Shared Earth

Here's a website where you can offer up part of your land for gardeners...

http://www.sharedearth.com/

Fruit Apps

I just found this fruit sharing app.  Looks really nice!

http://neighborhoodfruit.com/

Looks like you can register a tree in your backyard as being fruit bearing, and if you'd like to share the fruit, you can allow people to contact you to come pick it.  They also have an app for fruit trees on public lands.

Today's Harvest

So today I pulled some leftover green beans, my first turnip, and a broccoli head.  I should have a couple more turnips in a week or so.  I've got plenty of mesclun right now, but haven't cut any yet.

Brooklyn Limestone Blog

Mom sent me a link to a really nice blog, Brooklyn Limestone but more specifically, a DIY Vertical Garden.  Take a look....

Another Xmas Gift

Look what else I got for Christmas!  This was a tin sign from MyPetChicken.com.  I've put this on the door going into my garage.

Xmas Gifts

I got this magazine (oh how I want chickens!!)!  And a subscription to Mother Earth News!!!

When are Turnips Ready for Harvesting?

I'm on day 60 of growing my Purple Top turnips.  They're really tall and leafy already.  The packet of seeds says 40 days to maturity -- so we're already way past that.  The websites I've read say they are like carrots in that they will start poking their shoulders out of the ground when they are ready to pull.  One of mine is poking through, as you can see below.  However the rest are not.  So I'm thinking I should leave these in a bit longer.  Folks also say that when they get as big as a walnut or golf ball, is when you can pull.  So I don't think this guy is as big as a walnut -- so again, gonna let it be.

Turnip poking through the ground

Checking in on the Garden

Finally got some time to check up on the garden....

Broccoli coming in nicely

Harvested lettuce varieties

Mesclun on the left, and swiss chard growing on the right

Oldest square foot garden -- lots of lettuce varieties

Newer square foot garden -- turnips are REALLY big!

Tomatoes that won't turn red

Another Strawberry

I pulled this the other day -- yum yum!  I also got some more everbearing strawberry plants and planted them.

Here's what I pulled off my older plants

The top tier is the new bunch of everbearing strawberries I planted

Here's the whole fountain planted with lettuce and strawberries

Finally!  A Post

I used to not like the winter time change because it meant leaving work in the dark, and not feeling like going to the gym at night because it's too cold and too dark.  Now that I'm gardening I don't like the time change because I get home too late to check on my veggies.  And no veggie checking equals no posts.

But this holiday weekend I finally got to spend some time outside.  Here's what I did.  I spent some time yesterday finalizing one of the planter boxes we just built.  After we built it, I didn't feel like mixing up too much soil....  but as you can see further below, I finally mixed up the soil, added the string/grids, and planted it.  I planted it with mesclun, radishes, beets, beans, and carrots.

Before -- no soil (I was lazy)

After -- more soil, the grid is up, and things are planted

Better Homes and Gardens Article

There's an article in this month's Better Homes and Gardens about the next hot trend being Urban Homesteading.  It suggests a couple of ways to learn more about it.  One of those ways they suggested was reading the book "Farm Anatomy" by Julia Rothman.  It looks very nicely illustrated, very pretty.  Definitely not something I'd want to buy for my kindle, since the illustrations are the main point of the book.

Also they suggest the following blog:  SeattleHomestead.com

Blingy Chicken Coop

Check out this article -- a $100,000 chicken coop from Neiman Marcus (aka "Endless Markup"):

http://now.msn.com/neiman-marcus-dollar100000-hen-house-is-a-gift-for-chicken-lovers

http://now.msn.com/neiman-marcus-dollar100000-hen-house-is-a-gift-for-chicken-lovers

I've Been Gone for a Week

I've been on travel to DC for a week and so haven't been posting.  However, it's been pouring rain while I've been gone.  I just got home today and looked at my veggies and they are BIG.  Here are some pictures.

