January Gardening.

The ground is frozen solid, the yard has a light dusting of snow, and I'm really missing working in the yard. What's a garden girl to do? Arrange my seed stash in the freezer? Done. Look at photos from this summer? Done. Read seed catalogs? Done. (yes, really, I read seed catalogs-but that's another post entirely) Think about what I can do, garden-wise, in the dead of winter?

A-HA!
I typically stop composting my kitchen waste in the winter. Mostly because I'm too lazy to take it out back because that involves boots, winter coat, hat, gloves, and a scarf, but also because my method is to just dig the raw scraps into a spot in my garden. I don't actually have a compost pile. (WHAT?!) So it's been killing me to just pitch my egg shells and coffee grounds into the trash.

I started to just dump my grounds directly into a planter I have right by my doorwall. But that's too full and it made a mess because it's too full.


First stab at winter "composting"



Because it's full and because I toss wet grounds into this
planter, it splashed back up onto the house. No way am
I cleaning that up in January.

My latest option is tossing both my eggshells and my coffee grounds into an EMPTY planter, and putting that planter right next to the door. This eliminates the lazy factor and the mess factor. I have 3 more empty planters just like this one that I can put on the deck when I fill the first. Problem solved!

So far, this planter of eggshells and coffee grounds has NOT attracted any rodents. I try to keep them well fed out front, so maybe that's the reason. Or maybe they don't like eggshells and coffee grounds.