[JRinPA]

Hey sqwibb! Great thread and I wish I had seen it earlier. I'm sorry to hear about your garlic dying...mine looks amazing and has been one high point during this seemingly extended winter which rotted a fair% of peas I so
wed in mid-late March!


I do a lot of compost from shredded leaves, grass, and kitchen waste. Coffee grounds...I tried a couple years ago and it was like having to pull teeth and being made to feel like a beggar at the same time. That waste stream is sinful. This fall I will get horse manure again, which wouldn't be feasible for you in the city/suburbs. Leaves, when I see a pile I want, particularly in Nov/Dec when I see someone raking, I'll stop and ask and we load them in my 8ft bed. I didn't really like cover crop results, but I do leave many roots in the ground and lay shredded leaf mulch over them for winter. Maybe I will give cover crop another chance, but basically my beds are still going into Oct so there is not much time to start a cover crop.

Depending on your situation, you might benefit from adding redworms right to your compost bin. I have a lot in my piles. Some I added and inevitably some come with the horse manure as well. Even in hot compost they seem to survive by moving to outside of the piles, and manage to overwinter in the center of a big 1+ yd pile.

Still and all, I don't know I'd start seeds without buying peat moss for seed starting. I use soil blocks with basically 50% peat, 25% perlite, 25% finished vermicompost (leaves/horse manure in a big plastic bin left outside) and maybe 1% combined lime/blood meal/greensand/rock phosphorus. It is a lofty goal to cut those bags out entirely but I don't think it is worth beating yourself up over when you are forced to buy some.

I guess I hit post at some point so was editing it...I was going to offer to catch you some "real" turtles but then I saw you have one riding in the car. I found a big dessicated toad this spring that tried to hibernate in a roll of agribon in my shed. It's a shame he froze solid while the mice make it through, but that's the way of it some times.