Tall planter boxes full of different varieties of lettuce

Mesclun -- looks really nice

Turnips are really growing big

Original planter box -- alot of lettuce, chard, kale

More lettuce

Obviously we like eating lettuce.....  I just turned off the sprinklers, as it looks like more rain is coming.  I also pulled a ton of lettuce leaves off while it was raining.  We've got beaucoup salad for the week.

CSA Today

Here is what we got in our CSA box today.  We swapped the pomegranate in for 4 small granny smiths out.

Swiss chard, beets, apples, squash, pomegranate, mushrooms and eggs.

So we've decided to stop the CSA box once our 12 week obligation is up.  Only because we're getting too far ahead on veggies.  My square foot garden plots are really coming in with tons of lettuce and veggies, and we can't keep up with everything.  So we've decided to drop the CSA, in a couple of weeks, and then just buy a few items from the farmers market as needed.

CSA Box and Brussels Sprout

Here's my CSA box this week.  A bag of mesclun, bag of mushrooms, two apples, one lime, one small jar of honey, 5 eggs, green beans, snap peas, two tomatoes, one onion.

The CSA box I got this week

We then went to our grocery store, Fresh and Easy, to get some bread for the week.  While there I saw Brussels sprout off the plant!  Check out below.  I've never seen them this way before, and really didn't know they grew this way.  Always bought them in a bag...  and don't grow them myself...

Brussels sprout

Mom's Veggie Garden

Here are some pictures of my mom's start to growing a container garden with some lettuce, radishes, carrots and spinach.

Mom's three containers

Carrots and radishes

Mesclun

Spinach rows planted at different times

Strawberry Bloom

Look at my strawberry blooms!  They look a bit prehistoric!  I also have two more strawberries growing.

 

Project 333 -- Simplifying Your Life

I'm reading a new book by Tammy Strobel called "You Can Buy Happiness (and It's Cheap): How One Woman Radically Simplified Her Life and How You Can Too".  In it she mentions Project 333 as a way that you can simplify one aspect of your life, your wardrobe. 

I really dislike clutter, and what I dislike more than clutter is my packed-tight closet full of clothes.  Most days I can't find anything I want to wear, and it's difficult/depressing getting ready for work or to go out and run errands.  I've always wished there was a way to simplify things.  This Project 333 has you keep only 33 items of your wardrobe and wear them for three months.  You box up your remaining wardrobe and put it out of sight.  I think after doing this long enough you begin to realize that you can live with a much smaller closet of clothes, and that it makes your life easier whenever you need to get dressed.  Gretchen Rubin also talks about how cleaning out her closets makes her happier in  "The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun ".  All these authors talk about the same theme.  How simplifying our lives and uncluttering our lives, can make us happier.  Less stress, less depression, less to think/worry about, and your stuff ends up not controlling you anymore.  

I've decided, when I get a chance this weekend, I'm going to try to get my wardrobe down to approximately 33 things.  And then box everything up and put it aside.  I sort of do this when I go through my closet for donations.  I pack up the donations in a garbage bag, and then I store it for a month or so.  If during that month I don't need to go into that bag to grab an item, I should be good to go and am ok with donating those items.

Who Woulda Thunk It?

Williams Sonoma has a new Agrarian shop on their webpage!!  Wow, it's nice.  http://www.williams-sonoma.com/agrarian

They've got chicken coops, planter beds, beekeeping stuff, canning and preserving, tools...  Of course everything is a tad spendy.

I found some really cute garden planning guides (they are PDFs):

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/shop/agrarian-garden/agrarian-garden-plant-a-gram/

Plant-A-Grams at Williams Sonoma
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/shop/agrarian-garden/agrarian-garden-plant-a-gram/

More Planter Boxes

Now I'm trying to upgrade my planter boxes.  I showed you, many many posts ago, the second-hand planters I'd gotten from my parents.

