And we thought Summer would never come!

There are plum and pear trees planted. The garden is sprouting beans, peas, greens, tomatoes and peppers. Everything is in order for the best summer yet!

I finished the final rain barrel installation this morning and I am glad to say that, after a nice heavy day of rain, I've got about 220 gallons of rainwater waiting for me to use it.

I've begun work on the chicken coop. I will post some progress images soon. The main garden bed has been prepped and I've planted some popcorn as well as kale and other greens there as well.

I've got Nasturtium flowers growing on my edges and I even got my hands on a moon flower to help the local bats this year.

This is going to be a banner season!

Permaculture Certification

  Summer has pretty much passed me by. Between working on the rental house we bought in May and trying to keep up with life I barely had time to go out into the garden and look at the plants this year.
  Some things grew marvelously without me. Other things really needed my attention and, therefore, were not as strong as they could have otherwise been. Here are a couple of pictures:

From Garden

From Garden

Pretty nice, right? And this is what it turned into:

From Garden

From Garden

Jungle...

  I have learned a few things this season, which makes up for the lack of success I achieved in the beds. I think the first lesson I am drawing from this year's garden is that my tomato plants need a bed of their own in which they can just consume all the space. 

  The best thing to come from this summer was my completion of the first of my certifications in Permaculture Design. I was hesitant to take a course online due to the lack of hands on experience. But then in March, Geoff Lawton offered an online certification that promised to be incredibly comprehensive and worth the money. I have to say, it definitely was.

  I submitted my final design on September 26 and I haven't heard anything to tell me there were issues so I'm hoping that means I have a certificate coming in the mail from Australia. I'll post the design elements in my next update.

  So now I have to tear the garden apart and start several large batches of compost from the green materials in the garden and the dead leaves that will shower my yard in the coming weeks. 

  I almost forgot to mention that I also finished a Master Composter class through my local county this summer. So I know everything there is to know about municipal yard waste composting. Fun times!

Garden Progress

It seems as though I can never get the garden started at the time I'd like to. This year, that worked out in my favor.

I've never been really keen on forcing my plants to survive events that they couldn't normally survive on their own. This includes covering for frost. Now, to be fair, I didn't plant any of my cole crops during the proper time in which they should have been planted. I also didn't get my tomato or cucumber seedlings transplanted until a few days into June. This all turned out to be a very good thing because we got one last frost here on the Sunday before memorial day. The community garden where I have a few things planted this year lost a lot of crops due to the very late frost. I got lucky because I was too busy to plant anything until June 3rd!

Here are a couple of updated pictures of the garden in my back yard. I still have one bed to cut and prep which will host my beans and corn and some root veggies. The largest bed in the photo is half sewn with buckwheat and amaranth and the rest is tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, basil, celery and peppers. The 5x5 that you see in the photos has been prepped and contains lettuces, spinach, herbs, garlic and onions.

From Garden

I double dug the half of the garden which would have the food crop in it. Double digging is probably the hardest garden-related activity I've ever performed. The digging is relatively easy, but my beds were littered with roots and so moving one trench into the next was a chore. The roots held everything together except the top layer, which would landslide into the trench ahead or behind. The whole point of double digging it to loosen 24" deep while maintaining soil structure and I found that to be a very difficult thing to do well. Maybe I'll try again in a couple of seasons.

From Garden

I found some info online about "trench planting" tomatoes. I had a couple that had grown a bit wonky so I tried the trenching method. Of the 8 plants I put in, I trenched 3 so we will see how well they do.

From Garden

The final step was to layer about 1.5" thick of compost on top of the beds. This step is crucial, as compost has an amazing water retention factor and acts somewhat like mulch with water. The only hard part about using only compost is that it is amazingly suited to grow things, which means any kind of weed or grass seed that ends up in it grows amazingly well. Compost added every year also greatly helps the structure of your soil. Layer after layer builds up to be a lovely high structure of organic matter and nutrients.

I began building the beginnings of my new composter a while back. Here are some images of that. I still have 2 more frames that same size to build, as well as a door for each and a lid.

From Permaculture

From Permaculture

I ran out of leftover cedar for the side with one plank to go! I have some more on standby now until I have some time to cut it and install it. This container is about 3 cubic feet, the size required to successfully hot compost all compostable materials (including vegetable cellulose plastics). The next 2 units will attach to this one and will also be about 3 cubic feet. I also plan on building another unit near the chicken coop once that is completed to allow for the composting of manure for fertilizer.

