Raised Beds Dilemna

After reading, flip-flopping, researching (and talking), and flip-flopping again, I decided to do a combination of the square foot gardening mix and lasagna gardening in my 2 new little garden beds - the blog is not called Eclectic Living for nothing! This is the layering I came up with as of right now... We'll see what I actually put down. If you see any major errors in this or see that I'm missing something important, please let me know in the comments or off-list. Here are a few photos of the work-in-progress.

- Layer of wet newspapers

- Very thin layer of diatamaceous earth. This goes back to my issues with pathogens.

- Mixture a la square foot gardening of 1/3 peat moss; 1/3 organic compost; 1/3 top soil (instead of vermiculite)

- Thin layer of dried molasses - mainly just sprinkled

- Mixture (same as above)

- A sprinkling of homemade bone meal

- Transplants

- Mulch around the plants

- Add kitchen scraps in areas not directly around the plants and put light layers of mulch on them throughout the winter (???). These spots will get planted in next spring.

- When it gets really cold in January maybe mulch some more?

Peat Moss or Coconut Fiber??

I have issues with using peat moss. I don't want to contribute to the destruction of the Canadian peat bogs when there is an alternative that is a byproduct of an industry already in existence. So, I looked for coir, aka coconut fiber, but the sheets were expensive and I couldn't find it in bags. Maybe I should look in the pet department/pet stores because I think it's used as bedding also.

But now I have doubts about that because I read a post in which someone said the coconut killed his plants. I need to find out more.

For these 2 beds I'm using peat moss because of the timing and because of the cost/availability. In the meantime I'll be searching for a local source for coconut fiber or an inexpensive online source for the 2 bigger beds I'll be making as time/money allows.

School:

I hope to at least start coloring my enlarged Europe map today. I was going to try to follow the colors of a Montessori map but I think I'll just color it however. I follow the colors for the continents but don't think it will matter much for the countries. Hmmm. Maybe I should use the colors from the command cards since dc will be using those.

What's Cookin'?

- Bread is in the oven (bad me: unsoaked, rushed)

- Hopefully something with pumpkin! I froze 3 cups of the pumpkin I processed yesterday and kept 1 cup in the fridge to use today. I'm favoring pumpkin bread but need to dig out my recipes.