It rained like crazy like crazy today, much to the relief of our eucalyptus tree that's been begging for water for months. I wish I would have read Stew's post about 20 minutes earlier, because then I would have known that it was also going to HAIL.
What?! Craziness. And painful, I might add. I panicked at first because all of our potted plants were outside, but they took the beating pretty well. Luckily I hadn't planted anything yet because I learned my lesson from last year. Nothing in the ground until the last week of April.
Hopefully we got a good amount of water in the rain barrel we just put in. We got it back in March at the annual county sale, but had to get gutters installed, which happened this past week. Sal assembled the barrel on Saturday and put it in place yesterday, just in time for the rain. I've got high hopes for this rain barrel - we'll let you know how it goes. It's got to be better than the bunch of random buckets we've been setting out on the first sign of an overcast sky.
So you may have noticed it's been almost a month since I've posted anything. This whole traveling thing we've been doing has taken a lot of time. Just returned from a week long CA trip and have finally caught up on work. I'll be playing blogger catch-up this week. There's exciting stuff going on around Wilmington, people!
3 comments:
One thing I've been using my rain barrel water for, is mixing with compost tea to spray on the yard - we took Evan Folds' composting class at the coop a couple weeks ago, for some pointers we maybe hadn't thought of yet, and he outlined a lawn care (really a lawn repair) program that basically involves nothing more than feeding the soil and keeping it alive & healthy, rather than concentrating on individual plants - take care of the soil and the rest will follow over time. So starting this weekend I took the gallon of free tea they give away at Progressive Gardens, and rather than just pouring it onto our veggies and plants, I've been basically inoculating the soil with the beneficial stuff in the tea (1 cup tea to 1 gal water, in my case from the barrel!) into the sprayer, rather than chemicals. He said roughly once a week should, in time, replace nutrients in the soil that will allow healthy grass (which, I needed to be reminded, is a perennial just like any other perennial) that will choke out weeds naturally. It's the time factor that we're learning to live with...That plus the fact that I bought a push mower this weekend, which should really help the nitrogen for the grass, as well as the atmosphere and my nose!! (soil is dusty and dry at this point), plus I get a workout!
All in all, between the Poplar Grove market, Lewis's u-pick, the coop, Jackson's milk, Tarheel Beef, and the Black River CSA, we've really been moving our food dollars and intake more local. Plus I bought ground pork from Well's this week (ground for me while I was there) and I made 10 lbs of Italian sausage!
Let's keep the community going, I'm finding it's never too late to learn, and it's really fun to do these healthier things!!!
Look forward to your next post.
Chris
Hampstead
Thanks, Chris - it's funny that you posted this comment today, because this is exactly what Sal and I did with our compost tea this weekend! We had a couple of gallons in the reservoir under our envirocycle, and were thinking about pouring it on our tomatoes when it occurred to us that it would make sense to pour it in the rain barrel, since that's providing most all of our watering needs right now. Great call on also using it on our lawn. Your comment gave me the boost to get back to blogging. Thanks again!
Actually rather than putting it right into the rain barrel (which I suppose would work well too), we've been using our sprayer, rather than for chemicals etc., Evan Folds suggested 1 cup tea to 1 gallon water (and this is where the rain barrel came in), I mixed it in the sprayer (each batch, took I think 3 - 4 for back and front individually) and just walked the yard and pumped the sprayer. Also today I put some in the mixer cup of our mixer hose nozzle and did the garden areas. According to Evan, a year of inoculating the soil should really help bring it back to life, literally, making growing anything healthy a more feasible proposition.
Sausage came out great, high marks from my Italian dad (also named Sal), so I'm on the right track. Tonight it's mole with chicken breasts from Tidal Creek, broccoli from Don Gilbert and Black River (good week for broccoli), and most likely a Black River salad. Yesterday my wife made the CSA snap peas raw with a ginger dressing, fantastic.
Lots of great ideas bouncing around here - I'm sure this stuff exists in Cleveland but for some reason we never locked in til we moved here. Now to get Jackson's half & half at the coop!!!!
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