Old planter from my parents -- wood has rotted pretty badly

My brick pathway behind my house has planter areas -- the planter boxes were free,
but too small for the planter area, so I filled the excess area around the boxes with rocks

What we did today was remove one of those old planters, that was against the garage, and replace it with a new planter that fit tight to the bricked in area.

Here we pulled out the old planter, and removed the rocks that were filler, left
the two plants that were there originally

Here's the start of a pile of rocks

We used red fence wood to build the box, and we (meaning the husband) built it to be the exact size of the planter area.  Now no need for rocks!  The rocks weren't the best solution for filler, they let the weeds grow in pretty badly and required lots of maintenance.

New planter box that fits the space perfectly.

You can see in the picture above that I had two nice green bean plants that are still going.  The reason there were only two green bean plants in a rather large area is because I planted 6 but only 2 germinated.  I didn't bother, to try to replant additional seeds.  I just got lazy.  Anyway, so we just kept those in the ground (since they still are producing beans), and then we spread a mixture of compost, pete moss, and perlite around them to fill in the rest of the area -- since this planter box is now much bigger than the old planter box.

If I use the square foot gardening method on this box I'll have 5 square foot gardens to work with because the box we built was 5' by 16"...  I'll just say the 16" rounds to 12" :)  Using the square foot gardening method I'll plant quite a few green beans in this area now.

This is the one area in my yard that I have to water by hand, as there are no sprinklers near it.  Well, that's not true, I also have to water my vertical plant stands that I have now.

Chickens

OMG OMG, I want chickens like nobody's business.

I've decided I want three chickens.  They are social creatures, so you need at least two.  I've read that you should have 2-3 hens per person in your household.  I think that's a bit much though.  That'd be 4-6 hens for my house, and I don't want to take care of that many chickens!  But three I think would work.  Some weeks we eat about seven eggs (one for me each day) and then other weeks we eat a bit more if my husband eats an egg.

So which breeds would I get?  I read "A Chicken in Every Yard" by Robert and Hannah Litt that had a great summary of pros and cons of each breed.  Also, mypetchicken.com has a good comparison page.

I think I've decided:

Leghorn (white chicken) or Australorp (black chicken) -- best layer...  Australorp has brown eggs, and leghorns have white eggs.  However the site and book disagree with one another on who is the best layer.  The book says the Leghorn is the best layer, and the website says the Australorp is.  Hmmmm.  Mypetchicken.com says the Australorp lays five eggs per week and the leghorn lays four.

Easter Egger (brown) or Legbar -- green/blue eggs...  mypetchicken.com says both lay about 4 eggs per week.

Plymouth Rock -- really pretty hen, with black and white spots...  mypetchicken.com says they lay 4x per week.

I don't know whether it's worth it to have a really pretty hen that's not as prolific a layer?  There are three other good layer breeds (besides the Australorp), according to mypetchicken.com:  Star and Rhode Island and Ancona, all 5 eggs per week.

Should you just get the breeds that are the best layers?  Or should you go with some diversity in bird color and in egg color....

A Community Garden

We went down to the Westminster Church Community Garden today after Thanksgiving dinner.  It's quite a nice and large garden.  I took alot of pictures.  I noticed though that they seemed to be letting alot of plants stay in the ground too long.  The lettuce seemed really large and tall, and rangy at the top -- so I think it had bolted.  Also, some of their swiss chard was beyond massively tall.  There were other plants there that were really big, that I didn't really recognize.

I'm not sure whether we were supposed to be inside the garden or not.  It was after hours, it was gated, and they had locks on each gate.  However, one of the gates was a double door -- and by pulling the door stake out of the ground, and by swinging it out, you could get both gates open without needing to remove the lock.

Sooooo...  not exactly the most legit start to Thanksgiving.

Here are the pictures I took:

Lettuce that has bolted

Broccoli -- one of the guys is still small and already has a head on it

Bird houses

Massive swiss chard

A pyramid trellis

Cabbage

A MASSIVE carrot ready to be plucked

Really nice work bench....  I want it!