N&C Midwest: October 2018

Scorpio Rising wrote:

OhioGardener wrote:
  Drool, drool....

We're still picking cherry tomatoes every day or so, just not from the garden. When I cleaned the gardens, I cut off the tomato plants and hung them upside down in the mud room. The tomatoes are continuing to ripen, but there are getting to be less and less of them every day. Soon, too soon, we will be tomatoless....

This was my first year using the Texas Tomato Cages, and it made it really easy to cut off the plants just below the last branch with tomatoes on it, and pull them out the top of the cages.

Tell me more of these cages, maestro!  

I made the EPIC mistake of not planting my beloved Sungold cherry maters....was overrun with them last year, had A REACTION as I have been known to have, and planted zero.  Wah.   Those babies deliver.  And deliver, and deliver.  You get it. 

The Texas Tomato Cages are folding cages either 20" or 24" diameter (I have the 20"), and 6' tall. It keeps the tomato plants going straight up instead of out all over the garden.   They are redoing their web pages now, so there isn't much information available right now. But there page is: Texas Tomato Cages

You are right about the Sungold cherry tomatoes - we had 2 plants of them this year, and they produced over a quart of ripe tomatoes every day right up until frost killed them.

Today I put one of the Coffee Grounds Silos in place to start collecting Starbucks grounds for next year's gardens. Last year Starbucks was complaining that "nobody" picked up grounds during the winter months, so I decided to help them out. By spring I had one Coffee Grounds Silo full of uncomposted grounds, though redworms had entered the drum through the drain holes I drilled in the bottom and had replaced about 6" of the bottom with worm castings instead of grounds, and the 2nd Silo was about 2/3rds full. By mid-summer all of the coffee grounds were either composted or dug into gardens.

Worms love the coffee grounds!  That is basically my entire winter compost contribution.

Nice day here today, actually.  Rain on the way.  I am going to completely clean out the boxes this weekend.  We have had unprecedented rain here this year.  Just unreal.  Want to get my garlic in,but we will see!

I must learn to be careful what I ask for, since I might get it!  The nearby town has a leaf collection whereby all of the residents rake the leaves to the gutter and the city vacuums them on a specific dates. The city then takes them to the back of one of the parks to "compost" and be used to mulch the park trees.  I mentioned to a friend that lives in town about how I need more leaves to compost for leaf mold, and he said he has two huge Oak trees that he has to rake the leaves up and that he would be happy to bag them for me if I would pick them up. I told him I would love to have them, so he said he'd call when he had some to pick up. Today he called and said he had a "few" bags of leaves if I wanted to pick them up, and he'd get the rest of them this weekend. So, I took the truck down to pick up the leaves. The "few bags of leaves" turned out to be 35 garbage bags full of leaves, all neatly tied up and stacked on the driveway waiting on me. I had to make two trips to get all of them. He said he would probably have 20 more bags by the time he was finished.

Guess my shredder will get a workout now.... 

OhioGardener wrote:I must learn to be careful what I ask for, since I might get it!  The nearby town has a leaf collection whereby all of the residents rake the leaves to the gutter and the city vacuums them on a specific dates. The city then takes them to the back of one of the parks to "compost" and be used to mulch the park trees.  I mentioned to a friend that lives in town about how I need more leaves to compost for leaf mold, and he said he has two huge Oak trees that he has to rake the leaves up and that he would be happy to bag them for me if I would pick them up. I told him I would love to have them, so he said he'd call when he had some to pick up. Today he called and said he had a "few" bags of leaves if I wanted to pick them up, and he'd get the rest of them this weekend. So, I took the truck down to pick up the leaves. The "few bags of leaves" turned out to be 35 garbage bags full of leaves, all neatly tied up and stacked on the driveway waiting on me. I had to make two trips to get all of them. He said he would probably have 20 more bags by the time he was finished.

Guess my shredder will get a workout now.... 

   That is great news!

I've seen posts on that before, DorothyG, but never had a problem with them when we had our own Oak trees.  According to the Oregon State University Extension Service, "Although oak leaves have an acid pH (4.5 to 4.7) when they are fresh, the breakdown products are neutral to slightly alkaline."  So, I suspect after they have composted over the winter with a few bags of Starbucks coffee grounds, they won't be much of a problem. They'll be mulch next spring.

sanderson wrote:I think the only problem with oak leaves in compost piles, is that it takes longer to break down.  They will eventually break down.

That is true, but I have noticed that if I run them through the shredder, and then mix them with some nitrogen source, such as coffee greens, they tend to break down quite a bit over the winter and are ready to use for mulch the next summer.  But, if they aren't shredded they tend to last forever.  When we had a bid oak tree in our front yard, before a tornado tore it down, there would uncomposted oak leaves in the flower beds for years.

Interesting!  Nothing to add.  All I have are maple or linden leaves...but great talk......