Why I Oughta...

There I was, just wasting time as I watched Caddyshack on tv a few weeks back and I see Carl Spangler prepping for his battle with the gopher. But, what's that in the sacks behind him?  Wait a second...that's...Milorganite.  Yeah...Milorganite.   Kinda interesting to see the old-school bags from 1979 that the pros down in Davie Florida were using, isn't it?   The time is near for my first application of Milorganite for the season - on/around Memorial Day .  

Last May I built out our three-bin compost set-up .  One active bin. One carbon storage. One nitrogen storage.  That was a year ago - and the bins were.... empty . I did a check-in on the bins in December and showed all the leaves that I had picked up from our yard, but the bins weren't that full.   Once the weather turned, I started to fill the bins with yard waste and started to see enough volume to fill the active bin.  I knew that I wanted to get a good batch 'cooking' this Spring, so I decided to install a passive aeration system a few weeks back .  When I did this pvc pipe project, I opened up the bin, cleared all of them out and started from scratch - both to get the right combination together, but also to 'turn' the stuff that was at the bottom as there was a lot of anaerobic decomposition going on down in the bottom. While I had the bins empty, I clipped some of the fence panels to allow for the pvc pipes to 'pass through' the front.  I di

I'm adding this entry to my [ garden diary ] to mark the date when I added this Jobe's Organic Compost Starter to our active bin and our tumbler in the Spring.  If you're not familiar with a compost starter, here's a good overview of what they are and what they do. There is some competing views on the value of a compost starter or booster, but if you believe the claims and buy one with 'microbes', then your compost starter - like the one above from Jobe's - is cultured to speed the decomposition of the materials in your pile. There are a bunch of people who say that they don't really do anything - but for less than $10, I figure...it can't really hurt, right?  It contains no synthetics and is made up of things that you can buy at a garden center like Bone Meal, Feather Meal, Potassium, and manure. I used this same product last year, but I don't think that I posted about it in the garden diary. Here's the listing on Amazon (note...

I was out walking one morning and came across this little garden railway.  It is not too far from our house, but I've never come across it before, despite walking around for the past few years.  It totally reminds me of the Epcot garden train that is just outside the Germany Pavilion - I've posted a photo of that railway here . This setup isn't huge - maybe eight feet by six feet and has a couple of switches and fie buildings.  There is no locomotive or rolling stock out, so I'm guessing that they run this seasonally.  The pond is a nice touch, too.  There's a little bench for kids to sit in on the far left of the photo above, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that this is a grandpa's house/railway that he runs with his grandkids. I *think* this is O Gauge - or thereabouts - and not a big garden train nor a train the size of Walt Disney's where you could ' ride aboard '.  There are a few cars from the Carolwood Pacific Railw

When we used to go to Michigan, we tried to incorporate Michigan-based foodstuffs into our rotation like this local Michigan beet sugar , local potato chips and these Koegel's hot dogs from (wait for it....Flint, Michigan).  Since we transitioned to Wisconsin, we've done some of the same - and I've chronicled both on-going and one-off Wisconsin foodstuffs like this local root beer , various cheeses ,  New Glarus beer and...of course... the King of Clubs cold pack club cheese .  There's a new entrant from the Usinger's Sausage company:  Mr. Baseball's Famous Franks Beef Frankfurters.  That's Bob Uecker for those non-sports folks (or...really....non Sports-movies people as my introduction to Bob Uecker was as Harry Doyle in the Major League Movie s and that Miller Lite Beer commercial - "must be in the front row! ").  He does the radio call for the Milwaukee Brewers , so it is a natural to see him involved in hot dogs, right?  Hot dogs and b

A few weeks back, I saw in Adam Kuban's Instagram Stories (he's the "OG pizza blogger" that I've posted about from time-to-time ) that he had purchased some new pans from Lloyd's Pans that included a long/thin pan that had a pretty unique shape.  I think...he then included a 'repost' (is that what we call them on Instagram?) of a story from TheKitchenWhisperer.Pizza where she was talking about how she was using similar pans.  Here's one of her posts .  And if you look at her feed, there are a bunch .  This one appears to be when she first acquired the pans .    Here's one of a full topped pie below: View this post on Instagram 🎵 “I’m feelin’ Hot! Hot! Hot!” This pizza was SPICY 🔥 in all the best ways! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I couldn’t let another day go by without using my 18” Long Pan from @lloydpans . A girl’s gotta eat after all! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Layers of 🔥🌶spicy banana pepper sauce, cheese blend,

Over the weekend, we experienced a mid-May late (and hard) frost.  It has been cold for a few days ( some are calling it a polar vortex ) and it sure doesn't feel like Spring around here right now.  We had ample warning on the frost - the local news was talking it up for a few days - so I sprung into action and tried to cover/protect as much as I could.  Anything that was budding/on the edge of flowering, I tried to protect.  That means the Rhododendrons and Disneyland Roses were covered.  I also covered our new Hellebores (that I seem to have failed to post about) and even attempted to cover *part* of the Japanese cherry blossom tree that was/is mid-bloom . But, I have far too much to cover everything and it seems that I've learned a lesson here:  the newly emerged, unfurled tips of Ostrich Ferns are far too delicate to deal with a hard frost.  See the photo above - these things were hit pretty hard.   This pair of ferns is located just to the west of the Gold Co