Cooking

In addition to gardening, I love cooking. Well I guess the truth is J loves cooking and I love baking. It doesn't surprise me that gardeners and chefs tend to be either the same people or run in the same crowds. Our biggest reason for joining a CSA last year and for starting our own container gardens this year was that we love to eat delicious food and the most delicious food comes from homegrown, super-ripe food.

We're pretty addicted to America's Test Kitchen and all of their related tv shows, websites, magazines and cookbooks. J got ambitious and decided to try an episode for Peruvian chicken that required us to buy equipment. But it was delicious! And doesn't it look impressive?

I'm planning to try posting more about our cooking adventures, especially once we have our own produce to cook with!

Worm Update

The worm composting had been going really well. They were eating my food scraps regularly, they didn't smell, and I was looking forward to having wonderfully rich compost for my plants in a month or two.

And then things went horribly wrong. First it was some small little white things in the bin. See them in the bottom corner there? Still not sure what they were/are.

Then the worms weren't eating quite as much as they used to.

Then it started to smell. Bad. Really bad. I babysit a lot and I've changed more than my fair share of nasty diapers. This was worse. Gagging was an involuntary response if you opened the bin even a tiny little bit.
I got on vermicomposters.com and got some advice. Apparently I was overfeeding and not putting in enough bedding for the worms to get away from the rotting food.

Someone recommended that I take out half of the rotting food and put it in my outdoor compost bin - since my landlord lets us have one. Then go out and purchase some peat moss - since I have lots of extra money. Then he said I should collect some dry, dead leaves, crumble them and layer it in - since dry leaves are so abundant in March and in my giant yard.

I shredded some more newspaper at work and overloaded the worm bin with it. The photo below is actually before I added the paper. Imagine the bin with about 150% more paper shreds in it.

A few days later they seem to be happier. The smell isn't 100% gone, but it's back in the house and doesn't smell if the lid is on. And the paper is slowly being moistened from the bottom and the worms are escaping into it.

Orchids!!

Photos taken at the Boston Flower & Garden Show.

Boston Area Events

TGIF!!! :)

I wanted to let anyone in the Boston area know about two great gardening events happening this weekend.

Saturday:
Gardeners' Gathering - Put on by the Boston Natural Area Network it's an afternoon of workshops. Schedule of workshops was put on their website this morning. And to top it off Mumbles will be there! Free

Sunday:
Spring into Gardening - Put on by Bountiful Brookline. This one is pretty expensive (by my standards anyway) so I'm not sure I'll be attending, but it looks great!

And to go with all this Springtime activity it's finally stopped snowing! That had better be the end of it. You hear me Mother Nature? You can take your 80+ inches of snow for the year and STOP now.

Have a great weekend everyone!

More tomatoes!

The AeroGarden is going nuts!! We even had to get creative and do some rubberband support system.

Living Room

Click on the photo to make it bigger and read what plants are currently taking over my living room. Some are only inside right now because currently, during the first week of Spring, it's snowing outside and is too cold even on the sunporch.

weekend Update - Part 2

So after Saturday's adventures in plant-ittude, it only seemed fitting to attend the annual Boston Flower and Garden Show. I showed you some of the scenes on Monday and I think I'd mentioned before that the theme was container gardening.

The "theme" wasn't obviously apparent by the displays, but they were beautiful nonetheless. I was excited about two of Sunday's lectures. One was about growing cacti and succulents. I was hoping to find out more about how to grow them from seed since my first try died a quick and painful death. The death may have involved me rushing and knocking the entire pot off the table... Anywho, the presenter was very knowledgeable and gave some great tips on making your own potting soil for succulents (1/3 regular potting mix, 1/3 sand, 1/3 vermiculite - don't use pre-made succulent mix as they don't usually have sand) and an interesting tip about rooting pieces of the plant that fall off (just stick them in a shallow container of wet sand), but the majority of the demonstration was about creating a nice display of grown cacti and succulents in a pot. By the way, how do you all pronounce "cacti"? I've always said it like "cack-tie" but the presenter said it "cack-tea". Is that a weird New England accent or am I wrong?

The other lecture was titled "Growing your Groceries." Which sounds perfect! Unfortunately I've been way too overzealous about reading books and online and forums and your blogs. It was a great lecture for those that haven't ever grown anything before, or for those that haven't tried growing vegetables. I actually snuck out the back early because I didn't think I wasn't learning anything new.

Then we walked around some of the vendors to see what they had to offer. Ok, so we really went hunting for free food samples. And we weren't disappointed. In fact, we ended up buying some delicious treats!

And I found some earrings. I recently got my ears pierced after they'd closed up, and I've been trying to only go for gold backed earrings and there was a gold/silversmith there who told me about his technique.
There was even a group of artists that specialize in plants. As someone who isn't artistic in the least, I'm always so impressed.

We spent another hour or so walking around admiring the displays! I thought it was a great way to spend a weekend!