I suppose that is enough for this post. I will be updated more and more as the summer progresses and my projects get more complicated. I am thinking I'll also highlight some of the tools I use from time to time for reference material.

I need to work on a new sign off. Stan Lee calls everyone "true believers" and most newscasters say something like "stay classy San Diego". I need a little quip to end with. I'm thinking something like "Until next time, keep growing!" but anything I come up with sounds stupid in my mind...so just check back here frequently this summer for more updates.

My ever expanding universe

I have been making some big changes around the garden. I'm adding a new bed and expanding the existing garden space to make a total of about 100 sq ft. I'm also double digging at least one of the spaces to Grow Biointensive standards.

I've uploaded some new pictures into the garden album to show before and after.

In addition to all of this, I'm also in the process of preparing the windows I scavenged to make the greenhouse/chicken coop. I have them mostly cleaned now and I have to replace some of the broken panes and then scrape and seal the entire window. Each one is about 35" x 45", so I figure if I turn them on their sides and stack them vertically, I'll be about half a window too big. Luckily, I have other ones of various sizes that I picked up earlier this year and I think I might just be able to patch them together. The bonus to all of this is that I don't have to purchase any new windows for the entire coop because I have enough for the greenhouse wall as well as the sides of the greenhouse area and the sides of the coop.

My seedlings are doing exceedingly well in the basement under the lights. Too well in fact. I needed to transplant them a week or two ago. I've been hardening them off slowly, but lucky for me I didn't plant them in the beds yet. We frosted for (hopefully) the last time a few nights ago and I have been too lazy to get everything into the ground so nothing of mine died. Some of the members at the GNG weren't so lucky.

I have one of my 2 plots at the GNG prepped and potatoes planted. I attempted to save some strawberry plants that were in the bed already, but the severe heat and no rain we've had this month did not favor them. I think maybe 1/3 survived so I guess we will see what comes of that. I also have strawberries in PVC tubes at the homestead, so we won't be without this year hopefully.

I'm taking my PDC online this summer. I know how oxymoronic it sounds to take a class on permaculture design over the internet, but it was a good deal and Geoff Lawton is teaching it. I'm into the third week now and I have to admit, there is a lot about the subject that I don't know yet. I've been independently studying this for over a year now, but permaculture is still an amazingly complex philosophy.

Here are a couple of before images of the garden:

From Garden

From Garden

It's finally time to plant

Just a quick update, as it is about 2:30 in the morning. I planted the first round of seedlings tonight. I had a Hydrofarm brand seed starting kit left over from last year and one of the principles in permaculture is "produce no waste". So instead of chucking the thing, I choose to make use of it. I put in 18 spanish onions seeds, 10 roma tomatoes, 14 Rutgers tomatoes, 18 brussel sprouts, 16 straight 8 cucumbers and 5 strawberries.

I picked a few of these based on length of time to maturity and the rest I just randomly selected. Tomatoes tend to survive transplanting better when they are large. I also found out a new method to plant my tomatoes this year, which may lead to larger yield. It is called "trench planting" and you can read more about it here. Basically, you lay the seedling flat into a trench to get a better root structure from the plant. I can't wait to try it out.

I have made significant progress in the way of chickens as well. I have the area where the coop/greenhouse will be placed leveled and prepped. I also dug the holes for the cement footings of the coop and I'm now ready to mix some concrete and get the posts anchored. I haven't gotten very far on the framework yet, but I'm still holding out hope to have the project done by the end of May.

My next step on the gardens is to get all 3 beds prepped when we have some warm weather. I was offered 2 plots at the GNG and I have my 102 sq ft holding in my back yard. I still have some work to do with the expansion behind the house, but it should be relatively simple considering I won't be building any new raised beds, but will be transferring the ones already built to the additional spaces. The beds at the GNG seem to be in relatively decent shape and I was able to get 2 next to each other. My only issue there is that my bed spaces run north and south of each other so I won't be building any trellises for pole beans or peas.

I realize now that I still have some seeds to purchase: peas, comfrey, herbs for the spiral...etc. I guess I better get on that. I got my potatoes in the mail a few days ago and realized I could have just gone and bought a 5 lb. bag at the grocer's. At least these are certified organic and I know that they haven't been riddled with pesticides and weed killers.

