I happily set up my new "Urban Compost Tumbler" today... Quite simple, looks like a backyard creation. Just a black 50(ish) gallon pickle bin, a metal rod, and a stand. I filled it up with newspapers and paper bags (it says it can be half full of those!), last week's lawn clippings, sweet potatoe greens, and various remnants of the past couple weeks dinners. I'm eager to see what comes out the other side in a few weeks...

Also harvested my sweet potatoes. I was quite impressed, considering that I only planted one three or four months ago -- the harvest filled a five gallon bucket. We're 'curing' them now in the laundry room which lives up to the requirements perfectly (80-90 degrees and humid). After that success, I'm planning on turning a small corner of my yard into a perpetual sweet potato patch -- down here in south florida it should produce year round, maybe slacking about in January/February when it can get a little colder (low forties, upper thirties even -- they like the soil to be above 55).

Then we dug of a stretch of lawn maybe fifteen to twenty feet long by the back fence and planted a row of soy beans. I know it's the wrong time of year, but then again it's a 12 month growing season down here. It may work...

Next up is to replant the raised bed (where the sweet potatoes were). The plan is to put horseradish in the corners, potatoes throughout in little mounds, corn around the mounds, and finally pole-beans to grow up the corn stalks. That'll be a tastey treat come Christmas time.

Also took half an hour or more to scrub down the Mango tree. It had a nasty infliction of scales earlier, leaving black soot all over the leaves. Amie picked off all the leaves once, but evidently there were more scales on the stalk that survived. So this time I used my fingers and a hose to remove every scale I could find. From the books I've read, it sounds like that'll be sufficient...

I love having a large enough yard to get my hands dirty. I'm enthralled by the notion of urban gardening.