Peter Ramos has been gardening on Long Island’s temperate climate for almost 20 years, and has learned many methods for being effective and efficient with a busy family life. He’ll share successful strategies for creating healthy compost, planting perennial beds that look beautiful and enhancing the landscape and some trials and tribulations of growing trees.

Tell us a little about yourself.

Live in the suburbs about 30 miles, a little over an hour from New York City on Long Island, kind of the opposite of the Peter you talked to yesterday who lives further out on the island, so your classic suburb, part of a sort of development area, we’ve lived here almost 20 years.  So I live here with my wife and 2 daughters. And you could reference the interview you did with our mom on episode 10 and you could get two perspective growing up on Long Islands. I like you were very influenced by our parents, both my wife and I love gardening alot.

I could talk about how they influenced me to doing a compost pile. Growing up we did that, and when of the first things we did when we first moved in, I’m not gonna say I did it right away, but after a couple of years, we were lucky enough to have a little area behind the garage which was out of site, cause it’s one of those things where everyone has to make those decisions.

If they’re doing a compost pile, like where am I gonna put it?

Cause it’s not the super most attractive thing, so where am I gonna put it, do I have to worry about smell, or anything and animals. And I was able to find this area, I put it behind the garage by the fence. The first one I bought this border type fence, and I put that in the ground, and I carved out between a 4’x8′ area. It’s like 2’ or 3’ wood slats, the kind of thing you put around the garden, like a white picket fence, rolled up. I don’t know how else to describe it, but a border fence. That was the first go around. That lasted many years, then we remodeled the house, it got neglected, there was like debris on top of it, and it sort of got away from us. So then last year, I was finally able to get it going again, basically the second round, I was able to find some 2x4s and cut those up and put those into the ground and use some chicken wire up. So these are different ways of attacking it.

I guess you can use some lime if you get smell, but we never had smell. Because we have a dog, we have a fenced in yard, which probably also helps. People think – the suburb we live in, we get racoons, and possums, you get squirrels & rabiits, etc, because we have a cat and adog, we never have too many problems with pests or occassionally we get a squirrel who I guess attacks certain things.

So in the decision you have to think about where am I gonna put it and how am I gonna conatin it? So there are things I always talk to people about. Do you want to put it behind some shrubs, where is a good spot maybe that is gonna be tucked away? It’s not the most attractive thing for people to look at. We’ve been lucky that way. And also, in terms of building it, I was lucky to have some found things around it was really easy to do, and now we’re very excited about it again!

Do you want to share what you put in it?

Pretty basic. All of our vegetable scraps from our food prep, we do a lot of cooking. Through spring, summer, into fall, go dormant for the winter.  We add egg shells, coffee grinds, tea, tea bags, then of course we try to do as much, grass clippings, obviously the grass that’s cut we put in there. Then we do that throughout that period, then we reach that point, where we get in the fall, and just cover it with leaves, let it sit through the winter, then come the spring you turn it over and you’ve got it to use. And that’s basically it and it works out pretty well.

The things we do the most any more is planters on the deck, my wife uses it that way, that it’s been really successful. We’ve had some really nice flower parts that way.

By then, the following year, it’s become dirt. It really breaks down we’ve discovered, some things take longer to break down, like avacado skins, especially also corn, corn husks, take longer. Most of it breaks down pretty quickly.

Do you cut up the corn husks etc to make it easier?

No, not really but I do smash up things like pumpkins, watermelon rinds. Break it down and create like a mush, you want things to break down sooner then later.

It is one of these things that, I don’t want to claim I’m any kind of expert, I’m just saying it does work, from experience. You have to tend to it, you do have to do it regularly, turn it every couple of days otherwise it clumps up.

But turning it takes what 2 minutes?

Mmmm. It takes a little bit more. You definitely have to do it at least once or twice a week. If you want it to break down sooner then later? If you want the grass clippings to break down, you have to do a couple of inches deep at least. I use a cultivator, it’s a four pronged, garden tool that has like those prongs, 4 sharp pointy, but it’s got that curve, it’s like a hoe, but its got these prongs.

I don’t use a pitch fork, I did that for year, and then I realized that this cultivator really breaks up the grass, and breaks up the dirt and moves it well, even if your just moving it back and forth. It’s one of those things you kind of have to do like semi-regularly.  If you want to get the most out of it, it does need to break down.

It needs water. It needs moisture to break down, if you let it dry out again, it’s kind of wasting,  it will just become dirt, dirt, If you want it to be really nutrient rich, keep the bugs in there, I love as the year goes on, you see more and more earthworms. As I go out there now I see that there are more and more earth worms, but they need the moisture. It’s the kind of thing, when your’ e going out to put your food in there. When I take the food scraps out, I take some time tome the dirt around. It kind of accomplishes it that way. It all depends on how big your pile is. Mine’s about 32 sq feet, so there’s a bit there. You can divide it up and do more at some points, or do 1/2 one day, or another, or 1/2 one week, or another.

The great thing is then you get this great amount of dirt, it’s just a little bit of work to get some great dirt! The philosophy is it’s one more thing you’re not throwing out, and its also adding to your garden and you’ve got this great dirt!!

Go back to what herbs you go.

Our strategies, we’ve worked over the years to be a little bit more of a  “lower maintenance garden”, but it’s proved at times unmanageable, so we say alright, we’re gonna cut back a little. So when it comes to herbs we’ve really got it down to mint and basil. And we’ve got some ornamental oregano growing. We do different types of mint. but like I said over the years I’ve done almost everything. Those are the ones I’ve found that we really enjoy.  Basil for us is just a staple which we love using it throughout the summer for the different things. Mint, is such a great thing to have to put in drinks.

There’s just generic mint.  There is peppermint you can get peppermint and there’s spearamint, we have this Chocolate mint, there’s a generic mint. What was one of those other mints, you go to the nursery you can find all these different types of mint. It’s pretty hardy, if anything it can be hard to control, it starts growing, like into the grass and whatnot, it’s like anything else, you need to pay attention to it. It’s worth having.

What’s your favorite drink?

Different, it’s good with rum, lemonade, ice tea. It’s good to have, it’s refreshing, and again it’s good to cook with. There’s lots of good recipes, Middle Eastern things, you can grind it up and use it as a marinade.

Let’s get back to …

You can still have a great garden. We’ve gotten away from the vegetables. We used to do the vegetable gardens, we just found – A at the end of the summer, we didn’t want to go out and weed it, and a lot of times it would just fall into disrepair. So now we’ve just worked on…

We just try to focus on different things, have a lot of variety, have a lot of color, and different things, make it so it’s a little less maintenance. Because we love to garden, it’s one of those things, with our busy lives.

Very event orientated to, it’s a State Park, they wanted to create a CSA, so they are leasing it out to this non-profit, so she found it a fascinating idea, my wife she is excited to be partipating in it, another part of the park we’re contributing to, and we get these fresh vegetables,

If you’re into planting a big garden, if you live in the suburbs, and you want some fresher organic vegetables.

Perennials are just great, one of the perennials, I particularly love, is an iris bed, and they produce flowers, they’re seemingly pretty hardy.

We’ve done lots of hosta’s. Come in different colors, some have big leaves,

Like irises you can split them, and they spread like crazy, they’re another one of these really hardy plants. Some produce a leaf that’s really like quite large, big. There might be a flower, big sort of a low plant. They’re great.

My wife does a lot of other different cone flowers, not really wildflowers, whatever they’re called – snowballs? Hydrangeas? The other one, I’m forgetting the name of it. So we’ve moved towards alot of that stuff. The pots that we grow on the front of the house, she will put annuals in. The kids will have school