I will be sure to post a couple of pictures of the coop footings and other things as I go. I also hope to do a tutorial on both composting and double-digging garden beds in the near future on this blog. I might even venture into video this summer, who knows?!

Let's Talk Dirty...as in Compost

I just finished my first class in my Master Composter program and let me tell you, it was amazing!! The material we are covering and the possibilities for community outreach and education are very promising.

I also attended my first co-op garden meeting this week and I already see that I'm going to fit in nicely there. I like a lot of what they are doing already and I see plenty of opportunities to add my input.

In the coming months I have several more composting classes to finish the program. Part of the requirements include building a composter and getting a heap started as well as 12 hours of volunteer work in multiple different settings. I'm scheduled to help run a demonstration table at both the Greenfest at the zoo and Vegfest, which is being held in Novi this year. I contacted my guy through the Ferndale Environmental Sustainability Commission to potentially get myself on the roster to head up a composting workshop in Ferndale this summer.

Part of my volunteering can come from simply working in the community garden, which is awesome since I sporadically volunteered to lead a Wednesday evening work night at the garden. Hopefully, after I've taken a few more classes, I'll be versed enough to hold a workshop for members of the garden on starting and maintaining a compost system.

As I mentioned previously, there are multiple methods to composting. The method that SOCWA, the organization hosting the master class, uses is primarily cold composting. I have already noticed variations in the way they teach how cold composting works, however. This is of great interest to me, since I plan on studying different methods this summer. My plan is to build several enclosures and test different methods to find out if they work the way they should. Provided I have the time, I will be building 3 new composters in my backyard. One will be a double unit, near the house for kitchen scraps and yard waste. One side will be a hot system, the other side will be cold. I hope to get one going near the chicken coop as well and one on the opposite side of the yard.

I will sketch a site map this week and post it so that what I am talking about will be easier to envision.

Permaculture 101

I've been schooling myself in permaculture all winter. I've been waiting for a class to present itself in the Detroit area for 2013 and so far it seems like I'm out of luck. Instead of relying on someone else to offer me a program, I've pieced one together myself. Basically it consists of purchasing way too many books and ignoring everyone around me for large chunks of time while I read about swales and edge and diversity of species...etc.

In addition to all of this reading, I've been proactive about learning through experience. I joined a co-op garden on the edge of Ferndale and I also enrolled in a composting class which runs twice a month in March, April and May. I plan on volunteering a few hours a week down at the CSA we joined last summer. I wanted to work with people who have already established a system and these folks offer a "work share" to make the program more affordable. So I guess I'm not technically "volunteering" but I'm really only taking what I grow and I'm not getting money for helping...so yeah.

This summer looks to be quite busy for us. I addition to the 10 x 10 plot I'm getting from the co-op, I'm also planning an expansion on my backyard garden space. I'll be essentially doubling my growing area. I'm using John Jeavons' GROW BIOINTENSIVE method to garden this year, which adds a bit more prep work, but should decrease the amount of labor time I spend in the beds. I'm definitely building my chicken coop this spring and we hope to have chickens in it by May or June at the latest. Our front porch needs to be demolished and rebuilt and then for the few days that I'm not doing all of this, we want to remodel our bathroom. Overwhelmed yet? Me too!

Here are a couple new pictures. My ever expanding library (I think I have at least 3 or 4 more books since this was taken.) and the preliminary images of the coop plans. I will post a high res image as part of the series I'll be doing during construction.

Make your own dirt...

In this post I am going to be discussing a few different methods for composting, listing some of the steps to each method, but mostly going over pros and cons of each method. I will cite some sources at the bottom for further reading. If more information is required, use the comment section to ask questions.

Composting is something I've become quite interested in lately. I've found many different sources on how to do it, using many different methods. It seems to me that, depending on what your overall goal is, you may need to choose a specific method of composting, rather than just setting up a heap and throwing all of your organic waste into it.

For instance, a heap made from all sorts of food and yard waste may not contain the proper nutrients your soil needs when it comes time to introduce your compost to your garden. Plant yield can vary greatly, depending on the organic matter in which it grows.

I was always under the impression that taking compost from your heap and establishing it as the primary soil in your garden was a top-notch idea. According to one of my books, I was dead wrong. Compost on its own only plays a fractional part in the production of food. Adding compost to the soil that already exists, and introducing other materials as needed seems to be the ideal way of growing. In fact, the Biointensive method only asks for a 1-2 inch layer of compost on the very top of the garden at the beginning of the season, meaning that the other parts of the soil are just as, if not more, important for the proper propagation of species.

