Preserving a high internal temperature in your compost is crucial for rapid composting. With our compost thermometer, you’ll find it easy to keep an eye on your compost's heat and thereby ensure that bacteria are working at the most favorable temperature. You’ll also save time and energy because you won’t do any unnecessary turning or tumbling of the compost!
Bacteria are responsible for breaking down food scraps, and they work most optimally at 120° to 160° Fahrenheit. These bacteria also need fresh oxygen, which is why it’s important to turn or tumble your compost, without exposing it to too much cold air. With our compost thermometer, you only turn the pile when it needs that boost of fresh air since you’ll know when the compost is cooling down.
Our thermometer will also help you avoid scalding and let you know when the compost is finished. With it's 20 inch long stem, this compost thermometer can reach deep into the compost pile and help you spot danger signs.
Benefits of our Compost Thermometer include:
· 1 3/4" easy-to-read dial
· All Stainless Steel Construction
· Very accurate (+/- 1% full scale)
· Plastic No fog lens
Visit www.BestComposters.com to order this and other helpful and time saving gardening tools!
Friday, April 30, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Not So Common Chive
I walked in my garden this week in our BestComposters.com Lawn Aerator Shoes so that all that wonderful moisture that we’ve gotten all week can make it’s way down to the roots of our lawn. It’s a really easy way to do something nice for your lawn! Beforehand, we’d spread a little of our compost as a dressing onto the lawn as well, and the nutrients will be absorbed more quickly with the aerating too. As I did my aerating and checked out what damage the storms might’ve done in our yard, I was overjoyed to see my alum schoenoprasum, or Common Chive, poking up through the Spring snow. This hardy and easy to grow perennial is one of two planted in my garden years ago when I discovered that my family enjoys snipped chive on baked potatoes. I personally love the sweet pink blossoms and look forward to adding them to my salads for a blast of color and splash of mild onion flavor. The chive plant is a member of the same family as onions, garlic and leeks and is lovely whipped into softened butter and added to mashed potatoes or on grilled meat. It can be added, as well, to sauces, soups and salads, and is especially yummy in chicken or tuna salad. The vibrant green pleases the eye as much as the flavor enhances the salad!
You can plant the seeds of the chive plant now in your garden, or anytime in a pot to set on a sunny window sill. Once it has bloomed (don’t forget to add those gorgeous clover-like blossoms to your salads!), the tops should be snipped all the way to the soil. You’ll be pleased to see them shoot right back up and provide you with more chives all through the summer and early fall.
Being from the garlic family, the flavor of chives is comparable to garlic, but can be savored by those of us who are sensitive to garlic without concern. And like garlic, chive has therapeutic qualities. It won’t keep the kids from Twilight away in a ring around your neck, but will aid digestion of rich foods, protect your respiratory system, and has antiseptic value.
Hints:
1. Freeze fresh chives by mincing the shoots, spreading in a flat casserole dish and flash freezing. They can then be stored in plastic freezer bags.
2. When cooking with chives, add them at the end of cooking.
3. Make chive butter by creaming 4 TBSP chopped chives with ½ cup softened butter. Add ½ tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Roll into a cylinder in a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate for approximately one week.
You can plant the seeds of the chive plant now in your garden, or anytime in a pot to set on a sunny window sill. Once it has bloomed (don’t forget to add those gorgeous clover-like blossoms to your salads!), the tops should be snipped all the way to the soil. You’ll be pleased to see them shoot right back up and provide you with more chives all through the summer and early fall.
Being from the garlic family, the flavor of chives is comparable to garlic, but can be savored by those of us who are sensitive to garlic without concern. And like garlic, chive has therapeutic qualities. It won’t keep the kids from Twilight away in a ring around your neck, but will aid digestion of rich foods, protect your respiratory system, and has antiseptic value.
Hints:
1. Freeze fresh chives by mincing the shoots, spreading in a flat casserole dish and flash freezing. They can then be stored in plastic freezer bags.
2. When cooking with chives, add them at the end of cooking.
3. Make chive butter by creaming 4 TBSP chopped chives with ½ cup softened butter. Add ½ tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Roll into a cylinder in a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate for approximately one week.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Time to Clean Up Those Water Features in Your Yards!
