More bullet points than complete thoughts

My weekend consisted of a very busy Saturday so I could have a Sunday with nothing to do.

What did I do Saturday? Started off at the Farmer's Market, where I volunteer an hour of my weekend and get to meet all sorts of cool neighbors who enjoy locally grown food, then went to Renfrow's and spent $35 on veggies for summer growin'.

I was finally ready to "rebuild" the bed the formerly overrun bed of ivy. Here's how it all went down:

• I'd ripped up all the vines and roots I could find, then raked all the leaves and mulch out of the area. I was going to go back with boiling water and kill off whatever bits remained, but got too busy and the area dried out to the point I felt the vines were probably dead.
  
• I still yanked out whatever dead/dried up vines and roots I found.
  
• Went back in and layered cardboard and burlap (I got about 20 free burlap bags the other day--hooray!) to act as a weed blocker.
  
• Covered all that up with mostly composted materials from the compost bin.
  
• Made little pockets in the thick layer of compost and filled the pockets with fully composted and cured material. Planted transplants directly into the compost "planters".
  

I like using logs as borders because I feel like they invite more wildlife to the garden. (Do bugs count as wildlife?) These particular logs will do double duty: function as the border as all the organic material composts in place, and they're oak, which means I can finally try my hand at shitake mushroom growing!

I was going to turn the compost in the bin one more time, but decided instead to use it as a potato tower this year.


Here's how it went down:

• I pulled the wire cage off the compost and put the cage beside the finished pile.
  
• Next I added 6 inches of compost back to the cage, put in 5 seed potatoes and covered them with a couple inches of compost.
  
• I'll water every once in a while and wait for the vines to go crazy all over the place, bury the vines in leaves and compost and repeat. I left the small mountain of finished compost beside the cage and I'll use that as the material to cover the vines when they grow. Eventually the vines will bloom and die back, then we'll go diggin' fer taters.

* * *

Big G has been a busy gal since Grow Great Grub came out (well, actually probably the busy started when the new book first became a thought). Today she's chatting about growing food over on themotherhood.com and she's invited a few of us to join the conversation. Here are the details from an email the gals at The Motherhood sent out this morning:

Celebrity gardener Gayla Trail is taking our questions TODAY! Gayla wrote Grow Great Grub and You Grow Girl and she is in TheMotherhood TODAY to share her latest ideas and know-how, and help us put some yummy grub on the table. The Talk is 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET, but feel free to go there now and post your questions, ideas, stories and PHOTOS!!

Co-hosting is a fantastic group of mom bloggers:

Amie Adams, Mammaloves ("For three minutes in the '80s I was awesome")

Amy, Assertagirl ("Knee-deep in parenthood")

Liz Thompson, This Full House ("don't make mom have to use UPPERCASE!)
Renee Garner, Wolfie and the Sneak ("if Martha Stewart raised black sheep")

PLUS they're giving away a copy of Gayla's book Grow Great Grub at 1:45 pm ET.

Join the convo to enter to win.