Secret Garden Tour 2009

Presented by the Jefferson County Master Gardener Foundation

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Thank you for supporting the Jefferson County Master Gardeners' Secret Garden Tour 2009.

Funds raised from our sell-out event will go towards local horticulture-related grants and scholarships.

Here are a few photos to enjoy from the 10 gardens who participated in the tour.

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Garden # 1

Garden #1

Garden # 2

Garden #2

Garden # 3

Garden #3

Garden # 4

Garden #4

Garden # 5

Garden #5

Garden # 6

Garden #6

Garden # 7

Garden #7

Garden # 8

Garden #8

Garden # 9

Garden #9

Community Garden

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Recipes To Share From Garden #5

Compost will "cook" even in cold climes, less vigorously in the coldest part of winter, but it will still work. Use about:

-- 1/2 Browns: (autumn leaves, straw that you'd used for mulch or lining the rabbit cage, straw left over from the chicken house, etc.

Browns also include torn up corrugated cardboard, preferably not too colorfully printed. Plain is best.

Torn up, or not torn up, newspaper. Make sure it’s a newspaper that uses soy- based inks. I soak the cardboard in a big tub of water, which I have out near the compost heap. Sogging it up helps it go to work faster. Brown kitchen scraps, which include nutshells, eggshells, potato skins, etc.

-- 1/2 Greens. Grass clippings, if they were not treated with any chemicals, weeds (put everything but ivy and poison hemlock and holly in), all your Clean Green, kitchen scraps.

-- Some soil. Some is of course in there because the weed roots are going in there. I toss a little soil in addition now and then. A little sprinkling.

-- Some lime (which is calcium) A bag of lime will last a long time. I like to use different forms of calcium, but some don't use dolomite. Soft rock phosphate, Azomite, oyster shell flour, etc. Oyster shell flakes take forever. According to experts, you can best add calcium to compost just after the pile has heated. But I do it whenever I think of it, while I’m tossing stuff in there. Using a plastic flower pot which has drain holes in the bottom of it as a sifter, powder the compost every now and then (3 weeks? month? Weekly?) When ever you think of it as if it were a little dusting of light snow. Almost none. All over the top.

-- Manure. I use cow manure or horse manure. Very important that the cows aren't fed growth hormones. Horse manure has lots more seeds in it but I don't care because the compost will cook and very few make it through that heat. I have a pile of chicken manure and I throw some of that in sparingly too. By the time I use the compost, it's not hot any more.

-- Worm castings from your worm bin. Yum yum.

-- Live compost tea: Aerobically brewed compost tea. Yum!

You don't +have+ to turn the compost, but if you do, it works more oxygen into the mix and it cooks even faster. Beautiful Black Gold Compost to help your plants thrive and a tribute of gratitude to Mother Earth.

# Re: weeds. The heat from the compost destroys most of the weed seeds. If you're avoiding putting weed seeds in your compost, that may help, but remember, right now there are weed seeds in your garden soil from last year, from 10 years ago, from 15 years ago. Weed seeds cast from weeds on your land, ones from the lot down the street, weed seeds blown in the air from the next county over. Mother Nature has assured that these plants will survive The Apocalypse, along with rats and cockroaches. So dig them out, root and all, and throw them in.

GENTLE SLOW RELEASE ORGANIC FERTILIZER

4 Parts : cottonseed meal or fish meal

1 Part : lime or dolomite or oyster shell flour

1 Part: 1/3 rock phosphate

1/3 bone meal

1/3 kelp meal

WSU Extension of Jefferson County, 201 W. Patison, Port Hadlock, WA 98339
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