Autumn Leaves - Blow Then Suck

On my less than .5 acre/2,024sq meters of property stand 10 large trees. Half are in my front yard. There is a beech, an ash a dogwood, hickory and a huge Norway Maple. The leaves that fall from these trees are vital to the my composting for the garden.

To start the composting process, I blow the leaves into piles. The leaves are then vacuumed, which shreds them as they pass the impeller inside the blower/vacuum. They are then hauled out to the back yard and dumped into the compost pile.

I started about noon to collect the leaves one bright and warm November day. Four hours later, I had the leaves from the main portion of my front yard blown into a serpentine pile across the lawn. 

There were also two piles in the road that I hoped wouldn't be blown away by the vehicular traffic. Big trucks, especially, have a way of relocating leaves. My back ached and my hand was showing signs of a blister. That was it for me until morning.

In the morning I changed the leaf blower over to a vacuum. The part of the blower that took in air the day before became the part that took in leaves. The part of the blower from which blew air would blow leaves.

Originally when I purchased the leaf blower/vacuum, a shoulder bag was supplied to collect the shredded leaves. A bag that became heavier as it filled with shredded leaves. The collection bag soon became cumbersome. If I needed to change hands, which happens often, I also needed to change shoulders. The bag needed to be emptied frequently, too, because it didn't hold that much volume. 

I didn't put up with that for very long. I returned to the home improvement store, from which I purchased the blower/vacuum, to look for an alternative to the shoulder bag collection method. There I found a different manufacturer had a collection kit that included a length of flexible hose connected to a cloth that fit over the opening of a trash can.

Here is how it works. The blower vacuums the leaves, shreds them and sends them through the flexible tubing depositing them into an upright trash can. A can that could support all the weight. It would also hold five times the volume of the shredded leaves as would the shoulder bag. That meant there was five times less emptying of the bag. Pretty simple. I bought the kit.

Leaf Vacuum System

There was one problem. The parts from the two manufactures weren't compatible. I had to jury rig them to work together. That was taken care of with the help of duct tape.

I put the two openings together - hose to vacuum. Two long strips of tape were placed 180º around the tube from each other across the joint. Then several longer strips were placed radially around the tube and vacuum to create the seal and hold down the initial two strips. It has worked for over ten years, so far.

In four hours the serpentine pile and one of the piles in the road were vacuumed, shredded, hauled to the back yard and dumped into the waiting bin. Shredding the leaves sure does reduce the volume. It also accommodates and speeds their composting.

The next step is to get bacteria to do their job making compost.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Transplanting Tomato Plants Into The Garden

Let's face it, starting seeds indoors is not an easy project. Although I have done it in the past, I didn't have the time this year or for the last five years, for that matter. So I, and a large majority of gardeners, will purchase plants to transplant into their gardens. This post will deal with transplanting tomatoes.

 

Here are two tomato plants I purchased at Lowe's on sale in late April at 2/$3.00. They are Bonnie Plants brand. These are both cherry/grape size tomatoes that I am planting in the top of my two potato towers. 

To reiterate, I filled the potato towers with shredded autumn leaves that spent the winter atop my square foot garden plot. In early March I started to compost kitchen wasted into the pile of leaves. The leaves were partially composted when I added them to my square foot plot. The leaves that weren't used in the plot were placed directly into two towers made from wire fence material with cloth lining the towers to contain the leaves and potato plants. I also drove 1/2"/12mm lengths of rebar into the ground to stabilize the towers. The towers were planted with potato seeds in layers  6"/ 15cm apart with the last layer 12"/30cm thick atop the last layer of potatoes. That last 12"/30cm will be where the cherry/grape tomatoes will grow.

Here is the top of the first tower I constructed. I created a well in the center of the shredded leaves and filled the well with some soil mix from last years hanging pots.

Remove all the last years plant remains and brake up any clumps of soil mix before placing the mix into the top of the tower.

