starting on the front lawn...

I've put the mulch up against the picket fence, and under the flame tree. It's not really good enough to do a proper job of composting, but we'll see what horse manure I can bring back from the rural areas I'm going to tomorrow when B, her hubs C, and their kids come to visit. We'll go up that way to check out a park and have a picnic.

For nitrogenous matter, I've realised that the local fruit shop tosses a lot of their fruit matter away into an open and openable bin, and it's not locked. If I go with enough of a trailer, then I might be able to salvage enough green wastes to make compost with. There's actually a fruit shop that's even closer, but I don't know how much green wastes they have, and I'm not sure if they'd be willing to let me take them.

I'm looking at a local nursery for fruit trees, and they have mostly dwarves, but some full-sized trees (apricot, almond, walnut, mulberries, olives, kumquats). I've been thinking about dwarves vs full-size, and thinking:

What if for every graft I planted, I made sure to plant a straight seed? (Perhaps plant in a large pot until the first flower/fruiting)
- lychees
- avocadoes (have one growing from seed even now
- apricots
- apples
- olives (should be able to buy these ungrafted)

Some thoughts on corn in the coming season.
1. Grow the coloured "glass gem" corn in front yard for grinding and gifts. Which means prepping the ground now - with chickens, but also compost heaps – hence the need for the fruit shop bin wastes.

2. Grow the regular yellow stuff in the back yard for eating. Which bed? Well, I'm inclined to think the plum-stone bed, although maybe those should be tomatoes and zucchini?  

Compost:
- woodchips (easy to get by the 8 cubic metres)
- horse manure (harder to come by - need to go up rural way)
- vegie waste (very close: local shopping centre, nightly throwout. With suitable bins/storage, could easily collect enough through the week to make a compost by Saturday.

Chickens I'm really going to struggle to keep them in greens this summer, I think. I need to find somewhere to put them that means they won't fry, and I suspect it's going to be the lower cherry-peach bed. Also, I need to plan better for when plants come out of a bed and they go onto one...