It's looking Better

We are finally able to get some work done in the yard!!!  Whoo hoo!!!  Three of the boxes are laid in the back and we have on in the front yard too.  We are hoping to put in another box to the right and then three more in front of these.  By the house there is a huge area of white stone laid down that Jeff is pulling up and sifting the dirt out of the rocks and those will be getting put down between the garden boxes.  While he was working in the stones he found a bunch of stepping stones we didn't even know were there!  That area has been pretty neglected since we moved in.  

We had a wrap up meeting for the Service Auction committee at our house and Molly helped by getting the glass top of the table cleaned up and all the old chairs.  She is a huge help to us :)

I even got a little bit of transplanting done.  Our local nursery had their herbs on sale for only 99 cents each!  It was a total steal but we wanted to get them into some bigger pots because they were starting to look a little root bound.  

Now I'm off to call for dirt prices to fill in those boxes wish me luck!

Planting Ginger

 This weekend we finally got around to trying something we've meant to do for a while now.  We planted our own ginger.  My family loves ginger in stir fries and sauces Jeff loves to eat it crystallized.  In one of my homesteading books the author states that you can grow your own ginger just bring it in for the fall and winter time.  Okay I can do that (probably anyway).  I grabbed the piece of ginger while grocery shopping about a month ago and left it sitting on the counter so it could grow some 'eyes' like potatoes have.  A bit weird looking huh?

Jeff planted it in a long shallow planter for me that the kids picked out.  It's planted about 2 inches deep.  In theory it will look a bit like bamboo when it grows and will get to be around three feet tall!  The kids are very excited to watch it grow.  I will keep you updated as to how our project goes.  Have a great day!

Garden deconstruction

 Over the weekend Jeff started deconstructing the garden.  The cucumbers had pretty much stopped producing and were completely out of control!  The zucchini plant was still going strong but with about 20 pounds of zucchini harvested from just one plant we felt that we don't need any more (especially since it seems to be all over the house right now).  Our poor pepper plants just didn't do well this year and I think that we only harvested about five peppers in total from six plants. 

 Last year we had tons of peppers from our plants I would like to figure out what happened because peppers are something that we use a lot of.   The jalapenos did very well and the Hungarian hot peppers are still going strong.  I have learned that licking them to see if they are hot or mild is not the best way to test peppers.  Yes I really did that but only once.  The squirrels got away with most of the watermelons, well we think it was squirrels but we don't know for sure.  We found this one under some of the freaking ground cover we can't seem to kill off.  I'm hoping it will grow to size before the frost hits.  You never know when that first frost is going to be here in Michigan tonight for instance it is supposed to get down to around 50 degrees. 
This is the one little squash thing that grew in the back garden.  We have no idea what it is but we are guessing it is an acorn squash.  The back garden was feral this year with only some seeds that Jeff threw at it out of sheer frustration at the late start to the growing season.  We haven't started any late season crops because we are hoping to get this whole area tilled up for next year before the ground gets hard.  The goal is to till it and get some good compost down for the winter.  I don't know why but it would make us feel an awful lot more ready for next spring. 

How does your garden grow?

      What in the world is wrong with me?!  I couldn't believe it the other day when I realized there were no photos of the garden up!  Geez!  Sorry about that I feel so silly.  Here are a few of the photos I took this weekend.  Please forgive the fact that we haven't cut the lawn or weeded.  The kids and I got out after I did the photos and got the beds cleaned up real nice.  Here are the three beds that Photo dude and Molly got built for us.  They are working quite well.  The heat and humidity that we've had seem to have really made the plants happy too :)  At least something likes the weather. 

The tomatoes are growing great and all of the plants have bunches of tomatoes.  The Hungarian Hot peppers are also doing really well and are almost ready to be harvested.   

I'm not sure we are going to get more than what you can see in the photo the plants don't seem to have more flowers on them.  Oh well, the Jalapeno plants are going gangbusters so we'll have plenty of those for poppers (or jalapeno jelly). 

I did not have the best planning skills this year.  My pepper bed is nicely organized in straight staggered lines but then you look at the other beds and they are no were near as neat.  The middle bed is especially a hot mess.  Every year those darn zucchini plants surprise me with there size!  

This bad lad is about four feet by four feet, it takes up most of the bed.  We also have three broccoli plants growing and a bunch of bush beans, watermelon and cucumbers!!!  What on earth was I thinking?  Guess that by the time we planted I just wanted to get stuff into the ground.  I will be making much better notes for next years garden.

   Photo Dude is very good at getting the vine plants trained up the lines.  He does yell at them a bit like they are kids invading each others space and I think it is really cute.  That's my guy :)

Change of Plans

 This is what Photo Dude brought me home last night.  I took a look at it and said "what the heck is that"?!  Really like we don't have enough weeds?  He explained that one of the guys he works with brought him some strawberry plants that he had asked about back when it was still snowing out (ya' know like three weeks ago).  Photo Dude had completely forgotten about the request and we didn't have a spot planned for these babies so we had to make a change of plans for the big tubs.  The potatoes got pulled out and more dirt got added.  We picked out the six plants that looked the most likely to survive and put them into the tubs.  Some of the plants already have berries on them.  They were taken from a mature strawberry patch so we have hopes that these are going to be good growers. 

