Pretty Peppers

Hoppin' jalapenos!!

My pepper plants have done ok this summer. I've been rewarded with a few nice sweet peppers and some very pretty (but wimpy) jalapenos.

These pepper plants are very obliging -- because they sure haven't had any help from the weather. It has been a carpy summer for heat-loving vegetables.

I made a delicious chicken dish with the pictured peppers -- oven-roasted chicken legs with lime juice, onions, garlic, sliced plum tomatoes and jalapenos. The jalapenos added nice flavor to the dish, but there was no heat. :(

Here is the first harvest of compost from my worm bin! I really need to get a life because it's ridiculous how excited I got to finally use this crumbly rich goodness in my garden. I added some of it to the planting holes for 3 'Husker Red' penstemon, and then added the rest as a top-dress for my viburnum sargenti 'Oonondaga'. It's been so much fun having the worm bin. So far I have been composing about half of my kitchen waste. Once the bin gets cranking and the worms start reproducing, I'll have several drawers going at a time. My bin has 3 drawers. According to the Urban Worm Girl, the worms do their lovemaking in the roof of the bin. Sure enough, when I take the roof off and look inside, there are teeny baby worms running around in there. There's a little orgy going on in the corner of my kitchen!

In other garden news, here is an amaranthus 'Love Lies Bleeding". It's about 5 feet tall, but is bent over so that it resembles some kind of strange fluffy red animal -- like a red wooly mammoth or a big, fancy rooster. It had been laying prostrate all over its neighbor, that nice sedum 'Autumn Joy'. You couldn't even see the poor sedum. Dan brought me a handy-dandy bungee cord from the garage and I tied the amaranthus up to the fence. It's very important to have at least 3,476 bungee cords laying around, because you never know when you will need one to restrain a red wooly mammoth or a big fancy rooster.

Dog Day Evenings

Now that mid-August is here and it's a bit shady in my yard by 7:00 p.m, I can manage to get some weeding done after work. When I get home from work in early summer, it's way too sunny and hot in my yard to do anything resembling labor. I'm a wimp in the heat. I guess I could garden in a skimpy bathing suit, being refreshed by the sprinkler, but if anyone saw me my property values would plummet.

Anyway, I have been pulling weeds these past three nights, and I can actually glance at certain portions of my garden without screaming. Progress!

Here is my beautiful little euonymous fortunei, Green and Gold. It's 2 years old, and thriving.

The Earthboxes have been amazing -- lots of vegetative growth, and the tomatoes and peppers are finally coming ripe. They don't taste that good, though, very bland -- like the ones you buy at Dominicks over the winter. This summer of 2009 was just too cool for the 'maters. We hardly had any hot, sunny days. This summer has been very comfy for humans -- we have used air conditioning twice in 3 months -- but the vegetables aren't happy unless they are basking in the hot hot sun.

Notice the cayenne pepper thrown about with complete abandon. It seems to be working keeping the squirrels at bay a bit -- I have been able to leave some red tomatoes on the vine to fully ripen! But the squirrels will probably grow immune to the cayenne, once they realize that it will not kill them. And I say "too bad it won't kill them!" Don't tell PETA where I live........

Note to self for next year -- squirrels don't bother pepper plants! No more tomatoes for me, I'm afraid. :( I'll have to look for something else to plant in my Earthboxes. What else do squirrels spurn?

Worm News Update! Time For a New Working Tray

It's been a little over two months since I got my worm bin, and the worms have been busy munching away. They have just about finished their labors on the current working tray. There is a little bit of bedding left, but the tray is now mostly castings (worm poop). It's time to make a new working tray for them, and to harvest the rich compost that they will leave behind when they move to their new digs. The worms can't live in their castings, because it is toxic for them. I think I can hear 1,000 little voices cheering.......
I have assembled all the materials that I will use to create the new bedding for the working tray. I have newspapers, corrugated cardboard, twine, an egg carton, and lots of clean paper towels that I have used for things like blotting excess moisture from lettuce. Such an exciting life I lead!


Everything gets cut up in to small pieces. The Urban Worm Girl told me that the worms love to hide in the ridges of corrugated cardboard, so I will throw a bunch of that in, along with the twine which I have cut into little pieces.


Next, the newspaper is cut into strips and added to the tray.

Add some torn paper towels and give everything a good spritz with water. The bedding should be as moist as a wrung-out sponge.

In goes some cut-up egg carton, and everything gets mixed together. The tray should be about 2/3 full of moist bedding.

Now I'll add a few handfuls of topsoil and give it a few squirts of water. Later on when I boil some eggs, I will add crushed, dried eggshells. It's important to give the worms a bit of grit to help their tiny digestive tracts. Keeps 'em regular!

I've saved some vegetable scraps, and I will chop them into smaller pieces to help the worms ingest them. Looks pretty tasty!

