Garden composting for the Buffalo area.
by Connie Oswald Stofko Autumn leaves are so valuable for your garden. You can rake them onto garden beds to serve as mulch. This can help protect your plants during the winter. After that, many of us still have plenty of leaves left. These are great for compost. Here are three tips to make the most of your autumn leaves. Gather leaves up in a tarp. I used to rake my leaves into a pile. Then I would pick them…...
Chrysanthemum Show set at Botanical Gardens Mums are the emblematic flower of autumn, and the Chrysanthemum Show at the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens is a Western New York tradition. It has been held annually for more than 105 years! The show is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Saturday, October 20 to Sunday, November 11 at the Botanical Gardens, 2655 South Park Avenue, Buffalo. Enjoy all the colors of the fall season with many different varieties…...
Speed up compost with this no-turn bin I love these instructions for making a bin for a compost pile that you don’t have to turn. It’s cheap and very, very easy. Compost piles need oxygen to carry on the decomposition process. One way to speed up your compost pile is to turn the pile with a pitch fork. This design by Fred Davis of Hill Gardens of Maine allows air to circulate throughout the pile so you don’t need to…...
In an earlier article, we told you why you should save autumn leaves and we gave you some basic information on composting. In another article, we gave you more details on what to put in your compost pile. Today we’re going to give you more advanced information on composting. If you’re willing to put in a little bit of work, there are ways to speed up your compost pile. David Clark, horticulturist, shared tips on composting at a recent seminar…...
Here are three helpful tips for autumn, courtesy of the free newsletter from Heimiller Greenhouses. Tip #1: How to deal with tar spot When it comes to tar spot, there’s bad news and good news and more bad news. The bad news is that tar spot is an ugly black fungus that seems to infect Norway maples, to a greater or lesser degree, every year, according to Lisa Heimiller of Heimiller Greenhouses. The good news is that while tar spot…...
Take advantage of this beautiful autumn weather we’re enjoying in the Buffalo area and tackle some gardening projects. Here are some reminders of things you can do right now. Reminder #1: Hurry and plant spring bulbs. If you want spring flowers such as tulips and daffodils, hurry and plant your bulbs now before the ground freezes. That tip is from the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens, where today 16 volunteers and several staff members planted spring bulbs– 4,500 of…...
A lot of you have asked where you can get red worms for composting. In an April article, we told you that Buffalo Reuse was planning to sell worms for composting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they’ll have a stock available anytime soon, so your best bet is to go to a bait shop. I went to Big Catch Bait and Tackle, 2287 Niagara St., Buffalo. Greg Becker, an employee there, said the red worms used for composting are easily…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko When Janice Hetrick sees a statue that reminds her of one of her kids, she buys it for her gardens. Janice has six children, but the statues outnumber the kids 36 to 1. Her collection includes more than 220 statues, which are displayed in a number of gardens and around a couple ponds at her home on Schwartz Rd. in a rural part of Lancaster. She and her husband, Jeff, have just finished putting the ornaments…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko I saw some amazingly beautiful compost a couple weeks ago in an Earth Day demonstration at Buffalo ReUse. The compost was dark brown and crumbly and pure, with almost no soil mixed in. The secret to this compost is red wriggler worms. They eat garbage and turn it into compost. “They eat their weight in garbage every day,” explained Kevin Hayes, executive director at Buffalo ReUse. “They’re voracious.” The earth worms that you find in your…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko If you don’t have a compost bin going yet, now is the time to start. The temperatures should be in the 50s later this week, and you may get a touch of spring fever. Starting a compost bin will give you a garden-related chore during this brief warm spell. Your goal for the next few weeks is to start accumulating plant materials in your compost bin. Nothing much will actually happen to the materials for awhile,…...
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