Gardening

New Garden post... here: Garden IN, Gardenin!


Cassandra, Cassandra, quite (Hmm, nothing rhymes with...well shoot, there's goes that idea.) How does your garden grow?

When I purchased my home, I was lucky that I'm only the 3rd owner in the house's 30 year existence. The sad part about this, is that the original owners had the home for 26 years, and the people they sold it to lost the home shortly after purchasing it. I can tell from digging around in my backyard, that at one point my backyard must have been a thriving mecca for plants and landscaping. However, over the years, things have fallen to dirt and had not been maintained. I was told the garden area was used by the previous owner as a fire pit. A FIRE PIT. As in, burned, scorched earth. Soil, turned to dirt. However, this once gorgeous area screamed "Hey! I once was a garden! You could totally use me again! I promise to try to grow for you! There's probably even irrigation under all this junk!". Well, in my 1st time homebuyer delusions, I learned a lot that first year. Many weekends were spent scaring some of the neighborhood children with my yelling at broken water lines. I re-enacted scenes from Little Shop of Horrors, and gave that garden everything but blood (although the thought did cross my mind that this hunk of dirt I had affectionately named "Audrey 2" may eventually require human sacrifice to get going into soil again...).  Now that the soil is fixed, and my garden is back to almost fighting condition, I wanted to share a few things I continue to do to keep my garden growing.

Eggshell Composting:
I'm an avid composter, and try to recycle every kitchen scrap I can. One of the ways I use homemade soil nutrients is to save, dry and crush all of my egg shells for compost and soil. I dry the egg shells on a few sheets on paper towels overnight, then crush them using a mortar and pestle, and have been storing them during the winter in one of my large blue mason jars. When planting season rolls around, after our last frost, and before we till up the garden, I will add my egg shells to the garden soil. If I'm able to save a lot, I will plant my tomatoes with the crushed egg shells, as this helps to boost the calcium many tomatoes often lack. Free, organic, and non-wasteful.. sounds good to me!