Pea Trellis

I forgot to put this in the last post, but here's a pea trellis you can make if all you have is a couple long poles and some twine. I don't think it would hold anything too heavy, but at least it gets the peas up off the ground.

It's Hot Already

May's mostly over and I haven't gotten much done around here. It's been getting hot here already and I really don't do well in hot weather, so I have to try to get work done in the mornings. I finished the raised beds in my vegetable garden. Originally I had planned to do an H pattern in the middle, but decided to go with a C instead. Now I have to work on the sprinkler system, the old hose is cracked and some of the heads are missing.












I don't have the money to buy mulch, so I'm using grass clippings in the pathways instead. I hope it works. I figure if you pile it deep enough it'll keep anything from growing.

















I'm still trying to fine tune the watering system in my greenhouse. When I first set it up in March there was so much water that the seedlings molded. Now all my rhubarb seedlings died from lack of water. I think the battery in the timer died so it wasn't turning on. This is what happens when I get lazy and don't check on them for 2 days. Grrrrrr!












Here's a little advice for those of you who have goats: make sure your children latch the gate of their pen properly, goats really like roses and strawberries. This bush had big beautiful clusters of roses on it, and the strawberries were lush and overflowing the top of the barrell. Another grrrrrr!

























At least my peas, lettuce, and artichokes are doing well. I don't know how long they'll last though in this heat. I almost lost all 20 of my Roma tomato seedlings because I forgot to water them during the same 2 days I lost the rhubarb. They popped back up after a good soaking, but some of the leaves didn't make it. I still need to get those in the ground.















































The goats are enjoying their new sun shade. Unfortunately the flies are too.












I've lost almost half of our 30 meat chicks that I got a few weeks ago. Some died from lack of water, some escaped their cage and were caught by Augie the dog to be shaken to death. Now I only have 17. Bummer. But seeing as how this is my first year raising meat chickens, I figured it would be a learning experience, and it has been.











Well, let's not end with too much disappointing news. Here's Hopie and her new clothespin hairdo. She could start a new trend with this.

















And here she is preparing for her new show "Cooking With Chicken Feed."

Gardening Frenzy

Every spring I get the gardening bug, but it seems this year is different, I want to do EVERYTHING! From starting the seeds in my greenhouse, to raised beds, to canning, I'm going all out.
The plan:

















It's roughly a 600 sq. ft. garden (Well, maybe. I'm really bad at math). I used to have about 18- 4' squares with old fence boards for 1' wide walkways. It was nice at first, but by mid summer the garden would be so overgrown I couldn't get into it anymore (thus the new 3' walkways). And the fence boards were rotting out with weeds growing in the cracks, not to mention the snakes, lizards, slugs and bugs which lived under them, **shiver**. That's why I like the NEW Square Foot Gardening book (see my bookshelf to the right). It's very much streamlined having been written about 20 years after the first book. I just got the outer perimeter beds done yesterday (yay!).


































Then I transplanted my asparagus to a new, cooler place in the garden. I'm hardening off my peas now so I can plant them too, and I'm going to have to mercilessly prune back my monster rosemary if it wants to stay.
















In other news, my strawberries are blooming,













my hen is setting on a batch of eggs,















the grapevine is coming to life,













the roses are blooming,













the goat is in heat,

















the massive compost pile needs to be tamed,









and I found a tulip blooming at church that looks exactly like my tattoo!


























All in all, lots of work to be done, but lots to look forward to and enjoy in the mean time. But today, I'm taking the day off!





Hil-ar-i-ous!!!!!!!!!

Grrrrrrr!!!

I really just have myself to blame. I knew the kids were playing in my greenhouse yesterday. Right after I crawled into bed last night, all warm and cozy, I thought to myself, "Andi, it's cold tonight. You really should check to see if the kids left the greenhouse door open or not."

Did I? No.

Do you see all those pretty, sparkley drops of water on my baby peas? They're frozen! I don't know if they will survive or not.

Exciting Soil Experiment

Before we left for vacation a few weeks ago I wanted to get my seeds planted so I wouldn't have to sit at home staring at them all day waiting for them to sprout. I do that. I also try to watch water boil. I want things done NOW and a few minutes, or a few days is too long to wait.
Anyhoo, I have a lot of beautiful black compost in my backyard. I've heard that compost is too rich for starting seedlings and will fry them. But I hate buying dirt. It seems stupid to me to spend money on something of inferior quality to what I can make at home which is of superior quality. Especially dirt of all things.

