Vol. 4, Num. 44, October 29, 2009 (Read It Online) Hello Dee, Leaves are changing color and falling in the Pacific Northwest, as they probably are where you live. Today we have a great article from Ellen about Compost "Tea" and a tip about using your leaves as mulch. Please send in your tips and photos for gardening this time of year, such as how you are preparing for winter or next spring. Thanks for reading, The ThriftyFun Team Send to a Friend! Submit Your Gardening Tips Submit Photos of Your Garden Submit a Gardening Request Edit Your Subscriptions: To edit your ThriftyFun subscriptions, click the Update Profile/Email Address link at the bottom of this newsletter. Today's newsletter contains: Photos: Garden: Walking Stick Garden: Volunteer Gourd Garden: Burning Bush Reuse Halloween Pumpkins In Fall Displays Tips and Articles: Leaves are Free Fertilizer How To Make Compost Tea Garden: Deer and Rabbit Deterrent Where to Shop for Bulbs New Requests: Old Blue Spruce Tree Is Dying Propagating a Weeping Willow Tree Tangelo Oranges Falling Off the Tree Early Remediating Creosote Logs in the Garden Getting Rid of Bats in the Attic Deterrent for Snakes Do Junipers Acidify the Soil? Importance of Insects I Saw a White Deer Making a Compost Bin With a Plastic Garbage Can Storing Flower Bulbs Keeping Dogs Out of the Garden Keeping Cats Out of the Garden Growing Sunflowers Without Sunlight Caring for a Burning Bush Plant Is Horseradish a Radish? Cucumbers Turning Yellow Today's Sponsor: Crafting for Fun and Money! If you are an avid crafter, capable writer and own a digital camera, you are eligible to participate. Submit your craft projects to ThriftyFun and we will pay $15 for any crafts that we publish. More Information: Click Here: http://www.thriftyfun.com/post_craft.ldml</a> Photos: Garden: Walking Stick I started out of the front door the other day only to stop dead in my tracks seeing this walking stick sunning on the glass. I rerouted my steps to grab the camera and finished my coffee inside! By melody_yesterday from Otterville, MO Post Feedback: http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf38294000.tip.html</a> Email to a Friend | Get Responses | Bookmark | Link | Print | Rate It: | Garden: Volunteer Gourd The seed that started this plant was dropped in front of our hay rake and started growing. It climbed up our rose and grew quite large! You can see a small gourd growing if you look closely! By Jackie from Enumclaw, WA Post Feedback: http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf39878185.tip.html</a> Email to a Friend | Get Responses | Bookmark | Link | Print | Rate It: | Garden: Burning Bush This is our brilliant fall burning bush and variegated barberry. By Jackie from Enumclaw, WA Post Feedback: http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf30799846.tip.html</a> Email to a Friend | Get Responses | Bookmark | Link | Print | Rate It: | Reuse Halloween Pumpkins In Fall Displays After Halloween last year, I took down my scarecrow, but his pumpkin head was still fresh. I added his head to a bale of hay in the front yard for a fall decoration. My granddaughter asked, "How did the scarecrow get inside of the hay?" By Vickie from Earle, AR Post Feedback: http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf62798791.tip.html</a> Email to a Friend | Get Responses | Bookmark | Link | Print | Rate It: | Tips and Articles: Leaves are Free Fertilizer Why are people raking or blowing their leaves to the street for the city government to collect? Leaves are a type of free fertilizer, and yet we pay our cities to haul our free fertilizer away every fall, and then buy unnatural, non-organic chemicals, or organic fertilizers in the spring to replenish our lawns. Why are we doing this? This has been bothering me for years. I garden; and, because we all need to "think green," (before the mulching mower) I would rake all the leaves up, and dig a huge hole in the garden, or vice-versa, and rake all of the leaves into the hole I created in the garden, then back fill all of the dirt into the hole. The first spring, when I dug into that tree leaf back fill, I was surprised by some of the darkest, most lovely soil I had ever seen in my life. I truly feel that deciduous trees are trying to give back to us in the fall everything they accumulated from the sun, rain, and soil that spring and summer. Yet, without thought, so many of us rake those leaves up, waiting for the city to come take them away, and we devoid our own property of those nutrients, replenishing them in the spring with other nutrients - organic, or not. In the years that have passed, I've gotten married, and we now own a mulching lawnmower. I really like the idea that the lawnmower mulches the fallen leaves; however, the mulching lawnmower uses gasoline. For ourselves, and those that are here, and those to come, let's "think green." Really, what are we doing to our own properties when we give the city our leaves, and devoid our own land of those nutrients? Source: Myself. I was inspired to write this today, after I heard a noise outside and asked my husband what that noise was. He replied that it sounded like it might have been a leaf-blower, or even a leaf-mulcher. By Carol L. from South Bend, IN Post Feedback: http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf19650808.tip.html</a> Email to a Friend | Get Responses | Bookmark | Link | Print | Rate It: IMG</a>