bounty with friends and family is how our produce turns out so well. We don’t use commercial fertilizers or any chemicals in our gardens. I’m not a big weeder, so often our garden looks a little wild. And yet, every year we produce large, full, bright colored and beautiful fruits and veggies in large quantities.
One of our secrets is compost. We started composting about three years ago and again, just like our garden, we learn something new and incorporate new things into our composting. This year we’re going to get some worms and start vermi-composting to get that fantastic worm tea for the plants.
Composting is simple. It’s a technique that has been around for thousands of years. And it doesn’t take a lot of work. A little bit of space. A little bit of natural ingredients. Some turning. Some heat. And it turns your kitchen scraps and papers into the most beautiful soil and fertilizer.
You can compost in a pile, in a bin, in a specially made container. You can compost kitchen scraps (except meat/animal byproducts (no fat, dairy, etc). You can compost paper scraps. You can compost some animal droppings (we put our chicken poops into it!). You can compost yard waste (leaves, grass clippings, etc). The trick is getting the right ratio of nitrogen and carbon. By doing all this you can get great organic soil in a matter of two weeks to a month! The ultimate recycling project!
Here’s a website that gives you some basics of composting: How to Compost.org (http://www.howtocompost.org/info/info_composting.asp). This site gives you lots of information on the different types of composting, as well as a bit of history. Did you know that composting is mentioned in the Bible?
Another site I like with charts and such from Washington State University. (http://gardening.wsu.edu/stewardship/compost/yardcomp/yard1.htm)
Here are some pictures of our beautiful plants raised in their natural, organic composted soil.
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We totally compost too! But I am so jealous you have chickens.. that is next on my list. Do you free range yours or keep in coops?
We actually do a bit of both. We have a pen and coop, of course, but most of the time during the day they free-range our property (and the adjoining farm fields.) We keep them locked up during planting and harvesting times and storms. Or if we’ve noticed some predators around. But otherwise they roam the yard.
Jenn´s last article ..Taco Stuffed Shells