Quick Look: Potted outdoor plants in the winter.

Sometimes you can't bring all of your potted plants inside for the winter. Many endemic plants, meaning they grow naturally in your region, need to experience the seasons for themselves. Perhaps dormancy is required for new growth on some, or others need to be cold stratified to produce fruit. 

Whatever the reason,  they stay out in the cold. However, being in pots puts their roots at more risk to cold than if they were in the ground. The plant can be adapted to the cold, but the roots are used to being in the somewhat insulated dirt.

The easiest way to ensure a safe winter is to mulch around the pot. You've probably seen tree nurseries bury their pots in mulch above grade. This works great if you have the mulch!

What I like to do is to is stick my pots in the ground where I'm building a new raised bed. I often use yard waste in the fall to prep my spring beds, and this ends up being a great spot to stash my pots for the spring as well!

Below are a few pics of pots I have in one of my new beds. I have an outdoor bonsai Cyprus, several sapling maples and birch trees, raspberry propagations, and strawberries I didn't get into the ground yet. This is also a good option for late-season clearance shrubs from DIY centers that you can't get planted on time, as well as your potted herbs!

Get Started: Mushroom Bucket Farm

Today I'm replanting my Mushroom bucket.

Here's what I'm using.

Bucket Garden, Sawdust, Straw, Water, Spent mushroom block

Building the bucket garden is easy. I drew a grid on the bucket of 4"x4" and drilled 1/4" holes at every intersection. I also drilled a slightly larger hole at the bottom in the side to drain excess water. Ensure you get a bucket with a tight-fitting lid. I used one from an unsponsored hardware store who will remain anonymous. Seriously, don't ask, I'm not telling!

The growth medium I'm using this time is straw with a mix of soft and hardwood sawdust. The straw will colonize much more quickly than the woodchips I usually use, and the sawdust should provide more food for the mycelium. 

These "Spray and grow" mushroom kits are getting very popular right now. Many companies offer them, some I like more than others. You can probably find these in many superstores, especially at Christmas. They are easy to use and an absolute blast to do with kids! When they are done producing, you can use them in a bucket garden to get a whole new 'flush' out of your crop! This one is removed from the box because this company also doesn't sponsor me. Well, nobody does, but if you would like to, hit me up! Seriously...

I simply mixed my grow medium with a gallon of water in a wheelbarrow.

Remove your mushroom block from the plastic and break it up into pieces: a good mix of fine particles and some larger chunks. This block is mainly sawdust and coffee grounds which the mycelium has completely colonized. All the white you see is the body of the fungus. The mushroom you are familiar with is just the fruiting body; a reproductive, uh, gland that is responsible for spreading the spores around much like, um, the thing that it looks like... I'm moving on now.

Now all you do is build a lasagna starting with a layer of straw and alternating between layers of your mushroom mulch and more substrate. Make sure you have enough of the straw to fill the bucket to the top. You'll need to eyeball this to ensure you have enough mushroom mulch to inoculate each layer, but don't stress. If it is healthy, it will grow all through the bucket.

Put enough material in here so that you need to squish it down with the lid. You don't want any headspace if you can help it as mushrooms will try to grow there, which isn't the goal.

I finish up by pouring another can of water all over this to ensure uniform moisture. I let it sit at a slight angle outside or in a tub for 30 minutes so that all the excess water drains out.

Stick this in a warm, dark place, and in a couple weeks, mushrooms should start growing out through the holes in the sides. Keep it moist as mushrooms are mostly water. Harvest your mushrooms when they stop doubling in size daily or follow the instruction with the original block.

Enjoy!

Quick Look: Winter Rosemary

This is my first quick look, a short post that I just want to share so that others may benefit from what we do at Third-Acre. 

This is my outdoor rosemary shrub. It's three years old and started as one of those live herb plants you can get in the produce section of many grocery stores. 

For years I've planted rosemary in the garden for culinary use, aesthetic appearance, and pest control, but I've always grown it as an annual. Here in Michigan, it dies in the winter; I thought that was the norm. Then I took a trip down south where it is planted as perennial hedges and border shrubs. 

I found out that it isn't necessarily the cold that kills it, but the snow blocking out the sun. Here's my method of overwintering it outdoors.

First I drop the pot into my window well.

This keeps it close to the house where it can benefit from less intense temperature shifts and harsh winds.

Then I place an egress cover over it.

