Vegetable Gardening for the Lazy

...problems with growing vegetables is all the labor involved–starting seeds, composting, watering and watching out for bugs. It’s worth it, of course, for the tasty rewards, but many busy folks are simply too exhausted after work or corralling the bambinos to pick up a shovel and garden. For those who’d rather sit on the porch with a martini than laboring in the field, and we often include ourselves in that category, perennial vegetables can put foo...

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A Warning About Straw

...tch chicken droppings! Straw is a very inexpensive and useful material for composting, mulching and animal bedding (we use it for all of these purposes). If you use it for mulch you’ll probably get some seeds that will germinate, but I’ve never found it to be a big problem in a small vegetable garden. I get my straw from the feed store, but you can often get it for free from yuppies on Craigslist who have bought it to give their parties the Hee Ha...

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Straw Bale Gardens

...mical’s Clopyralid. This is a type of herbicide that is not broken down by composting. It’s not even broken down in an animal’s digestive track. It can linger in organic matter for a year or two, stunting the growth garden plants. (See Killer Compost). Despite this risk, we’re going to go ahead and grow some food in bales anyway and see what happens. We’ll also be testing our straw. So, off we go into another gardening adventure/research pit! So h...

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Lady Urine, Water Conservation and Halfway Humanure

...psychological leap. (It’s actually a great stepping stone to full humanure composting, if that’s your goal). The material you collect can go straight onto your regular compost pile–no special treatment required–and it’s a valuable resource. So, to sum up this meandering post, while Erik is “watering” the straw bales, I think I’m going to be collecting my nitrogen inputs in the dry toilet. (That it, unless I trot myself down to the AutoZone and get...

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