Topics List for Vermicomposting

This is an excellent link page for pretty much everything you ever wanted to know but didn't know to ask

Vermicomposting Topics List

Another Vermicompost Forum

Here's another one:
Vermicomposters.com:
http://vermicomposters.ning.com/

I am particularlly interested in their page on flow through bins
http://vermicomposters.ning.com/forum/topics/diy-flow-through-bins-a

A Couple Books That I Want

I already have a year round vegetable gardening book on order.

Now I want:
Aquaponic Gardening

and

MiniFarming

Vermicomposting

Or, Worm Composting.

I own the book "Worms Eat My Garbage". I've read it and I've had worm bins and stopped.

Recently I've started up again.

Now here is a forum for Vermicomposters:

Vermicomposting Forum:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/verm/

Some Cherry Tree Links

Here are some helpful links for cherry tree information.

How to Grow Cherries

How to Grow Cherry Trees in Illinois

Which Cherry Trees Grow Fruit

Facts on Growing Fruit Trees

University of Illinois Extension's "Small Fruit Crops for the Backyard"

Growing Cherry Trees

More specifically, this link is to a pdf of a Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service paper on growing cherry trees in Indiana. I don't live in Indiana, but I don't live far from there.

Growing Cherry Trees in Indiana

Why cherry trees all of the sudden? Well, I've begun to try to eat healthier and I've included dried cherries in my diet as opposed to chocolate or other candy. And I've been sleeping better. It seems that cherries are a super fruit that contain melatonin and anti-inflammatory enzymes that help joints.

Veggies in Winter

I just sent a link to my husband about a book on year round vegetable gardening.

In case he has trouble opening it, I thought I'd link it here too:

The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

Looks like a good one.

Indoor Food Gardening

Winter is coming. So my mind is turning in this direction.

Plant and indoor vegetable garden

Growing Food Indoors: Herbs

How to Grow an Indoor Vegetable Garden

Nifty Food & Plants to Grow Indoors

4 Easy Herbs to Grow for an Indoor Garden

Indoor Winter Vegetable Gardening by Kate in Colorado

If you make ink, you might need paper

I know, I know. This has nothing to do with gardening. My black walnut tree is dropping walnuts and I'm starting to gather them and am seriously thinking of making ink. But what to do with that ink. You need paper. And I looked up how to make homemade paper. I knew it could be done. I just never knew you could do it with dryer lint.

How to make paper out of lint

How to make make paper out of dryer lint

And just for fun here's some recipes for other uses of lint.

Dryer lint recipes and  patterns

I had heard before that you can make paper out of denim.

How to make gift paper out of old denim jeans

And here are paper making basics:

4th grade paper making

Black Walnut Ink

Yep, you read right. I saw this youtube video and just had to look at it and keep it. It might be nice to know how to make your own ink.

Black Walnut Ink

Here's another version

Making Walnut Ink

And just for fun, I thought I'd add another way to make ink

Making Ink from Berries

Harvesting Black Walnuts

We have a black walnut tree in our back yard and it already takes up too much of our ground since not much is able to grow under it. But I would like to know how to harvest a few.

How to Harvest and Crack Black Walnuts

Garden Recycling of 2-liter Bottles

This one will be harder for me to do since no one in my house even drinks soda. But I still like it because is recycles.

Building a Soda Bottle Garden

In Depth Look at Houseplants, Living Walls, Air Quality

Probably more than you ever wanted to know but still helpful to have around info.

House Plants, Living Walls and IAQ

Living Wall from wikiHow

I like this one because it comes from several different angles and gives the names of the best indoor plants.

How to Make a Living Wall

Hypertufa

Martha Steward has a recipe for Hypertufa. I will have to compare it to the other recipes that I have.

Martha's Hypertufa

And just for fun, Martha had a recipe for stone pots.

Stone Pots

Houseplants and Indoor Air Quality

Actually NASA made a list of the top 15.

Top Houseplants for Improving Indoor Air Quality

Another Version of the Raised Bed Made from Pallets

This one doesn't have the hoops nor does it have the spaces between the boards.

