Figure One: NBD, just holding a turnip THAT I GREW!
Today I weeded, amended, and turned a row in the garden, and found that not ALL of our turnips had failed! Look at that perfect root vegetable (pictured without its largest leaves, which I immediately pulled off and handed to Hotter to give to the rabbits). And just like that, for the first time our garden fed our bunnies (I have already planted a ton of bunny-fodder that'll replace hay in their diets when this bale runs out).
The cover crops are already sprouting. Yeah, the ones I planted like, the day before yesterday. I don't even know.
I was reading about rabbits and vermiculture, and had a moment of "wait, I paid good money for some worm poop, and I have rabbit poop..." and the next thing you know I was improvising a worm box with some alfalfa stalks the bunies had scorned layered with organic potting mix and rabbit poop...we'll see. If nothing else it'll make feeding our wormsnake easy when it's super-cold out. It would be awesome if I could make my own potting mix next year with MFA compost and worm casings, along with store-bought peat moss, and vermiculite.
Work was fantabulous today and I have picked up an additional side-job, so all in all things here are going well. It's nice.
I am thinking about leasing a plot in my community's public garden. I would get a 15' x 15' plot, access to a compost bin and water. No pesticides or herbicides are allowed. Most of my experience with gardening is from helping my grandfather in his large garden in SC as a child, and he was a firm believer in better living through chemistry so he used a ton of synthetic pest controls. I also don't know much at all about starting things from seeds (we usually just stuck the seeds in the ground since it was so much warmer there). Can you recommend a few books or anything else that you have found especially helpful that you would recommend to a new gardener? I am quite experienced with flowers, roses especially, but I'd like to eat what I grow!
Posted by: amanda | February 3, 2012 at 08:32 AM
Yeah! It's nice to hear about too. Three cheers for the... turnip. (I was going to write turnip queen but I couldn't recall WHY that was a thing so I googled & decided against. But yeah for homegrown veggies!)
Posted by: krlr | February 3, 2012 at 08:58 AM
That's nice, honey, :-)
Posted by: Hairy Farmer Family | February 3, 2012 at 01:25 PM
glad things are going well!
i've been MIA for a while, moving & getting a new job will do that.
so far i think i hate the new job... but that's just because management is really, really stupid...
Posted by: Satan | February 4, 2012 at 08:39 PM