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Make your own compost

How to make a compost bin.
How to Make a Compost Bin

Compost is easy to make, and gives you great soil in the spring.

First make the bin. Reserve a small corner of the garden for composting, about three feet square.

Next, put up stakes on all four corners of the square. Make them a few inches taller than your fence, just to keep your composting area secure.

Third, put some chicken wire around your stakes, looping it through them when you need to. There's your outdoor compost bin!

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As the food scraps build up, keep them in a bucket under the sink or next to the trash can. Toss the food scraps on your compost heap.

You'll want to add a few other ingredients to your heap to insure that composting takes place.

Make sure that you don't put any meat in the bucket or compost heap, or you will get raccoons, rats, stray cats, and other rodents climbing into your compost for a snack!

Turn your compost about once a month to let air circulate. Then every spring, you get rich soil to use in your garden!

Lastly, to keep away birds you can sprinkle cayenne pepper (in ground form) over the leaves. Cayenne pepper can be found at most food stores.

Think of what’s coming…
Salsa à la Maddy!

Thinking about what’s coming in the months ahead will help you keep doing all this work. I love to make salsa with almost all ingredients coming from my garden.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium tomatoes, chopped
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1/4 onion, finely diced
• ½ green bell pepper, finely diced
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, minced
• Black pepper to taste
• A couple dashes of hot sauce (optional)

Directions:

Chop the tomatoes, pepper, and onion on a cutting board and place in a mixing bowl.

Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Serve with chips.

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Live and Learn

Two years ago, I wasn't much of an experienced gardener. My family and I decided to plant pumpkins next to the squash in the spring.

About two weeks later, we were delighted to see that our pumpkins were growing fast.

Two weeks later, they were still growing.

In August, they were still growing. Our pumpkins had gone "divide and conquer," spreading their vines all across the garden, across the paths, and up the sides of the fence. They were taking over the entire garden!

My mother tried to "turn the plants around" by switching the way the vines were facing. This didn't prove very useful, and our pumpkins continued to grow.

The plus side, however, was that we had a bumper crop (lots!) of pumpkins that year. And we learned a valuable lesson: "Give the pumpkins their space."

While it’s good to know the common mistakes gardeners make, you will make mistakes along the way. If you can accept your mistakes and learn from them, there is no doubt that you will be a master gardener one day.