Today in the apartment homestead, I used my first batch of homemade compost!
Much black. So nutrition.
The top part of the bucket smelled like really rich soil. The bottom part smelled like a dirty aquarium or scummy pond? I mean I stirred it with a stick all the time, but the bottom couple of inches kinda needed to be scraped out with my gloved hands. I hope I didn't just breathe in legionnella or something. XD
After I used it all up, I started the new batch with everything I had stashed in my freezer for months (to stop mold), and the box of browns I had collected that wouldn't mold (matchsticks, cat hair, paper, houseplant trimmings), any current stuff I could add (the dish full of eggshells, the detritus from an incense burner, new pruning). It filled the bucket!
That'll break down though and get smaller. I filled the bucket a few times with the first batch and it always shrunk. Even today, I only harvested maybe 2/3 full amount of compost.
I had stopped adding to it months ago, so it could finish breaking down and I could use it this summer. I probably started it around a year ago, so this new batch will be for next year!
With this compost, I potted my Wandering Dudes (that is officially the new, nicer name for this plant per a FB plant group I'm in because the common "Wandering Jew" actually has horrifying white supremacist origins) that I had had rooting in water for way too long...
...and I divided some Snake Plants into two pots instead of one. I originally thought I would divide them all into multiple small pots for each growth, but they were REALLY tangled together at the roots and I felt like it would cause too much damage separating them more.
They were originally all in this pot!
I added support sticks to try standing up the droopy leaves. In this one, it's the stick from an old broken cat toy. In the other, I used a dowel that I had been using in the tomatoes that they really didn't need anymore (since I moved them outside, there's been some die-off. :( I hope they recover). When I pulled it out, I discovered the bottom had rotted off!
The same size dowel that is my compost stir stick to show how much is gone.
I mean, it's just wood, so I'm not surprised really, but I've never had that happen in a houseplant before. I suppose, however, that the tomatoes' need for a lot more water is what did it. More gardening lessons learned! :)
So that's about it in Phe's plant world today. How are your gardens doing?
Be good, Steem fam!
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Beauty job on the compost Phe! <3<3<3 Everywhere you put it majik will grow!
I hope so! <3 Do you compost on your homestead?
Are you kidding me fre, I could smell the richness from here!! Looks like you are going to have some very very happy plants, I can't wait to see an update!
I compost, oooh hellz yes, with help from the #chickenbitchez of course :)
And the #chickenbitchez self-distribute, too! LOL
What do you do with your food scraps? You feed them to the chickens, right?
I have a couple of compost piles going out in the garden. I've been putting all my coffee grounds in the one, along with the paper filters, and putting the food scraps in the other. The one with the food scraps doesn't have any kind of a fence or retainer around it, so if I put the coffee grounds in there, the filters end up blowing around the garden when they dry up.
Oh, I would have never thought of that, having it all in a bucket. I don't use coffee filters because I make coffee in a French press, so my issue is that they're always so wet so I dry them out on the counter generally before putting them in plants or compost. Years before I tried this double-bucket system, I tried it in just one bucket and the constant wet grinds made it mold over pretty fast.
I love your wandering dude! So pretty!
We tore the strawberries out of our garden right around the 4th of July. Planted pumpkins instead. We probably planted them too late, not much happening, but oh well. Lol. The garden just looks so bare. I keep fighting the urge to plant more stuff in there. 🤣😁
Why did you tear out the strawberries? Did you harvest already? O:
What I read online just recently was that the best time to plant pumpkins for harvest around Samhain is late June, so you might be OK on that score!
There were just too many. We harvested the whole month of June and there was probably still another month's worth of berries growing in there. I was losing more berries to slugs than anything, but still getting waayyy too many. 😂
I felt like I had mastered growing strawberries and I learned a whole lot from it, I wanted to move on to a fall crop of some kind. Pumpkins seemed like a good idea, we didn't plant a whole lot either, just enough for the kids to carve some or maybe make like 2 pies. 🤣
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Now you know that jack-o-lantern pumpkins and pie pumpkins are different, right?
And cool about the strawberries! Did you make jam?
Yeah, we've got both kinds planted. 😊
Oh yeah, I made jam. And strawberry hand pies and cookies and ice cream and scones and cake. Then I ran out of recipes I wanted to try. 🤣
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LOL! You should initiate "national leave strawberries on your neighbor's porch day" like "national leave zucchini on your neighbor's porch day." :D
Bahaha! That's a really good idea. 😍
I just checked on the pumpkins this morning and we've got one growing!!!
Thought you'd like to see. 😁
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