One method of composting is the "rapid" compost method. This is a simple formula which requires more work from you but yields much quicker breakdown as a result. Using something like 2/3 brown and 1/3 green ingredients, you monitor the moisture on a daily basis and turn the compost everyday as well. Within 2 weeks you have a fully composted heap, ready for use. The major downside to this method, based on the reading I've done, is that when organic material breaks down that quickly, a lot of the vital nutrients are released in gas form from the pile. Turning the heap causes air to get to the nitrogenous "green" material faster. This is why the pile converts quickly, but the problem comes from the fact that much of the important microbial life in the pile, the stuff that helps strong root growth in the garden, cannot survive in the high-nitrogen environment and the resulting compost is of inferior quality.

Now, there are 2 somewhat opposite techniques which both yield highly nutritive compost, but each has benefits and flaws. These two are the "cold" and "hot" compost methods. "Cold" composting consists of getting the proper mixture of brown and green materials, as well as a small amount of garden soil introduced to the pile. Ordinarily, one would loosen the base of the heap about 12 inches down and then place a layer of sticks on the bottom to provide a solid base for the pile. You then add the brown (dead leaves and plant matter), followed by the green (fresh grass clippings, leafy vegetation), and you top it off with some soil from the garden. The major downside to this method is the final step...in which you leave it alone for 4-6 months. The description of this method mentions potentially turning the heap once, about 2 months in, but otherwise this pile sits and works over time. As long as you have no urgency for compost, this seems to be the best method to get the most out of your compost. Not only does "cold" composting provide more useable compost for the material you put in, but it also provides compost with the most nutrients and microbial life.

"Hot" composting is somewhat opposite from cold, in that you turn the pile infrequently and maintain it more often. This method is necessary for breaking down items like "compostable plastics" made from vegetable materials and larger sticks and twigs. The heat required to consume a compostable bag of chips is upwards of 140-170, which you can achieve through "hot" composting. There are drawbacks to this method. First is the amount of human energy required to maintain the temperature. Second is the fact that, despite normal claims that a hot pile will kill weed seeds and small insects like aphids, the truth is that in order to actually be 100% effective, temperatures have to reach above 200.

I like to "hot" compost because it allows me to compost in the winter in Michigan. It also lets me throw things like compostable forks and coffee cup lids into my heap. There are a lot of places in the Detroit area using these materials now and, on the rare occasion that I purchase something that comes with vegetable-based plastics, I have a hot heap at home to biodegrade these items.

As I mentioned in my last post, I plan on expanding my garden and composting operation this summer. This plan includes trying each of these composting methods first-hand. I plan on using images, as well as updating with blog entries step by step as I go to find out just how well each method actually works. With any luck, they will all work well and I can send soil samples to the MSU extension office in Lansing to have the nutrients in each heap tested.

And that is my diatribe on composting. Obviously, there will be more compost conversation coming this summer, so if you love organic matter, keep checking back.

More info/citations:
Rapid Composting
Ecology Action: GROW BIOINTENSIVE method

Spring already?

Is it spring already? It sure feels like spring with the warm weather that we have had lately. While I'm concerned about the crops up north and other things that happen in Michigan when the weather is poor, I am also very excited about the possibility of starting the garden early this year.

I have been reading a new book called How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine. Long title, I know. But the title says exactly what the book is about. This summer I'm going to use the technique in this book, called Grow Biointensive. This method, unlike other methods I've used in the past, focuses almost entirely on soil health. Yield is considered a byproduct of healthy soil. This all makes a lot of sense and of course that is partially why I've never heard of it before.

Anyway, the Biointensive method is a long term commitment kind of thing, so I will have plenty to blog about in the coming months. I'm very excited about getting started with this new plan, especially with the other ideas I'm putting into the works with the city soon. I'm working on getting a lot of support from all sorts of people and so far, everyone I've pitched my ideas to has been overwhelmingly excited about the concept of inexpensive, quality food availability in Ferndale.

My home garden is also going to expand this summer. Basically, I am going to be working all day every day to accomplish all the goals I have in mind for this endeavor. I addition to the beds I have already built, in order to get to my golden 100 sq ft number,  I will be expanding one bed to 4x6 and adding another bed of the same size. This will give me a total of 102 sq ft of soil to cultivate.