Boom! Instant personal greenhouse! Now it gets a bit of sun all winter and the snow won't crush it!

If you have it planted in the ground, grab two of these well covers and connect them back to back for a similar effect!

Winterizing Compost

 Happy (almost) winter everyone! We have snow on the ground, it's 16°F, and my Kale is finally looking sad. It's days like this that I regret putting my compost pile all the way in the corner of my back yard. It makes it difficult to find the ambition to take my table scraps out, but as Bandit Heeler, greatest of all fathers says, "It's gotta be done!"

"I'm not taking advice from a cartoon dog!"

So here we go, standard procedure, right? Take out your green scraps, add in the appropriate ratio of brown, and water it sufficiently. But wait, it's fridgid outside, and everything is covered in snow, where am I getting water and brown compost from? Do I just keep adding green and hope it works? Do I toss my scraps in the trash until spring? Do I bag it all up and toss it in the freezer? (I may have done this one year...) No, no, no. You don't have to do all that! Here are some options for you.

First, collect all the brown waste in your house. Did you know animal fur and dryer lint is considered brown waste‽ In my case, I have plenty of both in my lint trap as my dog seems to shed 4lbs of fur a week. I collect is all a bin next to my dryer all year just for this. I used to collect it to make fire starters, but all the dog hair makes for one smelly candle. All you have to do is toss this into your pile with the green scraps. No prep needed. Be advised though, dryer sheets, which sometimes end up with the lint, is not compostable (yet!) and should be tossed in the trash.

Beautiful, isn't it?

What other brown waste do you have? How about all those carboard boxes and paper mailers coming from the megacorp that is supplying everyone's Christmas via mail each year? Amazon is making strides to supply more recyclable paper in their shipping materials. The cushioned envelopes used to be filled with polystyrene but is now made up of the biodegradable adhesive used in cardboard which when heated, puffs up like popcorn. What about all that junk mail? All of this is great to use in your compost. I make a day of shredding all the paper products I've collected for the year and mix them all into a big plastic tote. I'll even mix the lint in with this. It looks like confetti!
One note about using junk mail, the clear plastic windows in some envelopes need to be removed before shredding as this plastic won't break down. I find it too much of a hassle and just recycle all of these with my coated and dyed cardboard.

This resembles my garage any given day...

My other method takes some planning. You can insulate your compost with soil. In the spring, I dig a hole in a particular spot in my yard. All the leaves that I clean up in the spring go into it, all the hardwood sawdust from my shop goes into it, and even shredded paper. Nothing but brown waste. I then mix the dirt back in and cover it. I let this sit all season, and then in the fall I remove all this and pile it up next to my compost pile. The worms will have broken down most of the material and will look like good soil, which it is, but there isn't much nutrition in it. Think fill dirt, or top soil. It needs to be amended. This amendment happens throughout the winter as I scoop some on top of my compost every few weeks to ensure I'm compensating for all the greens going in.  In the fall, when you empty your "Dirt hole," fill it back in with leaves you are currently cleaning up and you'll have another batch of un-amended soil for the spring. Mix in some coir, worm castings, and compost and you have a fresh pile of potting soil!

Ok, I know what you're saying, "I didn't prepare! I don't have much of any of this." Yes, I told you pretty late, but here's two points that you should know. 1. You can start prepping now for next year, or even later this winter season. It is amazing how much paper you can end up with in a short time if you start saving it. 2. You have a lot less green waste entering the pile this season. Yes you still have kitchen scraps, but there is no yard waste entering the system right now which will be the bulk of your greens most of the year. Do what you can, and if you can't, you always have the bags of green scraps in the freezer as an option (shudder...)

What is going on this month: December

Once again, it's the time of the month where I list some of the things we are working on at Third-Acre so that hopefully we can inspire, inform, and collaborate with other gardeners all over.

As a reminder, my list will be specific to my garden for now but will grow to encompass general strategies for my region and FDA zone, which is 5(b).

Here's what we're working on in December:

- Starting indoor gardens

- Planning beds for next season 

- Repotting indoor plants

- Building Cold Frames

- Maintaining dormant Capsicums

- Pruning fruit trees

- Germinating mushrooms 

- Germinating tree seeds

- Germinating slow growing herbs

- Prepping household brown compost

Harvest Schedule:

- Kale

- Herbs (Final, unless brought indoors. Otherwise dormant.)

- Leafy Greens (Final)

- Cabbage (Final)

- Bunching onion tops (Final)