How to build a raised bed from pallets

Another Raised Bed Made out of Pallets

This one also has a hoop feature.

Old Pallet into a New Raised Bed!

Ideas for the slope out front

It might be nice to plant my slope with flowers rather than have to mow it. Plus, hubby dear doesn't like my random perenniel bulbs in the lawn.

Turn a Sloping Yard into an Array of Colorful Flowers

Raised Beds from Pallets

Since my husband is always wanting to build new raised beds and lumber is expensive, here is:

Building Raised Beds From Re-claimed Pallet Wood

Urban Hoop Garden

I've seen these around when I'm driving and wondered what they called them and how they made them. Now I've found a video on it and wanted to post it here:

How to build an Urban Hoop Garden

Old Tires in the Garden

My husband actually has a couple of old tires out back as mini raised beds. He has summer squash in them.
I've just stumbled upon videos of other people using old tires for gardening:

Tire planting stand

How to cut a tire and make it into a garden pot
(tire sculptures in this one also)

How to make a Rubber Tire Flower Pot

Tire Garden Experiment
(lots of unique ideas in this one)

Gardening in Straw Bales

My husband grew some of the best peppers in straw bales last year.

Here's one "how to" for straw bale gardening:
Straw Bale Gardening: Start to Finish

Kale

"Kale is one of the most worthwhile crops you can grow. It is easy, undemanding, tolerant of heat, drought, wet, cold, and poor soil. It can be eaten at the small leaf stage in salads, mid-size leaves are good steamed, and large leaves can be chopped and stir fried or put into stews. One especially good dish is lentil stew with leeks and kale."

So says the this article on kale at Gardens on the Go located here:
Growing Kale

Here's the Farmer's Almanac on Kale:
Kale -- Farmer's Almanac

And this from The National Garden Association
Edible of the Month (from the Edible Landscaping section)

Zone Five

Yep, that's the zone I live in.
Here is a planting schedule for zone 5
Zone 5 Vegetable Planting
If you live in a different zone, you can look it up at the above linked site

Off-Grid Self-Watering Container Garden

This one looks interesting. I'm going to watch the rest of it and then find the two videos that were supposed to come before it:

Off-Grid Self-Watering Container Gardening System

Growing Pumpkins

This looks like the place to start learning about pumpkins:

Growing pumpkins

I really think that I want a pumpkin patch. I hear that deer leave them alone which might make them suitable for our  country property.

Companion Planting

This is something I'm still new at. Gardens Ablaze has three charts that can be reached by visiting their Companion Planting page:

Companion Planting

On the left side of the page, you can find, under related topics:

Companion Planting for Pest Control

Plants that Attract Beneficial Insects

and

Companion Planting for Better Yield

Whatever you are looking for, these places are a good place to start.

More Garden. Less Lawn

Some people like flowers:

Reducing Lawns with Small Gardens

Some people prefer Vegetables:

Some People Trading Lawns for Veggie Gardens

Then there's the edible landscape:

How to Create a Beautiful Edible Landscape

How about Hyssop?

Hyssop is another herb I'm interested in. I'm not sure which I will try first, Hyssop or Jasmine. But I'd really like to try one of them soon and the other, shortly afterwards:

Tips for Growing Hyssop

How to Grow Hyssop

How to Grow Hyssop (The Herb Gardener)

One Straw Revolution -- pdf

Here is the reason I have this blog. So that when I find thing I want to refer back to but don't want to put it in my already overwhelmed favorites list, I can put a link to it here and I will always be able to refer back to it when I have more time.

Here is a pdf of "One Straw Revolution":

One Straw Revolution

Vertical Gardening in Great Britain

I stumbled across this video on vertical gardening from different angles and thought it was interesting.

Vertical Gardening

Lasagna Gardening

I own two books on Lasagna Gardening. And I love them both. But I can't get my husband interested in it. I think it's just because it's too easy. I don't know. But here is one video on it building lasagna beds:

Lasagna garden

In her second video she wants to put top soil on her lasagna beds. She doesn't need to even though her gut tells her to. You see, it's just too easy.