      We were gifted 12 plants total so the six that didn't make it into the tubs were placed where there box wood bushes when we moved in.  The soils isn't so good and has a bit more clay but the strawberries looked like they had been planted in clay before we got them so who knows maybe they will grow well enough that next year we can move them to a better plot. 
     Ugh.....  I just don't know what to say.  This year has been so bizarre we go from cold to hot then back again.  The rain has just not stopped for weeks on end at times, several times the lawn has gone for two weeks without being cut.  The low spot in our back yard is wet enough that we should have just planted rice.  Hopefully the next little bit will keep us dry enough to actually get the yard tilled up for the boxes. 

Potato Experiment 2011

Back a few years ago we tried to grow potatoes in a five gallon bucket.  Unfortunately the experiment was not a success.  At the end of the growing season all we had to show for the effort were a few handfuls of marble sized potatoes.  After the failure we decided to read up on how to grow potatoes (no we didn't do that first).  Did you know you are supposed to 'hill' potatoes?!  Sure you did because everyone knows that, well except for us we didn't know that.  Anyway we decided to try it again this year with a little more knowledge and a little bit bigger buckets.  I went to TSC and got water buckets from the horse/barnyard animal department.  The color choice was made by the kids they actually agreed on the color!  It was a small miracle.  After we got the buckets we took them home and explained our plan to Jeff and then told him he needed to go with us and get dirt.   It was a little like how I got my garden last year.  Buy half the stuff then he will feel the need to help us with the rest.... I'm evil like that.  We went to several stores and got a bunch of different opinions about the soil we needed.  As with many things we decided to just wing it and got the supplies you see in the first photo.  Jeff grabbed one of the spare barrels and mixed them all together.  We let it all sit for a few days and incorporate.  Or we got busy, something like that.  Jeff drilled holes in the bottom of the buckets for drainage and we got some stones from the neighbors for the bottom of the buckets.  In theory it will help the water drain without all the soil also leaking out.  Well that's the way it's supposed to work for house plants right? 
These are the potatoes.  I purchased them from one of the stands at the Farmer's Market.  She gave me some advice about planting spaces and whatnot.  She's great and sells 50# bags of potatoes for $8 if you don't mind a mixed bag of the not so pretty ones.  Can't beat that with a stick right? 
So we (Jeff) planted the potato bits and then hauled them to the back rock area.  We didn't water the soil because rain was expected that night.  If you would like a great link to learn more about growing potatoes try this one.  Have a great week.

Garden Plans

 Here is how our seedlings are doing.  They are getting so big!  Wow what a mom thing to say huh?  I'm really should be replanting these suckers.  Next year I will definitely be using cups or something instead of the little thingies they are in now.  Most of what you see are bean plants and pumpkins.  Hopefully the neighborhood cats don't eat all the beans up again this year.  I mean really last year to look out into our fenced in garden and see a big 'ole cat eating the green bean plants was just too crazy. 
This is the state of our garden boxes.  We still haven't been able to get dirt to fill them although we have hope for this weekend.  Photo Dude and I have a great place near us that has composted mulch and that is what we will be filling quite a bit of these boxes with.  Our hope is to till up the soil that is there, fill in more dirt and then top with mulch.  The dirt in this section of the yard seems very good so we are going to just use what we've got instead of paying a lot of money for new dirt.
     Our thoughts for next year are much bigger.  Ya' see that strip of yard between the fences and the shed?  Our thoughts are to till up all of that for a huge in ground garden.  Then we will plant something like arborvitae to block the view from the street and cut down on the neighborhood kids cutting through our side yard.  The photo to the left is taken from Google Earth and is of our house with the plans for next year colored in.  So what do you think?

Rain, rain come and play

Photo Dude and I decided we wanted to try and make a rain barrel last year. Like many projects we never got around to it. I'm glad we hadn't done this sooner since it probably wouldn't have been a whole lot of fun to pack this up for our move last fall. Our barrel came from a sale this guy was having at his house. He had a bunch of these but I'm not sure where he had gotten them from originally.
Most of these photos will have commentary by Photo Dude since he was the one building this. Yet again just a reminder all text in green are the thoughts and comments of Jeff AKA Photo Dude. So as not to make this to techie as I tend to ramble about thread sizes and stuff like that. At the bottom of this post is a link to the you tube video where I got the plans for this project. Same kind of barrel and every thing.
The basic's of what you are seeing in these shots are this. I was making this up and trying to look like I knew what I was doing. Well I kind of did thanks to the video. I drilled the holes in the lid with a stepper drill which gives a pretty clean hole. They are kind of expensive so a spade drill works just as well but I have the others for work so I used it. The Spigot I used is a half inch that is at a 90 degree angle. I would recommend getting one that is at a 45 degree angle because mine is touching the barrel and tends to run down the side. Lesson learned. See I told you I would get techie on you, sorry.Drilled the hole for the spigot and If you have this kind of barrel I would listen to the video again before starting your drilling. I did not so it could have been better but it works and I do have plans to improve the water collection system next year. I hope.Spigot going in a bit tight but forgot to check the size before drilling. I am a guy so that is just how it works sometimes.The next few pictures are of the overflow. Prety basic. Get a 3/4" NPT to garden hose fitting and screw it in. Put a piece of hose on it and wham you have an overflow. The next step is the screen. Important for keeping chunks out of you water and bugs. don't forget it needs to go over the top and a piece needs to go over the end of your overflow hose.