I also plan on setting up several more rain barrels, building a chicken coop, creating at least 3 compost heaps of varying materials and, if time allows it, still riding my bike with my kids several times a week!

My next post will be all about composting, so stay in touch for that!

New projects!

I have new pictures of the garden to add to the Picasa albums, but in the meantime I'll post a new project which I will soon be undertaking!

 Since the new child has been here, I've been attempting to keep everything maintained, but I'm getting to a point now where I can actually begin new things. I finished one of my lettuce boxes yesterday. I also drove a staple directly into my hand accidentally...yup.

My next small project (now that I have a router table) is going to be a shelf that also holds my bicycle. Here is the picture:

From Home Projects

This thing looks AWESOME. I'm still not sure how I am going to mount it so that it doesn't end up tearing half my wall down, but after I decide on a good anchoring system and an efficient place to mount it, I'm going to own one of these!

The garden turned out pretty good. I have a lot of work to do at the end of the season to prepare for next year, but for now things are really working out well.

We also bought a share of a CSA this season. The first drop off was today. Mostly just greens and a couple of beets, but this summer is going to rock with all the food I plan on making. 

My garden has already yielded a handful of pea pods and about 8 radishes. There are at least a dozen cucumbers already growing and about the same amount of roma tomatoes also on the vines. This should be a pretty decent year as long as the rains keep coming in the next few weeks. 

On a final note, I got the picture albums organized now so that it is easier to find all of the different projects and postings. More to come very soon!

One book down...

I finished Introduction to Permaculture this morning. What a life changing book. There aren't many you can say that about and really mean, but this one is definitely in the top 3 books I've ever read.

My next literary venture is Bill Mollison's Permaculture One: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlement. I also have Permaculture: A Designer's Manual being delivered tomorrow. My next move is to finish my rain barrels to completion and then I'll move on to more advanced elements.

From Stuff I Found

I planted nearly everything in the garden yesterday. This year, the list looks something like:
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Cabbage
Cucumbers
Peapods
Green and Yellow Beans
Sweet Peppers
Roma Tomatoes
Celery
Kohlrabi
Carrots
Parsnips
Radishes
White Onions
Green Onions

Not too shabby, if it all grows. I used some older seed when starting the tray indoors, but I bought some new stuff for the root veggies and other plants I started outside. I haven't had much luck keeping my seeds from one season to the next. Perhaps I need a better place to store them.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Just a quick update here. I finally edited the albums in Picasa. There are 3 new ones and one or two of the older ones got a facelift. Now you can view all the garden images in the Garden album, the home projects in the Home Projects album and (my personal favorite), the permaculture projects in the Permaculture album. Basically, I made it easier to find what you may be looking for at any given time. Of course this totally ruins many of the previous links I had posted to images, so disregard those older posts that have links in them.

I'm nearly finished with Bill Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture which means Permaculture One is in my near future. So far I have learned many ways to adapt our current living situation into an ideal permaculture solution. The big problem with implementing many of these ideas is the money it will take to build things like greenhouses and chicken coops. We are getting the gardens and yard together now, so it shouldn't be long before we can concentrate on other things. One step at a time, right?

Finally, I finished the new vegetable garden beds. Here is a "before" and "after" comparison.

Before--

From Garden

After--

From Garden

It is a bit difficult to really get the idea of how the original looked, due largely to the fact that I took rather inadequate pictures, but you can kind of visualize it. Now I have 4 trough-style lettuce boxes to rebuild and hang from the 4x4 posts and I'm totally finished.

Plants!

So a quick update here:

I had 3 Roma tomato seedlings and 3 green pepper seedlings getting too big for the seed tray in the basement. This week I got the garden started, perhaps a bit prematurely. The tomatoes have doubled in size in just about 5 days and the peppers went in today. Next will be the 2 cucumber seedlings that already have vines coming in. Oh boy am I behind.

On another topic, I'm halfway through my permaculture book and I have totally changed my design for the chicken coop. I'll post the drawings when I get them done. Essentially I plan on building the same size coop and almost the same layout but it will also have an integrated greenhouse for geothermal heat radiation into the coop. This way, one structure serves multiple purposes and I don't need any electricity at the coop. Sketches soon!

- Posted using my iPhone

Project completion feels sooo good!

