I might be a tree hugger...

Remember this post? Well, if you thought I was strange then, you'd best stop reading right now. Consider yourself warned.

It all started with this.


Ever since we moved to Virginia, Cole's been on my case to grow a garden. While we were living in our townhouse, we didn't have the space for it. So as soon as he knew we were buying a house, he got all excited about having a garden. Unfortunately for him, gardening was the very last thing on my mind last spring, what with buying the house, moving, and having a new baby. But this spring, there was no getting out of it. We discovered the square foot gardening method through a friend (thanks Beth!) and thought it just might be the perfect thing for our family. So we gave it a try. Here's our first attempt:


The above picture was taken on May 2nd. Here's what it looks like today:

We've got peas, beets, spinach, yellow onions, green onions, basil, cilantro, and parsley growing in this one. We just had our first salad with garden spinach yesterday. Awesome.

You can't really tell from this picture, but the garden box pictured above is actually sitting about 5 feet above the ground. Which, for us, is really nice, because our back yard tends to get really soggy because it doesn't drain well, and we are frequented by lots of hungry critters that would destroy a garden in a heart beat. If they had access to it. But they don't. However, they would have access to the second one, so we protected it:


This one has bell and jalapeno peppers, as well as more yellow and green onions, beets, cilantro, and a small zucchini plant (which claims to be good for container gardens, but may have to be uprooted if it starts taking over the whole box).

And so far the tomato cages seem to be doing a good job protecting these guys:


Anyway, in the above mentioned book, there is some discussion of composting. Composting has always intimidated me, but intrigued me, all at the same time. I read this book:



And gave some thought to buying one of these compost tumblers:


It seemed much more manageable and contained than the whole "compost heap" idea. I even went to Costco in pursuit of one, but they were sold out. And to buy them online was considerably more expensive. So I thought, and looked online, and read composting blogs, and thought some more. In the end, we made this:


And I ordered some of these:


Then I bought one of these:


Which sits innocently on the kitchen counter, where we deposit all of our fruit, vegetable, and starchy food scraps. When it gets full, we take it here:


And dump it in, like so:


After a few weeks, it begins to look like this:


Because the worms (and other microbes) are eating it, like this:


Here's a better view:


(Yep, that's my hand, holding a bunch of decomposing food, newspaper, and worms)

And I'm told, that if we keep at it, eventually we'll have this:


Which is, essentially, what the worms poop out after they eat my kitchen garbage and shredded newspaper. Supposedly the best fertilizer in the world. Which I hope, will make my garden grow big and beautiful!