Create a new well in the soil mix in which to place the tomato plant. One plant per tower.

Take a tomato plant in hand and remove it from its pot. The Bonnie Plants are in peat pots with a plastic label around the top. I cut off the label and removed the peat pot.

Bonnie Plants advertises the peat pots will decompose and are therefore more ecologically sound. Maybe so, however, the roots were pot-bound, as you can see in the above photograph. Leaving the roots in this condition will keep the roots growing in a circular pattern. That won't be good for the plant. That is why I remove the peat pots.

The roots need to be either unwound or if they are so intertwined, cut. New roots will grow once the plant is in its new soil.

Next I pinch off most of the lower branches of the plant. The reason is to place the plant deeper into the soil. Sunlight and air movement (read breeze here) will dry out the soil surface. Planting deeper allows the roots to keep moist because they are not near the surface of the soil that is likely to vary in moisture content.

Tomato plants are special when it comes to roots. All those hairy looking fibers growing straight out from the stem will become roots. The deeply planted stem will grow more roots from those hairy looking fibers allowing the plant to take in more moisture and with it, nutrients. Nutrients are good for plants as well as people.

By pinching off the lower stems I will plant the tomato at least 2"/50mm deeper.

Once the tomato is where you want it, fill in the depression with more planting mixture. Then it is important to water each and every transplant. Make sure the soil is moist through and through by burrowing down with your finger.

Clean up, for you are finished. Water each plant 1gal/3.78l per week, keep the weeds pulled and wait for those delicious tomatoes to turn red or yellow or striped or black ...

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Garden Planning 2012

I am in the midst of planning my garden plot for 2012.  The plot covers only 16 sq ft of area.  For that reason I need to plan carefully to get the most production.  

Last year I dug and planted a 4' square foot garden plot.  I removed a great deal of rocks and large stones from the soil.  I added sand, vermiculite, perlite, blood meal, super phosphate, calcium and composted manure.  When I was finished extracting rocks and stones, digging, turning and racking, the garden soil was level with the existing lawn.
My ground is mostly rock with just an inch or so of topsoil.  Back in the late 60's when my house was built, the builder scraped all of the top soil from the land before building the homes.  Just one inch or so of top soil was returned to cover the sub-soil after building the house.  I dug down two feet into the lawn for the garden plot.  I removed all of the rock and screened the soil through 1/2" hardware cloth.  Added the above soil amendments before I began to plant.

2011 Garden Plot Plan

Magnetic orientation of plot

I divided the plot into 16 - 1' squares, four wide by four deep.  I used 1/2" rebar and other supports on which I strung twine to vertically support the tomato vines.  I sunk one plant in each square except the corn which I seeded with 4 plants per square.

I didn't have enough money to purchase more soil amendments nor did I have the physical energy to increase the amount of soil to mound it above the lawn level.   This proved to be a big mistake.


In May there were two long spells of rainfall.  With each rainfall the plot flooded because of the rock and dense clay structure of the surrounding soil.  The garden soil looked like quicksand.  Many of the plants drowned and had to be replaced.  The growth of the plants that survived, was retarded.  I should have cut a drain into the lawn or built up the soil at least 8" above the lawn level, but I didn't.


In the fall, in an effort to remedy the soil problems, I used a leaf blower to pile all the fallen tree leaves on my front lawn.  I then reversed the blower and sucked the fallen leaves into a trash can.   The blower shredded the leaves and reduced their volume by 80%-90%.  I then surrounded the square plot with 4' high wire fencing and dumped the shredded leaves onto the plot.  The pile was 3' high and 4' square, 1.33 cubic feet of dry, shredded leaves.  I expected the leaves to naturally compost over the next several months.  Sometime in late February or early March, I will turn those leaves into the first 1' of garden plot soil.  That action will add nutrients, retain water and raise the soil above the lawn level.  Hopefully, raising the plot will eliminate the water drainage problem.


All of that in due time.  Now I need to plan carefully and judiciously.


©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved