At last, at last!  I can reveal to you the compost bin!   It’s been finished for a couple of weeks, but I finally got my lazy butt out there and snapped a few photos the other day and uploaded them.  Sometimes I wish this could all happen magically, don’t you?  :-)
Here it is!

It took my wonderful husband a few days to finish it.  The directions we found online weren’t 100% followable, so we had to improvise a bit as we went.  We also had to dig up some dirt and some old pavers so that the bin had room to “breathe”.

It’s made of cedar, which is rot resistant.   The wood is a little pricey, but we know it will last, so it was worth the investment.  The sides are made of some type of metal chicken wire fencing we got at the local hardware store.  We’re still deciding if we want a lid for the bin yet.

We’ve already started loading it up with some leaves from last fall, and kitchen scraps.

The heat from the sun, and moisture from hot humid Iowa weather, will lead to natural composting of the materials, hopefully resulting in a nutritious compost we can use in our gardening next year.

We situated the double compost bin on the back side of our garage along the alley and next to our strawberry patch.  That way it’s out of site and also get’s a good amount of sun.

For a while we had been collecting kitchen scraps in an old ice cream bucket and stashing it on our back porch until it was full and ready to be taken out to the bin.  But this was both inconvenient and smelly.  After a little research, we bought one of these to make things easier, a bit more stylish, and less smelly

Seriously, it’s the best $35 I’ll ever spend. It’s got a filter to cut back on the smell, and the lid hides any gross old food you don’t want to see. Plus, it looks kinda snazzy, doesn’t it?  I definitely highly recommend it.

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There’s are most recent fun building project.  What have you built lately?

For the past few weeks, we’ve been gathering kitchen scraps in a small pail and depositing them every few days in our “compost bin” – a paper yard waste bag behind our garage.  Our temporary solution is starting to get a bit soggy and is probably going to start composting any day itself, so it was high time we get to work on building a true bin.

After scouring online searching for plans, we found two that seemed doable and adaptable to our space, this one from This Old House

It included very good measurements and instructions, but we needed a two-bin solution, plus the amount of cedar wood to build it was gonna be kinda pricey.

We then found these plans, which use wire mesh for the walls and wood cut down on cost.  We really would have loved to have two bins, but we just don’t have the space for it AND the several perennial herbs we’d like to plant nearby.

After some careful calculations by DH and a trip to the hardware store (and the town brush dump to dispose of our neighbors yard waste so we could borrow his trailer to transport wood) we were on our way to building our compost bin!

Pictures of the finished product to come!  I’m super excited to compost again.  It’ll be a great addition to our a garden next summer, especially since we’re hoping to do raised beds for our vegetables.  I’m hoping by next spring we’ll have enough compost ready to work it into both our vegetable and flower gardens.  Plus, I just love the idea of returning the “green” and “brown” waste to the ground and reusing it to grow more beautiful and yummy treats.  Far better than it ending up in a landfill!

Our yard has turned into a lake. We’ve had such a rainy last week and a half that our entire yard is soggy and wet. I’m pretty sure our vegetable garden is drowning. And a lot of the soil in our flower garden is washed away.

Sun, where are you? Please come back!
Love,
Your friendly DIY gardner

Look what we started a few weeks ago!

Aren’t they cute?  Here’s a few more:

These are all flowers – larkspur, marigolds, zinnias, salvia, impatiens and a few others.These zinnias came up REALLY first – they were the first ones to germinate and sprout up out of the dirt.

Here we have some of the veggies and herbs: carrots, leeks, tomatoes, peppers (spicy and bell!), spinach, lettuce, cilantro, basil, parsley, dill, and a few other things I’ve forgotten.