Bury the food in one corner, and cover it up with the bedding. This step is important to prevent unpleasant odors or fruit flies. The worm bin should smell fresh and clean, and it will if the food scraps are properly buried under the bedding. Mine has smelled great so far when I take the roof off -- very woodsy.

Now the new tray is ready to go on top of the old tray, and I have placed it on top and put the little roof back on.

In about 2 weeks, most of the worms should have migrated up to the fresh food and bedding in the new tray, and I will be able to collect my reward. At the end of 2 weeks, if there are still a lot of worms down in the old tray, then I will take that tray and move it to the top, take the lid off and shine a light on it. The worms can't live in light, so they will hopefully migrate down into the new tray.
This has been a fun and interesting hobby so far, and I feel like I am doing a little more of my share to help the environment. My garden will thank me, too!

Squirrel Warfare

Warning -- the following post may not be suitable for younger and more sensitive readers -- not to mention the squeamish, the faint of heart, or members of PETA.

We have an over-abundance of squirrels in the vicinity of our house and garden. There is a small office building right across the alley that has a large garbage dumpster. Squirrels hang out there, get plenty to eat, and nest in the 2 trees at the back of my house. There are many, many, many, way too many squirrels living within a few feet of my garden. Dan and I are getting ever more defensive and bloodthirsty on behalf of our slowly-ripening tomatoes. Squirrels, heed my warning and stay away if you know what's good for you.

The tomatoes have not liked our cool summer, and are turning red very, very s-l-o-w-l-y. As we are downtown at work all day, the squirrels have a field day with my Earthboxes. They watch from the trees until they see us leave for the train, and then they scamper down the fence and snatch the only ripening tomatoes off the vine. Then -- and this is the worst part -- they take ONE BITE and leave the tomatoes on the fence. It's heartbreaking! My hate for those little furry bastards burns with the heat of a thousand suns! This is war!!!

As my first line of defense, I tried cayenne pepper in order to make my tomatoes unpleasant to their little furry noses. Dan's mom, Ann, got us a huge plastic jar of it at her neighborhood fruit market, and I've been liberally sprinkling the cayenne on the black plastic mulch of the Earthboxes and also a little on the tomatoes. It seems to help a bit, and I was able to pick a few puny orange tomatoes before the squirrels got 'em. A paltry victory.

Anyway, like I said, we are growing increasingly bloodthirsty. I know I will probably shock and dismay a few folks, but here goes. We have been using our Have-a-Heart trap (which is quite ironic), and when we trap a squirrel we drown it in a trash can full of water. There, I said it! When I say "we" do this, I am speaking quite loosely. Ok, I'm lying through my teeth. Dan, of course, does all the trapping, drowning and disposing. I hide in the house, with my fingers in my ears, going "la la la la la", pretending that he is not out in the backyard murdering the local fauna right before my neighbors' eyes. We have helped 3 squirrels pass into the great beyond this week, but I don't think it will do anything toward putting a dent in our over-abundant squirrel population. We'd probably have to trap and drown 10 squirrels a day to make a noticeable difference.

However, we are discontinuing our squirrel executions. We just don't have the heart for it any more, not after what happened this morning. It was around 7 a.m., and Dan went to check the trap. There was a squirrel in the trap, and he looked mighty nervous, as well he should. Dan fetched the garbage can from the alley and filled it with water from the hose. I was, of course, hiding in the kitchen, being lots of help. All of a sudden I heard Dan yell, and I looked out the back porch window to see him slamming the plastic garbage can's hinged lid down on the squirrel, who had somehow gotten out of the trap while it was in the water and had climbed up the inside of the garbage can, attempting to make a break for it. It was now half in and half out of the can, squirming mightily. Dan was holding the lid down on the squirrel, and yelling for something to whack it with. I ran to give him the garden spade, purposely looking away from the squirrel. He took the spade and told me to hold the garbage can lid tightly down on the squirrel while he clunked it on the head. I did NOT like this idea one bit, but what could I do. I got behind the garbage can, as far away from the squirrel as I could get. Twisting my head away, and with my eyes tightly shut, I pushed down on the top of the lid while Dan swung the shovel. WHAM! I immediately felt a bit of something hit the side of my head, and I screamed bloody murder as I ran a few quick circles around the yard. As it turns out, it was only dried dirt that had been caked on my garden spade, not flying bits of squirrel. It took about a half hour before my heart rate returned to normal.

In the meantime, Dan was calmly making sure that the squirrel was out of its misery, bagging it up and disposing of it in another of our garbage cans. After this very harrowing experience -- admittedly much more harrowing for the squirrel -- we are putting the trap away and giving up the fight. To any squirrels that may be reading this, go ahead and steal my tomatoes. Mock me from your leafy nests. After all, I can get plenty of nice, ripe tomatoes from the farmer's market, with a lot less violence.