OMG,if you saw my bins you would get your laugh for the day. Those are snazzy and if I am seeing them correctly,very pratical. It appears the boards in front slide in one atop the other alowing easier access to the material inside. If that is the case,lift the bottom board and support both ends exposing a space your fork can be stuck in to withdraw enough of the first material that went in to cover the top 1" to 3" deep. Cover that with new scraps and lawn/leaf mixture. Depending on your household's output of kitchen scraps and availability of other materials,you might need to hold them until you have enough to cover the partly composted material layer 1" to 3" deep. That isn't somthing you need to follow to the letter by no means. The point is pulling material from the bottom where it has compacted to fluff and expose it to air while inoculating new material. You might just as easly pull some material off the bottom and mix it with that on top until the bin has inverted. And of course you should monitor moisture and adjust if needed. There is no time line on how long it takes. When you can't tell the components apart it's ready and you can leave it in the bin or elsewhere as long as you like before using. Just put somthing over it to prevent rain and snow saturating it while it rests. IMO,your set up is much better than anything for sale at the store. Two thumbs up,you did well.

Haha, yes, I second north53's thoughts! I am always staggered by how organized some people are! Good on you Jenni for doing such a great job making your vision a reality! I'm also one of those people who just bumbles along and figures out to where to plant things after I've bought them, and where to dig a new bed, also after I've bought too many plants! Yours looks great! And welcome.

Just an update since I have my rose orders coming in...like Jim said before...things are behind this year with all the rain but I should see the first blooms this weekend...when it's supposedly supposed to be sunny and sunny for a stretch longer than 2 days. The Charles Darwin pot looks quite different as it's topping off with growth and putting the energy into buds now. It will be interesting deciding how to prune him after the 1st flush...still thinking that one over. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Her rainbow colored "climbing" roses. Spirit of Freedom is going between them...my only concern is it will be below the north lattice for a while and won't get much sunlight until it fills out more. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Not done, but managed to tear out the grass and mulch in the area around the garage....still need a WS2000 cutting to root to place in the empty spot to the right of the hydrangea. From 5-24-2011 This WS2000 has been exhibiting some weird behavior. If you look closer at the darker leaves, they are larger and a little different from the others...I'm wondering if it's a sport or something else...guess I won't know until it blooms. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 My old band from High Country of Winchester Cathedral...last year at this time it was TINY and I didn't even know if it would survive...now it seems to be thriving and on it's way to maturing. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 The other WC cutting I took off of the original WC...doing well. From 5-24-2011 The original WS2000 I bought in Columbus...glad it survived the transplant. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Another one of the WS2000 cuttings...this one is a little yellow from all the rain. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Just Joey, Medallion, Europeana, Double Delight, and Pascali still leafing out. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Anybody know what perennial this is?...it's quite colorful and the bumblebees LOVE it. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 She mustered up some gardening will and tore out the little area that was overgrown with grass and phlox and planted annuals...the 2 roses are doing better as well...need mulch...LOTS of mulch. From 5-24-2011 Lots of weeds and fern needs moved but little Peace is on the left and Graham Thomas is done growing and budded up...kind of funny seeing GT so small. From 5-24-2011 Bishop's Castle seems to be a later bloomer than most simply because it has so many buds on the end of canes that it takes quite some time for the rose to put energy into their development. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 The little GT on the other side of the porch...actually has a bloom on him. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Abe Darby seems to be getting a LITTLE more vigorous now. I just need him to throw out some thick and tall canes that others get. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Already ordered all these roses...should be in the mail soon...this is what I'm thinking. From 5-24-2011 What I plotted out....should be pretty full once everything matures. From 5-24-2011 Another one of my mother's unknown roses...it's pink...I know that much. I was under the impression it was a smaller rose based on the growth but it is throwing out some LONG canes...those canes aren't even budded either and are still growing. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Queen of Sweden to left of unknown rose and Carding Mill to the right of it...notice how I already have the holes dug out in anticipation haha. From 5-24-2011 Mirandy cutting has no buds yet this spring but....it's rewarding me with some new basal canes which is equally as rewarding. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 This cracks me up...Double Delight....still the same size it's been for almost a year now haha. I'm sure the root system has to be fairly dense by now, but it's struggling with top growth as the cutting was fairly thin...but it hints that it might grow with some basal buds. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Paul Neyron might be an antique rose, but he blooms pretty well. He had a bloom last year as a cutting and this year seems to be doing well. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Baron Girod de L'Ain has no buds....and probably won't get any blooms this year even though she is a HP just like Paul Neyron but I know BGDL will need some patience to get established in growth first before I start seeing some blooms. The growth looks really good so far. From 5-24-2011 Sharifa Asma with the newly planted Summer Blue Delphinium...this should be a striking combo of soft pink with soft blue. Sharifa was a Heirloom band. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Golden Celebration is quite....dense. Foliage is a little light from all the rain, but it's budded up and ready to go. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Evelyn was a High Country band a few years ago. Last spring she was just 2 4ft long canes and nothing else. This is the 1st time I've seen her in a state where she looks like an actual rose bush so I'm interested to see what the effect has. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Heirloom rose is leafing out nicely...not an english rose but close enough and it has an interesting color...for $2 I can't complain. From 5-24-2011 Not the soil of the garden...VERY rocky before falling into clay. I want to plant Crown Princess Margareta here but I'm still undecided as the hose is right along the wall so CPM kind of "gets in the way". I'm thinking about running PVC pipe underground and running a feeder hose from the spicket on the house to the hose reel which would be moved outside the garden. From 5-24-2011 A cloudy shot of the side...holes already dug for Huntington Rose and Charlotte...and CPM. From 5-24-2011 Pruning a rose is more like just taking a lot of cuttings haha. From 5-24-2011 A lot of trees have been cut down in the yard but some of the mushrooms still thrive...especially in this wet weather. From 5-24-2011 I dug up the Pat Austin cutting that died...they all looked like this...all had sufficient root systems, all put out growth this spring, then bam....died...so bizarre. From 5-24-2011 Poor picture, but does Evelyn do this for everybody else? When she puts out new growth her leaves are all shriveled up initially before reflexing and flattening out...doesn't seem like an issue, but always found that to be a little odd. From 5-24-2011 It was pretty much a miracle that the sun came out after all the rain and clouds if only for a minute so I took a pic of the sun...that's what happens when you never see it. From 5-24-2011 From 5-24-2011 Some of the salvia that was planted as plugs around Golden Celebration...4 for the price of 1 larger one, so we shall see how they do over time here. From 5-24-2011 And I thought I would finish up with my mother's dogs...which are more or less my dogs since I'm the only one that walks them haha. From 5-10-2011