In honor of Earth Day, and every other day of the year, BestComposters.com provides FREE SHIPPING on all our BiOWiSH™ Products! They are all 100% organic, fast acting and completely safe for humans and the environment.
When you first apply BiOWiSH™ Aqua, the biology of the water will be bought back to life. This can cause short-term darkening of water as bottom sludge gains buoyancy. This is all part of the accelerated decomposition process. Over the course of 1-2 weeks you will see the water becoming progressively clearer, blue green algal growth will be removed and sludge and waste accumulation will be eliminated.
BiOWiSH™ Aqua is used in many commercial applications where it is directly applied to animal’s drinking water, aquaculture production water, crops, hydroponics waters and general water treatment.
In the age of global warming and concerns for our Mother Earth, you won’t find a more environmentally safe, fast and effective way to clean your water features than BiOWiSH™ Aqua. This is the positive and beneficial choice to make.
Now is the perfect time to get your backyard water features, ponds in shape for the summer season. You’ll enjoy your pond so much more when it’s sparkling clean and smelling great! It will amaze you the way BiOWiSH™ Aqua will clean out the sludge build up from decomposing leaves, bird droppings and other detritus that accumulates over time!
When you first apply BiOWiSH™ Aqua, the biology of the water will be bought back to life. This can cause short-term darkening of water as bottom sludge gains buoyancy. This is all part of the accelerated decomposition process. Over the course of 1-2 weeks you will see the water becoming progressively clearer, blue green algal growth will be removed and sludge and waste accumulation will be eliminated. In the age of global warming and concerns for our Mother Earth, you won’t find a more environmentally safe, fast and effective way to clean your water features than BiOWiSH™ Aqua. This is the positive and beneficial choice to make.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
More Garden to Love
I am awfully glad that we have used our tumbling composter all winter long, as well as a static compost heap to which we've added BiOWiSH™ Compost Boost. What this means is that we have a great supply of garden ready 100% organic compost! We really need all the compost we've made because we are adding to our garden. Out in front of my house will be a garden bed that'll be 4' x 3', and then a larger raised bed in back that'll be 12' x 4' and 16" deep. And I almost forgot the Garbage Can for Potatoes that we'll need to fill as well. So I'm sure that we will use all of our compost just getting those two gardens and garbage can filled with top soil and compost.
Our tumbling composter made composting super easy with it's turn handle and sliding door for adding materials. I make sure that I cut up my kitchen scraps into one inch size pieces...the more sides that can start decomposing the faster the process will be. We add to our kitchen scraps the leaves that were gathered from last fall that we've stored, along with shredded cardboard, a handful of garden soil to add microorganisms and coffee that our local coffee shop has given to us. Giving the tumbler a turn every day or so keeps the air circulating and the microorganisms happy. We check to make sure that the moisture content inside the tumbler is ideal...a handful should feel like a squeezed out sponge...damp but not dripping.
Throughout the fall and winter, as we continued to add composting materials to our tumbler and static heap, I occasionally would wonder what we would do with all the compost that I knew we were making! It seemed like an enormous amount of materials. But as the BiOWiSH™ Compost Boost and microorganisms worked their magic, the materials turned into more compact, rich brown soil-like compost. And the compost itself isn't the only benefit: both my husband and I were pleased at the amount of water we were saving by not running the garbage disposal. We really saw a difference in our last water bill. But now that I think of all the garden that needs the rich nutrients that our compost will deliver, I'm doubly glad that we've made all that compost. I don't think we'll have any to spare for neighbors without composters or compost piles, but I have a feeling we'll have vegetables to share!
Happy Composting!
Our tumbling composter made composting super easy with it's turn handle and sliding door for adding materials. I make sure that I cut up my kitchen scraps into one inch size pieces...the more sides that can start decomposing the faster the process will be. We add to our kitchen scraps the leaves that were gathered from last fall that we've stored, along with shredded cardboard, a handful of garden soil to add microorganisms and coffee that our local coffee shop has given to us. Giving the tumbler a turn every day or so keeps the air circulating and the microorganisms happy. We check to make sure that the moisture content inside the tumbler is ideal...a handful should feel like a squeezed out sponge...damp but not dripping.