Finished barrel ready to be installed.I lost most of the Photos for the install but the short version is cut your down spout to fit and see what comes out of it. I guessed at a lot of this part but it works great.
The next door neighbor had a bunch of these patio stones in their backyard that were there when they moved in and said we could have them. This added height will make it much easier to fill a watering can from. We pointed the overflow hose down the cement trough so that hopefully we don't end up with a low spot in the yard from where the water comes out. If you don't have gutters on your house and you have that little moat around your house you know what I'm talking about.

If you would like to see a set by step video of how to make this here is one we found on YouTube.

Spring Time Thoughts

Here is another thing that never made it to the blog this summer but now isn't a bad time to share either.

After our garden growing beautifully this
summer we realized that the corner of our yard wasn't the best spot for us to try and harvest or even weed the darn thing. And we were pretty limited by the size and expansion possibilities. Photo Dude and I decided that what we needed were raised beds instead of an in ground plot. We hope that the weeding will be possible without worrying so much about the kids breaking stems and if the tomatoes run amok again (please let that happen again) we will be able to get at the vines without trying to do the limbo under the wires run for the cucumbers.
Our back yard isn't very deep but we have a wonderful side yard that isn't used because I can't see the kids playing from the deck. This is going to be the perfect place for our garden beds and there should be plenty of room for expansion. Photo Dude built three new beds and we have a layout in mind for at least two more. We want to see exactly how much we can fit in each of our boxes this year.
We've been using "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew as our reference guide for how big things might get. We sort of made a list of the things we eat the most often and decided that was what we would like to grow ourselves if possible. Much to the disappointment of the kids we will not have banana trees or orange trees. That just isn't going to work in mid-Michigan. We also explained that while there are other trees we could grow our yard just isn't right for an orchard and there is such a nice one we get everything from we'll just keep going there.


I will now turn things over to Photo Dude so he can explain the dimensions of the boxes and any tidbits that might come in handy while building your own frames.

So as you can see these are real basic boxes. I am going to till up the ground under them so we have more dirt room for roots. The boxes themselves are 4 feet by 8 feet by 6 inches deep. All I did was take 3 2x6 boards 8 feet long, cut one in half, and using deck screws to screw them together. I was thinking of going 2 high but the cost of soil was a bit much for us right now and I can always expand them later if we find a need to. Make sure when buying screws that you are getting a screw that is made to stand up to the elements not just drywall screws. We will post again about these boxes when we till up the ground and get the dirt in. I have to wait for it to stop all this snowing before I can think about that. Photo Dude

http://homesteadrevival.blogspot.com/2011/04/barn-hop-7.html

Garden Update

Wow it has been a little while since our last photo update huh? Can you believe how big everything has gotten? It is just crazy! Never in a million years did I think anything like this would have happened. So as a quick up date, all of our tomatoes are growing beautifully. We have finally ascertained that the cherry tomatoes are the ones that died right off the bat. These gorgeous red ones are the Fourth of July tomatoes. We are having them tomorrow on BLT's so I'll let you know how they taste. The banana peppers are doing very nicely also. We harvested the first one already and threw it in chili (we actually didn't know what to do with just one). The other peppers are starting to come in also. There are so many that we are beginning to ask our neighbors if they like peppers :) It would be great to have some to share. These are so cute too I can't wait till they begin to change colors it is going to be a rainbow out there. We had a wicked storm this past weekend with estimated 70 mile per hour winds. Our plants got knocked around quite a bit. Photo Dude had to stake some of them because they had almost come uprooted. Next year we are going to get bigger tomato cages and put the peppers in the smaller ones from this year. The cucumbers are very stubborn. They are not happy just climbing along the fencing they wanted to use the tomato plants to climb on too! Photo Dude ran twine to the back fence for them to run along too. He needs to go out every day to coax them on to it and off the tomatoes. They are very disobedient. This is just one of the yellow squash plants we have going. I never knew they grew like this, they almost look like lilies or something very pretty. I really hope that our neighbors like squash, I've only got so many recipes in my box. Last but not least are the green beans that I don't have a photo of. These are the only plants that we have had a problem with the rabbits getting to! We had cute purple flowers one night and then the next nothing but sad empty stems sticking out of the ground. We aren't pulling them out yet because they keep coming back and if nothing else maybe it is keeping those buggers away from everything else. I guess next year we'll know that rabbits love beans.