I completed the last 8 feet of the fence today. It's nice to be able to cross that off the list. The final piece doesn't match exactly, but I can't be too picky since I bought my supplies at different times from different stores. Like most of my projects, it isn't professional, but I'm satisfied. Now I have some grading to do to the yard near the fence and eventually I will attempt to grow grass back there.

I have a small part of the garden extension in progress now. I dug my root bed hole 10" deep and I built a cedar box to contain the amended soil. This, paired with the 8" high walls of the raised bed will provide 18" of good growing soil for carrots, radishes, onions and either parsnips or turnips this summer. I also just acquired a 5 foot tall upright chest freezer for storing all our frozen veggies at the end of the season. I got my grid set up in my primary bed and I transplanted the garlic that came back from last summer.

The next image updates will show the grid in the primary bed as well as the new raised beds I'm in process with now. In the meantime, I have to get some seed in the ground in the next week or so and then keep my fingers crossed for no hard freezes after the sprouts start. I have a couple of cucumber plants and about 7 tomatoes as well as a small variety of herbs growing under my shop light in the basement.

I think the seed tray warmer has been both a blessing and a curse. While it does seem to be making the plants grow well, it causes the moisture to leave the peat quite quickly, making it a bit of a chore for me to keep them all watered. I plan to find a way of rectifying this situation in the future, but for now I just check everyday.

Here are the pictures of the fence:

Before:

From Stuff I Made

After first section:

From Stuff I Made

Finished product:

From Stuff I Made

I am now 43 pages through the total 178 (not included appendices) in the Introduction to Permaculture and my mind is just swimming. There are events in life that cause a person to change the way they look at the world...reading this book is one of those events for me. Everywhere I look I see the layout of the landscape and think about how each element connects with it surrounding elements. Learning about this stuff has truly been life altering for me.

Grow Lights and Seedlings: A Love Story

This post might be educational for some people. I know this information wasn't common knowledge to me before I discovered it.

I guess I should start with my conundrum. I started much of my garden from seed last summer. I didn't have a grow system, I barely had a starter kit. I didn't have any other place to keep the tray of seedlings so I let them grow on my kitchen table surrounded by windows.

The problem that I had with this method was that the seedlings would grow and the stems would get too long to support the weight of the leaf at the top. It made it difficult to transplant them when the time was right. Now, obviously I can't bring the sun closer to the plants, so this season I bought a couple of cheap shop lights (about $12 each at my home improvement store) and I plan on building a shelving unit to make this work eventually. In the meantime, I have set up a small table using plywood and sawhorses. I then hung the shop light from a pulley in order to raise and lower the light.

Here is the enlightening part. I originally went to my local garden supply store to look at grow lamps. They run about $80 for a small fixture, big enough to light a single planting tray. For almost a tenth of the price, I bought a stoplight, which I have read on many blogs will work just as well during the initial stages of growth as an expensive grow lamp will. You keep it close to the top of the tray and slowly move it up as the plants grow to keep the stems from getting too long. You also get the desired effect of having your plants grow directly upright instead of leaning toward the sunlight.

Here are a couple of pictures of the system I have implemented right now. I bought a jumpstart kit from the garden supply store and I hung the lamp with jute from an antique pulley I had lying around. Obviously, this is temporary until I can afford both the money and the time to build a shelving unit.

From Stuff I Made

From Stuff I Made

Another Beautiful Winter Day

So it has become apparent that Winter is passing us Michiganders by this year. I couldn't ask for anything more. With all the work I have to do before munchkin number 2 arrives, I need all the good weather and time that I can get.

I wasn't going to get started on anything important yet, since there is a high probability that we will get hit with snow in mid May! Instead, I let my anxious nature get the best of me and I got the backyard seeded. I also began working on my flower bed in the front of the house. As long as it isn't raining, tomorrow I plan on going to get a load of compost from the city yards to finish it off.

I think I need to make a checklist of the projects that I am planning to work on this summer. I need some sort of hierarchy of priority to get these things done, otherwise I'll be stuck with more than a few half finished jobs by the end of the season.

In the meantime, here are two more books I recently grabbed to help me out this summer.

From

This is how I plan to organize my raised beds this year. If it works, I'll keep doing it from now on.

From

This book has tons of amazing designs and projects in it as well. More structural stuff than gardening, but I think I have found at least 3 designs I want to make so far.

