WORK WORK WORK

This is by far my favorite time of year, everything is blooming, the weather is perfect, and I'm starting some new garden beds. It all equates to a bunch of work, but it's fun and rewarding. In this post I'll share where I get some of my cheap/free organic materials. I'll show you the elusive Giant Yellow Wood Boring Bee, we'll eat some weeds, and finally my asparagus is coming up.

This is Rovey Dairy it's down the street from my house, for $10 you can hand load a whole trailer full of composted steer manure. That's right that pile in the picture is all bull#$&!. It's a great deal my trailer is 4' wide by 8' long by 3' tall, filled to the top I get 14 wheel barrows of compost. I know there's no way it can be all organic with all the chemicals that are injected into dairy cows, but still it's a great deal.

This is not a commercial for Starbucks, to be honest with you I've never even set foot in a Starbucks. Last week I was talking with my parents about black compost gold (coffee grounds) I was saying that I wish I new someone that worked at a coffee shop, all those coffee grounds would be great for my compost and soil building projects. Low and behold my step dad rides his bike over to Starbucks the next day and asks the manager "what do you do with your coffee grounds?" The manager points over to a large trash can and says "we save all of our coffee grounds for the local gardeners, go ahead and help yourself to as much as you want" WTF corporate America reaching out and helping local gardeners. I've gotta get out more. So thank you Starbucks, thank you Ken, and go have all the vanilla lattes you can drink.

20 pounds of Starbucks coffee grounds.

I mulched around all my blueberry plants with the coffee grounds. Blueberries love acidic soil so it only makes sense to mulch them with acidic coffee grounds. So the plants have a free, organic, acidic fertilizer. 

I put the rest in my 2 compost bins

Ever see this weed before it's called Mallow. It is a close relative to Holly Hock. This time of year it growing everywhere. So grab some out of your yard and wash it off

Fry it up with some bacon fat, garlic chives, and onion.

When it's finished top with grated parmasean,salt and pepper to taste, and boom fried weeds believe it or not it's delicious.

It's about time my first Asparagus spear has sprouted I planted this bed a year and a half ago and this will be the first time I'll be able to harvest it. I get off on eating weeds just think how excited I am to get fresh Asparagus  spears.

Finally I discovered this guy he's a golden carpenter bee. All the carpenter bees I've seen are black this is the first golden one. You can find more info on them here. Do you see his hole in the log table. As a side note that's my wifes table when we sit outside. If she only new what lived inside of it. The golden bees are supposed to be the males of the species. These are very cool solitary bees, and they are great pollinators, they're always welcome around here.

Here he is going into his hole I'll try and get a better pic of him but taking good bee pics is tough.