Suburban Farm: Gardens, Mint, and Insanity

Happy Wednesday! I know you haven't heard from us in a while, we haven't been doing much except watching back episodes of Lost.

Ok, you got me, that's not true at all. We've been BUSY! We built three 4x8 and one 4x4 raised beds, which required four truck loads of compost and one truck load of topsoil. (Thanks to Ryan's folks for the use of the truck.) We then mulched almost everything with another two truckloads of mulch, and most places got the wet newspaper mulch combo. We also chipped up a thicket of sticks that accumulated over the past two years (again thanks to Ryan's folks for the use of the chipper) and used the resulting mulch for the backyard trees, blackberries, and my mint garden. (Actually if it weren't for Ryan's parents, our yard wouldn't look nearly as nice.)

We also decided mid-project to add two new little beds, one for sunflowers and one for the mint garden. I am the only person in the world who can't grow mint. I kill the stuff all the time. In desperation, I purchased 7 different kinds of mint and planted them in a nice sunny spot on the side of the house where I hope they'll invade and cause problems that require my mower to fix. So far (now in week two) I haven't killed the plants. The mint verities are: ginger mint, orange mint, peppermint, apple mint, spearmint, chocolate mint, and I threw in some cat mint. They should all fill in, bloom, and attract some nice critters. I also used some of the mad money I get from my other gigs (babysitting and photo work) to buy some annuals and a few perennials for the front of the house. Everything is all decked out in the most vibrant jewel tones, it looks so lovely.

In the middle of all of this craziness, we discovered that Emma (the rat) was having emotional issues. I know, you're laughing, but she has been really lonely since her sister, Amma, died. She didn't really get any interaction on a regular basis, which was part of the problem, so she has been relocated into the living room where she can be part of everyday life. She also has a new cage with a very stimulating environment. She seems happier and more energetic, although we still have some work to do. The rest of the kids are doing well, especially Kismet who now looks forward to her weekly visit at Grandma & Grandpa's house for Sunday dinner. She gets to run around their fenced back yard. Life is good!

I had a BIG event the weekend before last at my top secret government job. They kept me all weekend working like a mad woman. One of the upshots of working for the state is that they have to give you overtime when you work more then 40 hours, so I get an extra week of vacation this year. This means that you must come and visit, 'cause I have a weeks worth of time off I have to use before the year is out. This is on top of my already accrued vacation, personal time, sick leave, and family personal time. Not to mention the community service time I can take. (Geesh, it's a wonder I have to go in at all.) So there is plenty time for everyone to come visit.

We are also just now starting to build the hen house, and the chicks should be at the Feed & Seed this week or next. (I promise pictures soon.) The first round of planting is almost done, too. Currently growing are: flowers, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, lettuce, spinach, snow peas, snap peas, carrots, beets, onions and potatoes. (We have a total of 57 different varieties of edibles that are in the ground right now.) Soon it will be time to put in all the viney plants like loofa and cucumbers. We've had trouble in the past getting any of our plants to thrive, so we're hoping we overcompensated this year and have to give most of it away.

That's about all for this week. I hope you are all doing well, and please email me back to let me know how your projects are going. And, don't forget to check the site for more regular updates.

Hugs,
Gretchen

Earth Day

There is a group of people where I work, who are committed to educating the public and fighting for changes in the way we handle our environment. You know the drill, every office has at least one person who distributes the recycling bins and occasionally picks soda cans out of the trash. Sadly, in my office, I'm not that person. We have an even crazier group of people who fill that niche. Or so I thought.

Today they are handing out pledges in honor of Earth Day, which is tomorrow by the way. The first irony is that they dressed the statues outside the office building (this actually happens quite frequently depending on the season) entirely in non-recyclable plastic junk. In order to keep the "costumes" on they used a lot of clear packing tape - and I mean a lot. I used less when I moved and had to put everything in boxes. Then once you get in the building they are asking that people sign a pledge to make some environmentally friendly changes, in exchange for doughnuts and store bought pre-packaged baked goods. I'm all for bribes, but the packaging alone from the goodies is a problem, not to mention that they will simply throw away any extra food into the trash. All in honor of Earth day.

This pledge they are handing out is the usuall list of stuff. Replace your bulbs with compact florescent bulbs, turn up/down your thermostat, turn off non-essental appliances at night, reuse and recycle, don't pre-rinse dishes, and wash your clothes in cold water. I must admit that I astounded the girl when I said that I already did everything on her list. So, I'm offering a Hardcore Earth Day pledge, based off steps that we've taken here at the house (mostly to save money, but still.) or steps we're too wimpy to take, but should.

Take the Ecological Footprint Quiz, and try to reduce your footprint this year by 5 acres. I have to be honest here, our footprint is 20 acres. It would take 4.4 earths to support humanity if everyone lived like us. There are only 4.5 biologically productive acres available per person, so I'm screwing at least 3 other people by living the way I do.