rgreen48 - in 2016, we did mulch heavily. Since we had just moved, we had an abundance of cardboard boxes, so I broke them down, removed all the tape, and laid them down in the garden, covering them with wood chips we chipped ourselves (mostly maple). I was hoping to always utilize the "no-till" method in our garden, but with the way it looks now I just don't think that's possible :) At least until we get things under control. This year, we had access to a lot of free hay (my in-laws horse died shortly after they got their hay delivery for the year); they delivered quite a few bales but my husband never had the time to spread them out and they are still sitting next to the garden. We'll add those to the soil either this fall or next spring, since they are breaking down nicely. So a huge part of our weed problem is that we didn't use mulch, at all, this year. And as I said, my husband was just too busy to get out to weed very often and I was more or less out of commission! If I knelt or sat on the ground, I wasn't getting back up! haha Our garden was smaller the first year - this year we added a 40'x40' area just for squash and a 25'x25' area just for corn. And the very north row of the garden (about 1200 sq ft) is planted with perennial berries (various raspberries and blackberries). You are right about the remainder of the garden - about half of that space is "paths" between rows or beds of vegetables; my husband didn't waste any of his time weeding these at all this year and they look the worst. The squash patch is not nearly as bad as the rest of the garden, even though it's new - as glib said, the squash shaded everything else from the sun. We do have some amaranth growing amongst the squash but it's not too bad. We do plan on planting a few tomatoes and cucumbers next year, maybe a couple squash; I like to can, so it would be nice to still have a couple of our favorite vegetables. The main reason we plan on skipping a garden next year is to try to get the weeds under control. We also had a terrible year this year, weather-wise, and burnout is a factor - it's disappointing to put in a lot of work and then have all your potatoes drown because it rained 25 out of 30 days in June, or have 75% of your tomatoes not ripen because August was incredibly cold, and then to get the first frost on August 25th (2016's first frost was October 14th!). We'd also like to focus on other projects next year and have plenty of free time to have fun with our new baby, who by then will be walking. We live near Lake Superior, so we'd love to be able to take her to the beach or boating if and when we get hot days :) Waiting a year would also give us lots of time to chip more wood. My parents cut their own firewood, and so they have no shortage of branches piled up around their property. Last year, we rented a chipper and got about 9.5 cubic yards of mulch in one day. We can rent a chipper this spring and again next fall and have lots of wood chips come spring 2019. When we moved here in 2015, I did do several tests on the soil like kimmq suggested. We have cobbly, sandy loam soil that drains well and has loads of earthworms. Organic material, drainage and life all seem good. I have not sent in a sample to be tested for ph or nutrients though. I can do that this fall, soon. Our cover crop for this fall is the Fall Mix from Johnny's. We'll use their Spring Mix next spring. I know we'll never be rid of weeds, and that's fine... I'd just like to get a better handle on them so it isn't so difficult keeping up with weeding. If were taking a year off anyway (which we probably are!), I figured we might as well spend that time improving the soil and reducing weeds instead of just letting it sit!