kitties / nitrogen

[dragonlady7]

I have two small gray cats in my big living room window, eagerly and attentively watching all the people walking by on the sidewalk.
Remi in particular keeps turning her head excitedly to follow people.
It's weird but cute. Why are they so excited about schoolboys?
Perhaps they plan to catch and eat them?

It is raining so no gardening right now. Boo.

I was looking up good sources of nitrogen for my compost heap / lasagna bed just now, since I was having so much trouble rounding out that layer-- no grass clippings makes it tough!-- and came up with two GREAT!!!! WOW (etc etc. Sometimes they use the "blink" tag; I'm being restrained) sources enthusiastically recommended by organic gardeners on the Internet:
1) Coffee grounds
2) Human urine

Hm. Well, coffee I can do, though if I could find a local coffee shop that'd let me have some of theirs, that'd be even better. But the second one... Mmm, not so eager to get on that. I mean, I'm crazy enough to probably do it (you can either dilute it and use it as liquid fertilizer, or you can just put it straight into the compost heap), but I really don't think the other two human inhabitants of my house are going to be willing to go along with this.
Good to know: in healthy, normal human urine there are no pathogens.
Yeah there are no pathogens in coffee grounds either, thanks.

Comments

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

I suck at the composting. I've had a composter for going on three years and haven't filled it, nevermind paying attention to what it's filled *with*.

My seedlings have needed transplanting for two days.

Will I have a garden this year? Remains to be seen.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I had trouble with composting initially. Getting a plastic composter helped a lot. Having my sister explain the browns/greens thing helped too. When it's finished it's just so amazing-- it's really dirt!! it's like potting soil!!-- so that's pretty good motivation to me to keep it up. I just wish I could have more of it!
(It probably helps that my parents have always had a compost heap and a burning barrel so I grew up separating my trash as a matter of course. Though instead of the norm here, it went into "compostables", "flammables", and "must be hauled to the dump"-ables. We used the ashes from the firepit on the garden, too!)

I saw a really cool thing to make raised beds really easily: Straw Bale Gardening (http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/584622/).

Your life sounds hectic enough-- a garden is lovely to have, but not if there just isn't time. Though my seedlings have needed fertilizer and transplanting for more like a week, so I really can't say I'm doing much better there. I'm busy making the bed, though.

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

My biggest problem with the composting is how far I have to go to get to it. If I ever fix the back room, it will include a back door.

My parents separated, also. Burning the papers was a covetted chore. Dumping the garbage was not. The dump-ables - *g* - my father had a unique solution for the tin cans; they just went down a chute below the kitchen sink and landed in the garbage pail in the cellar. Too bad I can't do that with the compostables.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Ditto for me with the composting-- it's a pain to go around and dump it in the composter, though I'm much more able-bodied so it's just laziness for me-- so I use a really big pail to collect it, so I don't empty it more than once every, oh, couple of months. (I use a large cat litter pail, which barely fits under the sink.)
It helps, though, because then I can use the lasagna method in the bin-- I collect 'brown' materials in the yard as I go, and pile them by the bin, and after I've dumped the pail I put in another brown layer.
In the summer I have trouble getting enough brown stuff so I use shredded paper ganked from the recycle bin. In the winter I have trouble getting enough green stuff so I just don't put all the brown in.

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

Now if I tell all this to Daughter, it might get done.

We had already decided on the litter pail!

[besina-sartor.livejournal.com]

Interesting article on the Straw Bale Gardening -- I'll forward that to my BIL -- he usually likes to try low intensity gardening and usually has a lot of bales sitting around for other purposes -- might as well give it a shot.

[greenworldgirl.livejournal.com]

I'll be very interested to see how this all turns out for you. I looked at the lasagna gardening book (didn't buy it) but I've been kind of curious. However, where I live most of my wood type materials are oak and pine- not the best I think.

I do keep a regular compost pile, though. All the food scraps, left over vegetable parts, egg shells and weeded weeds go in it. I use a pail to collect stuff- and just put a plate over the top. Nummy. It's drying out now after a washing.