I recently came across a periodical that I am now subscribed to. I love print and I really love getting magazines in the mail. Since Readymade folded in June of last year, I've been looking for something new to fill the DIY void and this one really hits the spot for the moment. It also happens to (coincidentally) fall within the realm of everything I'm working on right now.

From Stuff I Found

It's called Urban Farm and it basically guides a person like me through all the best ways to grow a large garden in an urban environment, keep bees, raise chickens and just generally follow a sustainable farming model. While I have many of my implements already accounted for, this magazine has given me some new insights into things I might not have considered before. For instance, this summer I am going to plant all of my root vegetables in pots instead of in the garden. Not only will this save me space, but apparently roots grow tremendously well in pots.

This magazine started in 2009 and is circulated bimonthly, which is a little bit disappointing because I hate waiting, but it is worth it's weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

I'm still looking for a really good DIY replacement for Readymade. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open.

Grass!!

Our yard has begun! It took about 15 days for grass to sprout but it finally happened. I think my hesitation to waste water has been a detriment to its growth, but to be honset, I would rather pay less for water and have no yard. Anyway, the parts of the yard that get more water have begun to sprout small patches of grass and so we have a start to a new yard after almost a month of no yard.

From Stuff I Fixed

We also have quite a few seedlings coming up in the garden. I didn't get all of the vegetables planted this year so I will have to be better about it next year. In my defense, I had to build the garden boxes and get the soil going before I could get started planting. I did put some tomato and pepper seedlings in that I had pre-planted indoors in April, but nothing grew well inside this spring. I think it may be due to the weird weather changes we had. I got the final boxes built and filled. I planted lettuce in these two hanging boxes to keep room in the limited space I have for bigger plants.

From Stuff I Made

I hope I get a decent yield this season despite my laziness in getting everything done!

More projects complete

I finished the second raised bed for the garden on Sunday. I also dropped the posts for the hanging boxes. After I finished, dad came down and we seeded the back yard. We got a good rainfall that evening and now we have 4 or 5 days of sun, so hopefully we get some grass by the end of the week. I think I may need to water it, but luckily dad also brought me his old water softener tank to use as a rain barrel. I need to get it filled and up on a stand and then I need to get my gutter installed for the kitchen addition.

I decided to only go with 2 raised beds this year and add on to the garden later. This decision has mostly to do with money. It costs me about $30-$35 per bed for the lumber, not to mention the time that it takes to build and level the box. I like spending much of my free time with my family so I chose to be done with what I have. It should be more than enough to grow what we need for this year. After all is said and done, I have approx. 48 square feet of garden bed and I am planting the leafy vegetables in the hanging boxes. This year, from seed, I'm growing:

Roma Tomatoes
Heinz Canning Tomatoes
Cauliflower
Yellow Bell Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Yellow Banana Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers
Serano Chili Peppers
White Onions
Green Onions
Lettuce
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Brussel Sprouts
Yellow Wax Beans
Snow Peas
Cucumbers (Pickling)
and a few other things I can't remember right now.

We will also have the herb garden out front and Gena is planting a pumpkin patch in the front yard somewhere as well. We also bought a blueberry bush to try to grow in the backyard somewhere.

All in all, we are going to have a huge garden eventually and hopefully we can get to a point where we no longer go to the market for produce. That is the goal, knowing where your food comes from and being self-sufficient.

Been busy

Since we got back from our little vacation, I have been incredibly motivated. I saw a lot of things in San Francisco that gave me some really good ideas about sustainable living. We came back and I got really excited about getting outside and getting things done.

The first thing I got working on was the compost heap. I have been neglecting it lately and I realized that this kind of behaviour must end. I knew it would be in the way if I decided to expand that garden at a later date and I also knew that I wanted it out of the lawn when we tilled up the back yard. So I moved it. There are pictures of what it looked like before and what it looks like now in the album Stuff I Made

I also tore out the ugly shrub in the front of our house. We are planning to replace it with peonies and other perennial flowers. We also will be planting some herbs in the planter box and another flower garden in front of the porch. Along with this small improvement, we also just tilled up the entire back yard. I will post some better pictures when it isn't raining outside, but for now the pictures are in the Stuff I Fixed album.

I also recently found out that the pressure treated 1x6 boards and 4x4 posts that Home Depot stocks no longer contain arsenate (arsenic), which means I don't have to line my planter box with plastic! HOORAY for the EPA! We will be staining it and planting in it soon I hope.

New pictures will come as I get more things done.