Starting off the season the first temptation after planting is to throw down some fertilizer. Nope, not this year. I trusted the work put into the soil in the fall. I top dressed with worm poop and added a small amount of compost in each planting hole.
The season started as usual. Your basic growth during the cooler end of spring/beginning of summer. I gave the veggies and flowers an occasional dose of water from my fish tanks. That and worm poop would be my only fertilizer. Once the warmer weather started the difference from previous years began to show in the garden. The cherry tomatoes were growing at an incredible rate. It is now July 26th and they are over 10' tall! They have grown in and over the evergreen trees in the bordering neighbors yard. Never in my life have I had cherry tomatoes grow like this. 6' sure. Maybe 7', ok. Never this big and still going.
Cucumbers I have had grow pretty high but the amount of fruit they are producing has increased. I pulled 5 off today, 3 off 2 days ago and several more on the way.
One of the eggplant has 5 fruit coming in at once. That is a first for me. Its usually no more than 2.
We have 2 lillies....11 heads between the two. That was out of the ordinary.
The sage, which we have in a pot and I added compost to, grew quite large and had to be re-potted
Plants that have grown averagely have been the peppers, basil, and plum tomatoes.
If your going to put sticks in your compost, put them in your next seasons compost. They take time to break down.
Avoid too much cardboard. It makes the compost very clumpy.
Dandelion greens are great but try to get them before they flower and seed.
In my limited experience, some seeds will survive the compost process. Don't be surprised to see cucumbers and peppers growing randomly in your garden. It's not the worst problem to have anyway.
When you add organic material to your soil mushrooms will appear. Compost them!
Don't waste a flower. Compost them all.
Avoid potatoes. Even when cut small they make spuds.
I consider compost done once it is unrecognizable. It is dark coco brown. It is not black.
Compost ingredients: leaves, shredded paper bags, bananas, banana peels, dandelion greens, coffee grinds, lettuce, hibiscus flowers, various flowers, blueberries, lettuce, various leafy weeds, fennel, mushrooms, bokchoy, basil, persimmons, worm poop, cabbage, strawberries, eggplant, peppers, cucumber, potato, celery, sticks
Moved to Quuens a couple of years ago from Long Island. No more big yard, lawn, and garden. Now I have raised beds that border a small backyard. This was a bit disappointing at first but decided to give gardening a go and to switch over to a more organic approach. I figured with the smaller area I could make enough compost in a tumbler for my needs but had never made compost before. I also have fish tanks and had heard that the old water makes a good fertilizer. So, I bought a small compost tumbler and started reading all I could find on making and using it.
During that research I also decided that the only fertilizer I was going to use other than fish tank water was worm poop. I have not set up a worm bin but it's in my future plan. For now, I am buying it.
I made my first batch of compost in the fall of 2020. I was not able to make enough to cover all my gardening area so some had to be purchased. I also filled all the raised beds with top soil in the fall of 2020 as they were quite low. The compost was put down on top of the soil layer along with worm poop. That was covered in wood chip mulch. New compost was started at this time.
Compost ingredients are easy to come by. I am in the trucking industry and have produce customers that throw away so much produce daily (ugh!) and have tree trimming/landscaping customers so leaves and wood chips are easy to get also. I also asked co workers to bring in paper bags which I shred in a paper shredder.
All set to do some serious gardening in 2021...
