How to make a simple rain gauge

  There's no need to purchase a rain gauge if you looking for pure functionality. Take any clear container with a flat bottom. The mouth of the container should be the same size as the walls. The pasta sauce jar I used has just a slightly smaller mouth than the sides but it's close enough to give me a relatively good gauge of how much rainfall occurred.

  Take a ruler or tape measure and place inside the jar against the bottom and mark off your measurements. Place it in your garden or yard away from building and with nothing hanging overhead other than clear sky.

The Compost Bin

Finished compost bin made from recycled fencing.

 A few weeks ago my Dad came back from visiting my Grandmother and brought with him a trailer load of old fence panels he'd taken down at her place. They've been stacked up in my back yard since then and I've been thinking of projects to use these for. I'd already made a birdhouse, with my girlfriend, that I was rather proud of because I managed to use every inch of a single plank to make it. Now I wanted to make something bigger and I decided a sorely needed compost bin was in order. Using two panels I made 3 3'x3' sides. It was a simple matter of just sawing the panels to the right size. I nailed these together used some of the leftover boards to make the half high front piece. This piece isn't nailed in but rather just slides into place. That will make it easy to remove when I need to turn the pile and later when I'm ready to shovel out my black gold. I can also slide another half piece on top if and when the pile reaches that high.

These greens are going to be a greater starter
for the pile.

To get the pile started I dug out a bag of carrots and celery that had been sitting in my fridge for way too long and two lonely lemons that never made it into a cocktail. That was a meager start but I also happen to have a row of greens that needed to come up and now can have a second life quietly composting away in the corner of the garden.

So how does a compost pile work? What goes into it? And most importantly, why go to the trouble of having one?

First of all a compost pile is nothing more than the decomposed remains of organic material that has been broken down, by heat, moisture and organisms back into a nutrient rich soil.It completes a cycle in which nutrients from the soil are taken up by the growing plant and then released back when it dies and decomposes. Gardeners can take advantage of this natural cycle by constructing and maintaining a compost bin and working the resulting compost back into their beds and containers.