So this is what I did:
1. Put finely sifted compost in one tray, planted seeds.
2. Put store bought potting soil in another tray, planted identical seeds.
3. Put both trays next to each other in the greenhouse so they both get the same sun and water coverage.
4. Went on vacation.
5. Came home and checked on the seedlings, this is what I found...









The difference is amazing! All the healthy, tall seedlings on the left are started in compost. The weak, stumpy ones on the right are in store bought potting soil. Time will tell if the seedlings in the compost will continue to do well or not. I have a feeling they'll be fine.
I have a dilemma though, I didn't expect there to be so great a difference in maturity and I had expected to plant them in the garden at the same time for a good canning harvest. Now the harvests will have to be staggered and I won't be able to can much. Oh well, I did learn a great lesson though!

Oh Yeah...

My plant labels and row dividers are old plastic mini-blinds. :)

Finally, My Greenhouse!

About 2 years ago my sweet mother-in-law Dixie bought me a greenhouse kit for my birthday. I was so excited! I've always wanted one. But, with homeschooling 5 kids, babysitting 2 more, and being immobilized by anemia, (not to mention, again, my inability to follow through with things), I didn't get around to setting it up till last month.
I picked a spot to the right of my little garden and ran a waterline from the garden spigot to the front left corner of where I wanted the greenhouse to be. I pulled weeds and dug up the big clumps of grass so that the greenhouse would be level and weed-free. Then I took a pic. My lovely daughter Abi is in there to give an idea of the size of things.











Then I opened the box and got a little overwhelmed. This thing was going to be bigger than I thought. Luckily I like building things and can read directions. Normally I don't read directions when I build things, then halfway through I'll wish I had, but I wasn't going to take any chances with this baby!










So up it went! It took me half a day to get the entire frame set up (for the love of God and the well being of your wrists, use a drill if you have one!). But then it started to rain, so I abandoned the thing for a week until the rain stopped. Then it took me another half of a day to get the polyethylene (?) sheet in place and secure it down.

















Then I set up the misting system. This didn't come wit the greenhouse kit, I had to go buy all the parts at Lowe's and figure out how to put it all together myself. Before you start thinking I'm really smart, you must know that this was SUPER easy! Not a lot of brain power was involved. First I screwed the timer onto the spigot, then screwed the hose onto the timer.

















Then I ran the hose up the left corner then horizontally along the 3 sides of the frame, and down again at the front right corner to lay in a coil under the shelf. I secured the hose to the frame with plastic zip ties. Again, easy.













The only hard part about this was to figure out what nozzle heads I wanted to use. A drip head would just run down the walls, so I found a mister head that would spray outwards to cover an area of about 2 feet and used the handy little hole puncher to punch holes where I wanted them, allowing for a few inches of spray overlap to make sure all the soil would get coverage. (This was all trial and error, it's a good thing the hole puncher came with plugs to plug up mistake holes!)
















Then I popped the mister heads into the holes, set the timer to spray every once in a while, and voila! I don't have to worry about my seedlings drying out!









The last part of this whole process was laying some sort of flooring. I wanted something that would drain water well and suppress weeds. Most of all though it had to be cheap. My ideal would have been putting the whole greenhouse on a brick foundation, but I didn't have the money for that kind of thing. My next idea was throwing down a layer of those pretty white round pebbles, but that would have been too expensive as well. So my last resort was using the box our new T.V. came in (thank you Grammie and Grumpy!), which worked great because I really didn't want our neighborhood tweakers to know we have a nice new T.V. So I put down a layer of cardboard, then a couple inches of bark mulch on top which was about $5 a bag, I used about 4 or 5 bags. I could have used homemade mulch with my chipper/shredder, but I didn't have it up and running yet, and I didn't have the time with our vacation decending upon us quickly and a wedding dress to finish! Eventually the cardboard will rot away, then I'll put down more mulch. I'll use the chipper then.

















So after a giant exhausted sigh, and warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment, I was finally able to plant my seeds secure in the thought that they would stay warm and moist while I was away from them. The End! (Tune in next time for my exciting soil experiment! Well, exciting to me anyway!)