Curious About Jasmine

The title says it all. Part of me would love to try to grow Jasmine. What can I say? I like fragrances. But I know nothing about Jasmine. Not even where you could buy it to grow it. But that's okay for now. I have a lot to learn about Jasmine before I try to my hand at growing it. I like to give special plants like this, a fighting chance in my garden.

A Grower's Guide to the Jasmine Plant

Bottle Tower

Some time in my life, I hope to be able to try this, even if it is just for fun and to see if it can truly be done:

Building a bottle tower for a container garden

Pallet Mania

I saw pallets behind a local store and was thinking about fences. So I looked it up on the internet and, yes, you can build a small picket fence from pallets. You can also build an outdoor chair, other outdoor furniture, a daybed, and so much more.

How to build a picket fence out of old pallets

Pallet Fence aka Inexpensive

A pallet chair , I made all by myself

Pallets as building materials

Pallets used for outdoor furniture

Ashley's pallet daybed

Wood Pallet Creations

Pallets and more pallets

Pallet Herb Garden

I can't seem to get away from Pallet Gardens right now. Here's one more that encorperates plastic bottles, kind of like the Horta Vertical video I linked earlier this week:

Build an Herb Garden Out of a Shipping Pallette

Selecting Pallets for Gardening

Since we're on the subject of pallets, here's a little more info from a guy who doesn't seem to like landscape fabric:

Building a Vertical Pallet Garden

I Love Lavender

I planted some in a container this spring for the first time. I wanted to learn about it, watch it grow, and perhaps even become a Lavender expert, if possible. To help myself in this new endeavor, I've located some blog posts by Sara Elliot that I want to link here for my future reference:

Growing Lavender

 Understanding the Different Types of Lavender

Keeping Lavender Indoors

Propagating Lavender

Growing, Keeping, and Propagating Lavender

Another Take on the Pallet Garden

Here is another Pallet Garden. But this gal comes at it from a different angle. No wait. It's still a vertical garden. She just doesn't fill the whole thing with soil but rather makes individual pockets. It's very interesting:

How to Plant a Pallet Garden

Strawberries on the Wall

I thought this one was real interesting, easy, and cost effective:

Growing Strawberries on Your Wall

Natural Gardening

Now for something completely different.

As I mentioned in my introduction post, my husband and I are in possession of both a home in town with limited space and some disturbed and/or undeveloped land out in the country. So I'm looking at polar opposites in gardening. What we do in town is highly controlled and not considered natural. But with limited space we have little choice.

But our land out in the country, old quarry land, what we do in town will not work with what we have in the country. We haven't done much so far mostly because we don't know what to do. So I'm open to many ideas at this point.

One idea:
One Straw Farming
One Straw, pt 2

The Basics of Natural Farming
The Basics of Natural Farming, pt 2

Horta Vertical... What?

I found this youtube video and wanted to link it here so I can find it again. It's all in Spanish so I have no idea what they are saying. But it has excellent pictures of a vertical gardening system that might actually be doable and maintainable for me.

Horta Vertical

Using Risers in Gardens

Sometimes the ingenuity of third world gardeners amazes me. I like looking a the way they 'recycle' things that we throw away:

Risers in Container Gardening

Vertical Pallet Garden with Chef Janie

Here is an idea that I saw on youtube. I do not know how practical it is for us at this time. But I really like the idea and I love hearing gardening ideas from chefs since the majority of the gardening my husband and I do is for food:

Building a Vertical Pallet Garden with Chef Janie

Intro Post

My husband and I garden. We love it. We also like thinking outside the box.

Right now my husband is doing both traditional gardening and some Square Foot Gardening.

We have a house in town with limited space so we like space saving ideas for gardening. I've been looking a little closer to vertical gardening and thought I might like to try different ways to garden up since we don't have a lot of room to spread out.

But we also have some undeveloped land out in the country that I'd like to figure out what to do with and I've noted a few things that I'd like to try out there so it seemed limiting to just make this all about vertical or small space gardening.

I have this blog mostly to just keep notes for myself. But if any info on here is helpful to anyone else, that's fine with me.