The idea that as long as you put plants or seeds in the dirt, you're a gardener, has always rung a bit hollow for me. I'm definitely an "all-or-nothing" person, and I have a tendency to throw myself into whatever my latest thing is and become utterly obsessed with it. So although I know I am a real gardener in theory, I now feel like a serious, more legit gardener in practice because I've added two things to the garden that Monty (Don) says are absolutely essential: a compost bin and a water feature.
I bought this compost bin from Amazon, and while the assembly was an absolute pain-in-the-ass, it was definitely worth it. (Pain-in-the-ass because you have to put the panels on in a specific order; otherwise, when you get to the last panel, it won't fit properly and you have to disassemble everything and start all over again. Learning is fun!) It has two compartments: the plus sign means that waste can be added to that side, while the clock side means that that side is full and is cooking. You just add the waste to it and spin it every few days.
This will make the absolute best compost for my garden because it will have all the microbes, fungi, and bacteria from my own garden already, which means that when I put the compost in my garden, there's already a relationship between the compost and the existing soil. This will also save me money on buying compost from the store (and thus adding more plastic to the landfills), money on trash stickers since most raw kitchen waste can go in the compost, and space in the recycle bin as cardboard can go into the compost bin.
To make really good compost, you need a 50/50 ration of green to brown material. Green material is most kitchen waste, which includes raw fruits and veg, egg shells, and coffee grounds (with the filter), and any excess from the garden. Nothing cooked, no fats, and no meats go in (mostly because they'll take forever to break down and will attract unwanted rodents). Brown material includes dead leaves and twigs, and plain cardboard. We mostly put cardboard from the egg containers and Amazon packages. The biggest thing is that it has to be plain cardboard because I don't want ink to end up in my veg that I'll eventually be eating. I also put a few scoops of garden soil from each raised bed in each section to kickstart that symbiotic relationship, and I'll do that every time. I haven't needed to add water to it yet because the green material and rain takes care of that, so it's pretty low maintenance: just add and spin!
The other latest addition is our water feature. I half buried my old metal Coca-Cola planter, covered it with a folded painting drop cloth sheet of plastic (because the planter had holes drilled into it), filled it with large rocks so any creatures that got into it could easily get out, and then bordered it with white rocks, both to weigh down the plastic and for aesthetic purposes. The water pump inside is a solar powered pump that was $12 on Amazon. Because it's solar powered, it does need direct sunlight to work, so it's only running a few hours in the late morning when the sun is directly over it, but I'm okay with that and I knew that when I placed it there because that's usually when we're outside anyway (because it doesn't quite feel like an inferno yet at that time). It came with six different spout options, and I change them regularly just to play around with them and to clean them so they don't get clogged with dirt and stop working.
A water feature is key in a garden, Monty says, for the sound of water and to attract wildlife. Ours is on the corner of the house, nestled between a raised bed and the berry bushes, so I don't know how much wildlife it will actually attract, but the sound of water is absolutely lovely, Chewie likes playing in it, and it makes use of an unused corner, so overall it's a win-win-win.
Lots of other changes have been happening in the garden, but that will have to wait until another day. Until then, happy playing in the dirt!
~Your Resident Hobbit Gardener