Get rid of your garbage service. You will be much more careful about the amount of garbage you create if you personally have to deal with it's disposal. Ryan and I really cut back when we had to start taking the stuff to the dump ourselves.

Only shop the outside of the store. With the exception of canned and bagged (like pasta or pretzels) goods all of the stuff on the inside of the store is chock full o' preservatives, packaging, and is usually more expensive anyway.

Only eat meat once a week. For our vegetarian readers this is a no brainer, but reducing your meat consumption will help your grocery bill and the environment at the same time. Plus if you're only eating meat once a week, your more likely to spend your meat budget on something really worth wile.

Reduce your water consumption by 25%.

Reduce your electric consumption by 25%

Start a compost pile, or a vermicompost bin. Better yet, do both.

Eliminate your car trips. Ok, I can take the bus to work, but it sucks up two hours of my day if I do. I could also ride my bike to work, if the roads in weren't so dangerous and I didn't have a problem with sweating through my suits. So, on the weekends I'm going to try to do all my shopping via human power. I make no promises, I'm a real pussy when it comes to this sort of thing.

Eat seasonally and locally. Again, this is a hard one for us. We love to eat, and we are spoiled by having a great selection of megamarts to get our food from. Still, we do buy produce from local farmers, grow veggies, make our own bread, and visit the farmers' market when it's open, but most of our food is purchased in the grocery store and probably grown overseas or in Mexico.

Convince at least one person, or, better yet, a household to reduce their footprint.

So that's my pledge. Would anyone care to add their pledges to it in honor of Earth Day?

- Gretchen

The bumpy ride from seed to planting.

Greetings all. It's been a while since I really said anything around here. I had high hopes and goals of a running commentary all along the early spring planting season, with daily updates about little seedlings and fruit buds and all the green growth that's breaking out all over the yard. It's all so exciting.

But I decided I'd rather just watch it and try to summarize each major step.

So we built raised beds. We planted things in them (sometimes even following our plans) and now we're watching things grow. Soon it'll be time to plant more, but right now I'm just going to write a little about my experience with starting seeds this year.


I really like starting plants from seeds. I get a kick out of it. Usually I really only like plants that earn their keep, but if I start them from seed I'm fascinated with even the inedible flowers. I wrote about beginning this process an an earlier post.

Now the vast majority of those plants are out in the garden and I'm looking back at the experience.


That's how the seed starting table looked about a week after starting the tomatoes and peppers and whatnot. The small dish is pansies (Incidently, don't bother. They're so cheap and nice at the store that it seems silly to start them inside 12 weeks before you plant them out.) the big dish is snapdragons, and the rest of the tray is warm season vegetables. It looks so nice and neat and organized. It's so full of promise. At this point nothing has died, nothing looks crispy and it's all about the potential.


I just like that picture. It's after we labeled all the peat pots, all the cotyledons are open and some things are getting true leaves. You're looking across the pepper landscape. The little guys are so healthy, so happy, so ready to turn into great big plants that will give wonderful, juicy, tasty, spicy, pretty fruit that I can turn into sandwiches and sauce and grilled things and, well, you get the picture. It's great to watch the tiny little seeds turn into plants, daydreaming all the while about the wonderful things you'll harvest in just a few short months.



Then you realize you're overextended. Plants sort of spill off your seed starting table. They get too close to the lights and get burned, they get all weepy as you're hardening them off, they just generally frighten you within an inch of your life that all the hard work and watching and waiting and anticipating is going to be for naught.


You get pictures like the one above. You can see all the yellowing burnt leaves and the weak stalks and the strange colors. I think it was a combination of a few factors. One was letting the tender little plants get too close to the hot lights, another was potting them in peat moss and perlite (i think that mix is too acid on its own, I added lime and things got better) and the last might have been hardening off too quickly. I took a week to get them ready for the outside, an hour more exposure each day. Then I just let them stay out all day. Then left them outside constantly. It would have probably been better to take 2 weeks. But then again, I only lost one tomato plant before I got them planted and that's a lot better then last year when I must have lost 75% of the tomato seedlings.

The strange yellow leaf thing got me scared, the fact that I planted 2 weeks before we had originally planned has me nervous and and, I kid you not, I lost sleep over the seedlings when it looked like I was going to lose them to a mystery leaf yellowing (I've since decided it was a burn from the light. New leaves are just fine.)

All the plants are great now. We planted them in the beds this weekend and lost one to some sort of creature (probably a neighborhood cat) breaking a pepper plant off an inch above the soil line and one to some sort of wilt. That's a pretty good record for me and I feel it bodes well for the gardens this year.

There it is, seed starting in overview. Hope you enjoyed it, I'm hoping to get some more bits like this one on the details of the other projects we've been working on lately.

Ryan