Quick Tip 11-start a new gardening related hobby

Two compartment, tumbling compost bin

Monday, February 19, 2024

Winter can be a downer time of year for those of us that love to garden, but it doesn't have to be!  There are many "gardener" things you can do during the cold months of the year.  I'm going to share an idea each week for the rest of the winter on gardening activities that help satisfy the itch and prepare us better for the upcoming spring season.  Here we go with Winter Quick Tip 11-start a new gardening related hobby. 

 

If you enjoy the outdoors, you can collect natural materials to make "fauna" arrangements.  They make beautiful additions to tables in the home.  I also saw on a recent "Home Town" episode where the artist collected natural materials, added glass pieces to make a beautiful wind chime.  You could use metal chimes, too.  I thought that was a very creative way to integrate natural materials into a useful object.  

Or as spring flowers bud and flower, try your hand at flower arrangements.  Another possibility is building terrariums.  Moss is easy to see and collect this time of year.  For indoor terrariums, moss found in the woods is probably best suited for the conditions indoors.  Just be sure to take just strips, leaving most of the colony behind so they can regenerate themselves.

Or maybe you have thought about taking up whittling.  Whittling is when you use a knife to create a bird or turtle from a piece of wood.  You could go exploring for pieces of wood around your home or on a hike.

Another "hobby" you can start is composting or vermicomposting.  Outdoor composting can be slow to break down this time of year, but you can go ahead and get your compost pile all set up for the warmer temperatures.  I compost in a two compartment tumbling bin and compost all year round.  With a tumbling bin, I recycle all our kitchen scraps, indoor plant leaves, and shredded paper.  If you are a composter that primarily uses kitchen scraps, you will need to be sure to add "browns" like dried leaves or shredded paper with each addition of kitchen scraps to keep the compost in balance.  Since you turn the bin, you are mixing up the materials and speeding up the process to get "black gold" sooner.  For more on composting:

Fall composting tips 

Composting is possible in small spaces or even indoors

Troubleshooting your compost pile

  Vermicomposting is using worms to breakdown organic material into worm castings which are super for enriching you garden soil.  For vermicomposting, you can do this indoors or in your garage.  Outdoors the worms will freeze and die.  You add kitchen scraps and shredded paper to your worms in a bin.  The worms eating the kitchen scraps, creating worm castings.  I have not tried vermicomposting yet.  There are lots of info on line on how to do vermicomposting.

There are many hobbies that you can explore in the gardening off-season.  Better hurry, though, as spring is almost here!