I’m really excited to start planting stuff outside in our garden.  Some of the seedlings haven’t fared very well.  I’m fairly certain our bell pepper mix isn’t going to bear any fruit – we still haven’t seed anything sprout yet.  But everything else is looking good!  It’ll be great to have fresh veggies and herbs right in our garden this summer.  Not only will they be fresh, but we know EXACTLY what kind of care has gone into their production.  No chemicals or weird stuff going on here!  Plus, it’s WAY cheaper.  The seeds were under a dollar for one packet, and we have PLENTY to spare.  Just a little TLC and some water is all they need.  Hopefully

It was a beautiful balmy spring day here in Iowa today – we reached 86 degrees!  I’m pretty sure that must be a record for April 1st.  It felt like summer and I actually had to use the AC in my car for a bit.  There were wild fires in a few of the corn fields as I was driving home from a quick trip to northern Iowa – with all of the wind and heat, we’re on fire alert in a few areas of the state.  I’m pretty sure the rain that is expected tomorrow will be more than welcome!

We’ve started our seedlings for our garden – it looked like this last year when everything was planted:

This year, we have a few surprises in store   Not only are we starting everything from seed (which we’ve never done before) but we’re also starting some flowers as well!  And eventually, I’m hoping to plant some hydrangeas, peonies, and some bulbs too.

But first, we have to prune this sucker:

We’re yanking him out, or at the very least, severely limiting his take on the yard.  He’s gigantic.

What will be in his place?  These:

I just have to figure out what kind of hydrangea, order them, and oh yeah, yank out the crazy monster taking over the south side of our house.

How about you, how is spring in your neck of the woods?  What are your garden and yard plans?  Got any tips for flower gardening or hydrangeas?

The heat finally broke in the midwest, and we were able to spend some time outside this weekend without suffocating because of the humidity.  It was a beautiful weekend!

We spent most of Saturday outside working in the yard.  And it needed the work!  I don’t have any recent before pictures, but this is what it looked like at our last walk through before we made an offer on the house (pic is from mid-April)

You can see a small garden in the center of the picture near the back corner of our property.

It’s easier to see from here…

Except, there’s no more playground.  And there’s leaves and you can’t actually see any of this from our windows anymore.  It’s like Swiss Family Robinson!

Anyways.  The garden had become pretty overgrown with weeds because our seller pretty much stopped doing anything with the yard once we had our offer accepted.  I don’t blame her, I woulda done the same thing.

We inherited a lot of dandelion weeds and Creeping Charlie.  I had no idea what this weed was until my mom told me about it when she was here visiting last week (she got the whole weeding process going – thanks mom!)  Let me tell you – it is the most annoying thing EVER!  Check out this wikipedia article.  It’s basically like mint, it spreads quickly and reroots itself as it spreads.  When you get down on the ground, it just looks like cute little clovers or something.  But if you look closer, there are all these tiny  little vines way down by the dirt that snake through your yard/garden, connecting each leaf.  When you pull it up, sometimes you can get strings of the weed several feet long!  You can kill it with a solution of Borax (which can be toxic to other plants/animals if it’s too strong) and some commercial herbicides.  Or you can do the dirty work and weed it by hand…only to have it grow back almost instantly.

We decided to go the cheap route and do it by hand for now and just get it out of our gardens first.  I spent all day Saturday pulling up weeds in our little 6×16 ft garden.  I have the sunburn to prove it!

Our wonderful neighbor wondered over to check out all the action, and one of them generously offered to let us use his gas powered tiller!  Sweet deal!  So DH got an arm workout and tilled the garden real good!  We took a trip to the local farm store and farmers market on Saturday and Monday and got a bunch of vegetables and herbs.  On Sunday we pulled out some of the loose roots and grasses, and finally, on Monday night we planted everything and gave it a good watering.

We’ve got basil, chives, rosemary, lettuce (leftover from the seller), tomatoes, some type of mystery squash (also leftover), red, yellow, green and thai peppers, and jalapenos, plus some cabbage!

It’s a little late in the season to plant a vegetable garden, but we didn’t care.  All of the plants were half off and we have no idea what the soil is like, so we just thought we’d go for it.  I’m going to get some more herbs this weekend to put in a pot – mint, oregano, parsley & cilantro!  It will be fun to see all of this stuff grow.