Throughout the fall and winter, as we continued to add composting materials to our tumbler and static heap, I occasionally would wonder what we would do with all the compost that I knew we were making! It seemed like an enormous amount of materials. But as the BiOWiSH™ Compost Boost and microorganisms worked their magic, the materials turned into more compact, rich brown soil-like compost. And the compost itself isn't the only benefit: both my husband and I were pleased at the amount of water we were saving by not running the garbage disposal. We really saw a difference in our last water bill. But now that I think of all the garden that needs the rich nutrients that our compost will deliver, I'm doubly glad that we've made all that compost. I don't think we'll have any to spare for neighbors without composters or compost piles, but I have a feeling we'll have vegetables to share!
Happy Composting!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Growing Potatoes in Containers
You may remember, or you may need to check back in the archives for a January blog of mine about growing potatoes in a garbage can. In that blog, I talked about how I loved the idea of growing my own potatoes without having to dedicate so much of my garden space to it. Growing potatoes in a garbage can solved the issue of space requirements, and also watering issues, since hubby is going to place the can under one of our hanging tomato plants that he's set up with a drip system! Clever, isn't he?
So I went out and got a new garbage can for my trash and am ready to drill air holes in the sides of the old garbage can (AFTER I clean it thorougly with BiOWiSH™ Bin Wash. That 100% organic cleaner will remove all the odors and odor causing bacteria from my old trash can so that I can start this grow with a nice clean can.) But then I read an article in my Friday, April 9, 2010 The Denver Post Grow insert called "Potato box yields scads of spuds" and it gave me pause. It seems that this fella, Greg Lutovsky, out of eastern Washington state has developed this 4 foot square spud box that can provide a really impressive yield of potatoes! Mr. Lutovsky lists five steps to succes in this process:
1. Select late-season potatoes. My hubby says this is vitally important because short-season potato varieties produce a limited amount of potatoes and then the plant dies off.
2. Plant in multiple layers; like lasagna, put in a layer of soil, a layer potatoes and additional side panels as the vines grow a foot above the soil level, making sure to leave at least 2/3 of the vine above the new layer of soil.
3. Wind a soaker hose through each successive layer of soil and taters so all layers of roots get even moisture.
4. Provide the potatoes with a medium of loose soil, like compost mixed with potting soil.
5. Don't overfertilize! He recommends a 5-10-10 fertilizer instead of a standard plant food. I think I'll stick to my organic compost that I make in our tumbling composter that our website offers, so that the potato plants will be continuously nourished by the compost.
This all sounds like simple, sound advice. And frankly, harvesting the vegies sounds like a walk in the park! The only trouble is that we'd already planned on a garden addition this spring, adding a raised garden in our backyard so that: a) we have more space to grow vegies and b) we have less lawn to mow (!). This addition will entail a trip to the hardware store for wood, funds for the wood, time planning out where exactly to put it in our yard and how to build it, laying down newspaper over the grass to keep it from growing into the planter and filling it with compost and soil. This is a large enough investment of time and money to have me putting the Potato Box on hold until next year. So if you're interested in growing your own potatoes with a limited amount of space and effort harvesting, and you like woodcrafting, Google "Build a Potato Box" or check out the diagram available on lifehacker.com.
So I went out and got a new garbage can for my trash and am ready to drill air holes in the sides of the old garbage can (AFTER I clean it thorougly with BiOWiSH™ Bin Wash. That 100% organic cleaner will remove all the odors and odor causing bacteria from my old trash can so that I can start this grow with a nice clean can.) But then I read an article in my Friday, April 9, 2010 The Denver Post Grow insert called "Potato box yields scads of spuds" and it gave me pause. It seems that this fella, Greg Lutovsky, out of eastern Washington state has developed this 4 foot square spud box that can provide a really impressive yield of potatoes! Mr. Lutovsky lists five steps to succes in this process:
1. Select late-season potatoes. My hubby says this is vitally important because short-season potato varieties produce a limited amount of potatoes and then the plant dies off.
2. Plant in multiple layers; like lasagna, put in a layer of soil, a layer potatoes and additional side panels as the vines grow a foot above the soil level, making sure to leave at least 2/3 of the vine above the new layer of soil.
