Why I Oughta...

Another day, another post showing some of the use of biosolids in the yard and garden.  This time....it was a couple of half-full trugs of the organic material in the front of the front porch bed and a little bit scattered in the lawn.    I last showed using it in the backyard .  But, I've put the bulk of biosolids down this late Winter/early Spring in the front.  Parkway and main lawn.  Bu, also in the front porch beds. Below are a couple of photos showing a bit of biosolids scattered in the front of the bed (first photo) and the two trugs that I used.   The reason for applying it to the bed was because I had a bunch of clay that I had dug up that was on the top of the soil.  When those clay clumps dried, I kicked them to break them up and then mixed in this organic material.  You can also see a little bit in the lawn, too. What is my plan for the next batch of biosolids?  I was thinking of running them straight-down my property line in front - to sort of....boost up that 'dom

Back in last October (2022), we had the large Norway Maple tree taken down in our front yard.  The guys who removed the tree chip'd a bunch of the smaller stuff and then hauled all of the larger material back to the far reaches our yard .  I had them put as much of it on the rack that I had back there to begin to dry out.   You can see what the original pile of rounds looked like in this post if you scroll all the way down to the bottom.   Almost as soon as the tree was taken down, I began to split some of the rounds .  Here's a post from November showing some of that work .   I was curious about the moisture content and how long Norway Maple would take to season - as some online suggest it is 'fast'.   By December, I had blown through most of the kiln-dried firewood that I had delivered, so that free'd up the racks by the side of our house.  I decided to move some of the recently-split Maple firewood up there .   Now...five months later (October --> March), wh

The online pizza world is afire with Chicago Tavern pizza these days.  It seems to have culminated this past week when internet sensation (and...someone who can go by just one name) Kenji published his months-long research project into *real* Chicago pizza .  I've been working on what I call "Chicago Thin" for the better part of 10 years.  On-and-off.   It wasn't Kenji's piece that moved me, but the guy he referenced in the story - John from Crust Fund - is who has been my northstar on this Chicago Thin journey.  I wrote about my latest attempt here in early February .   Both Kenji and John use a method called 'curing' - where they roll out the dough into 'skins' and let it age.  Sometimes in the fridge, sometimes not.  What's the goal with curing?  A dry, blistered bottom.   I had a little bit of a 'blistering' breakthrough recently.  See below for a photo showing these little blister bubbles that I've been chasing for a while.  Th

Last week, I came across the initial delivery of some common trees in nursery containers at the orange big box store .  These trees were the first real sign of Spring in terms of plant material that arrived, but I knew that more was on the way.  This past week, I wandered out to the parking-lot nursery and saw a few boxwoods in various sizes.  Knowing that I want to add A LOT of boxwoods to a few spots this year, I figured I'd see what they have on hand. First up is Green Gem.  I have a trio of these in the back .  They also have a variety of Green Mountain boxwoods in 3, 2, and 1 gallon sizes.  I have one of these.  At least... I thought I had one of these .  But, it bronzed up pretty good, so I'm not sure if it was mislabeled.  This year, they have a larger one - 3 gallon. The third variety that they had (on-hand) is Green Mound.  That's new (to me).  See below for the one gallon nursery container for $10.98. Green Mound stays pretty small - two-to-three feet all and wid

Having used biosolids to topdress the front parkway and a little bit of my lawn out front, I have now moved on to adding a bit of this organic material to our backyard.  This comes after I used the Downers Grove municipal biosolids in vertical mulching and by adding a little bit to our compost bin.   I've gone back-and-forth on whether (or not) to order a 3 yard delivery of biosolids, but in the meantime I've been going over to the pick-up station and filling 12 gallons-or-so of the material to use a little bit at a time.   As for the backyard, here's a few photos showing how I started with 10 gallons of biosolids as a soil amendment.   Below, you can see the 2 buckets and the trug - as well as the rake I use to spread it around.  I take each bucket and walk around and sort-of 'drizzle' the biosolids out.  You can see how that gets applied in the second photo below.  This is when I use that metal rake to pull it out of the piles and spread it a bit more to help it b

Over the past few weeks, I've been working with biosolids in various ways - topdressing parts of the lawn and parkway as well as using it in a vertical mulching strategy in our front porch bed .  But, I also wondered....what would happen if I amend our compost storage bin (the non-active, non-mixed storage bin) with some biosolids in an attempt to being to sort-of 'pre-mix' the storage bin.  This bin is MOSTLY last Fall's leaves with a little bit of grass clippings mixed-in...as I used the bagger on my mower to collect and 'chop' the leaves.  This is also the bin where I throw all my garden clean-up waste (like...the recently removed ornamental grasses) and our kitchen scraps.   This past weekend, I took two gallons of biosolids and dumped it on top of this storage bin.  See below for how much I added (not much): I used my spade to sort-of mix in the biosolids with the grass blades and it quickly disappeared from the top of the bin.   What's the goal?  To h