3. Wind a soaker hose through each successive layer of soil and taters so all layers of roots get even moisture.
4. Provide the potatoes with a medium of loose soil, like compost mixed with potting soil.
5. Don't overfertilize! He recommends a 5-10-10 fertilizer instead of a standard plant food. I think I'll stick to my organic compost that I make in our tumbling composter that our website offers, so that the potato plants will be continuously nourished by the compost.
This all sounds like simple, sound advice. And frankly, harvesting the vegies sounds like a walk in the park! The only trouble is that we'd already planned on a garden addition this spring, adding a raised garden in our backyard so that: a) we have more space to grow vegies and b) we have less lawn to mow (!). This addition will entail a trip to the hardware store for wood, funds for the wood, time planning out where exactly to put it in our yard and how to build it, laying down newspaper over the grass to keep it from growing into the planter and filling it with compost and soil. This is a large enough investment of time and money to have me putting the Potato Box on hold until next year. So if you're interested in growing your own potatoes with a limited amount of space and effort harvesting, and you like woodcrafting, Google "Build a Potato Box" or check out the diagram available on lifehacker.com.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Getting Started
Gardening is a lesson in self-sufficiency that can begin in early childhood. I had always helped my dad with the Spring planting in our backyard garden. Even though it wasn't extensive, the care of plants helped me understand about nurturing. Dad taught me that if you are careful when the new life begins, and provide the necessary elements of water, sun and nutrient soil your efforts will pay off in beautiful blossoms all summer long. We also grew rhubarb, which I was in charge of harvesting by the time I had lost my first baby tooth. Mother would remove the leaves, wash it, and cut it into one inch pieces. I helped. Then she'd boil it for what seemed like hours until it had the consistency of a watery applesauce. Then the frozen chunk of strawberries would enter the pot, to be boiled down to reduce the liquid. When the sauce had thickened, it would come off the stovetop and I would be in charge of adding the sugar and mixing it in. Of course this also meant that I was the taste tester! Seems like we always had a container of rhubarb sauce in our refrigerator in the summer.
When my folks moved from their single family home to a townhome, my dad sorely missed his garden. He found out that there were plots available at a community garden in our area. He got himself a plot and began his experiment with growing vegetables seriously. I was at college by then and didn't help with the soil preparation or planting. I don't remember if he had seeds that he started inside, or store bought plants. But I do remember that he loved to spend time in his garden, watching over and nurturing the plants, visiting with fellow gardeners, and then harvesting the bounty. Neighbors all around benefited from his garden, since he'd planted way more than he and mom could consume. Mom was never that domestic, so there wasn't a thought given to preserving the crops. Just like his folks had, he and mom enjoyed gathering their fresh picked vegies and cooking them up the same day!
Community gardens are a great opportunity to meet fellow enthusiasts, learn new techniques and get your gardening fix. The produce you grow can feed your family, and if you're not into preserving the excess, it often can be donated to local food banks to provide for those in need. Get some kids involved in your gardening. Help them learn about the soil, the elements required for growing plants, nurturing, how eating right can make you feel better, and different waysto care for others.
Happy Composting!
When my folks moved from their single family home to a townhome, my dad sorely missed his garden. He found out that there were plots available at a community garden in our area. He got himself a plot and began his experiment with growing vegetables seriously. I was at college by then and didn't help with the soil preparation or planting. I don't remember if he had seeds that he started inside, or store bought plants. But I do remember that he loved to spend time in his garden, watching over and nurturing the plants, visiting with fellow gardeners, and then harvesting the bounty. Neighbors all around benefited from his garden, since he'd planted way more than he and mom could consume. Mom was never that domestic, so there wasn't a thought given to preserving the crops. Just like his folks had, he and mom enjoyed gathering their fresh picked vegies and cooking them up the same day!
Community gardens are a great opportunity to meet fellow enthusiasts, learn new techniques and get your gardening fix. The produce you grow can feed your family, and if you're not into preserving the excess, it often can be donated to local food banks to provide for those in need. Get some kids involved in your gardening. Help them learn about the soil, the elements required for growing plants, nurturing, how eating right can make you feel better, and different waysto care for others.
Happy Composting!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
