Tag Archives: Gardening

Homesteading Knowledge

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I would like to start off by saying that I may or may not be obsessed with homesteading :).  I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie with my mom and I instantly became enthralled with their lifestyle.  I wanted to wear the dresses and bonnets.  I wanted a horse and I wanted to live in a log cabin.  While my actual life was nothing like theirs, I nonetheless wanted to be exactly like them.  Fast-forward a few years and my mom and I move to central Iowa where there is this wonderful place called Living History Farms.  I instantly fell in love.  At LHF, you go through a 1700′s Ioway Native American camp, an 1850′s farm, a 1900′s farm, and then a 1870′s town.  All of these sites come complete with livestock and real people who are dressed appropriately for their time period and do activities that are appropriate as well.

This reawakened my thirst for homesteading.  I started getting my hands on anything that had to do with homesteading; books, pamphlets, hands on experience, you name it, I wanted to look at it or do it.  So I started collecting books on homesteading and gardening as well as livestock.  Now, by no means do I have an extensive collection.  I have the books that I feel work for me and my family.  My hope is that someday, we can live on a “homestead” and be able to feed our family and sell the rest at farmers markets.  These books will help me achieve my goal.  As for now, I’m going to be planting some things in containers and leaving them on my deck.  Trying to keep up with a bigger garden with a newborn doesn’t seem like a good idea :)  But someday, I hope to blog about how we bought our first chickens or goats and how big our garden has grown…someday :)

RT

Benefits of Straw Mulch

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Like the majority of the Mid-West, here in KCMO it’s pretty hot.  It’s getting to the point where I get all my errands done before noon because it’s just too hot to do anything else after that.  And with all this oppressive heat, my garden is suffering immensely.  I usually water the garden 2 times a day, morning and night, but it seems like my plants have become stagnate.  I wasn’t sure what to do about this problem so I did some research and found that straw mulch was the best option.  I found an article written by Gwen Mellinger, who happens to teach at a university right down the road from where I live, giving the benefits of straw mulch.  Here is her list of benefits of using straw mulch:

  • The straw mulch creates a barrier against weeds.  Essentially it smothers the weeds so they can’t grow very big or at all.
  • It slows the evaporation of moisture.  Having mulch down means I can water less and therefore conserve water.
  • Straw is relatively cheap.  I bought my bale for $6.  I’ve seen prices from $4-$8.
  • You get a lot for your money.  I bought a regular sized bale and I only used about 1/4 of it.
  • Straw is easy to put down.  It took me about 10 minutes to get it all laid down and spread evenly.
  • When it eventually breaks down, it improves  your soil.
Have you used any kind of mulch in your garden?  Did it improve your growth and the overall health of your garden?
RT

Seeing Green

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No, this post isn’t about money or envy, it’s about finally seeing some green in my garden!  I planted beans, tomatoes, watermelons, and peppers.  So far my beans and watermelons have popped through!

1 watermelon

2 watermelon

1 bean.  I planted a row of beans that all have come through, but this one looks the best so it gets its 15 minutes of fame.

I only planted 2 watermelon seeds because even though the seed packet said it was ideal for small gardens, I’m not sure how small their small is and I wanted to be safe.  Hopefully the tomatoes and peppers will come through soon too!

Have a great weekend!

RT

Garden Update – Day 2

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Well it took us 3 mornings to get the garden completely ready to plant.  But it was worth it because we got to see beautiful mornings like the one above!

Just as a reminder, this is what we started with.

And this is what we ended up with.

I still have herbs to plant but I think I might just do those in containers on the deck so I can have easy access to them.  The garden was a lot more work than I expected to just get ready to plant, but I’m so glad we got some plants in before our window closed.  Now I get to wait with my fingers crossed and hope that at least 1 plant grows for me.  I’m now one step closer to bringing our grocery bill down a little and being more self-sufficient which was the plan in the first place.  Wish us luck!

RT

Garden Project – Day 1

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Today we started working on the garden.  I knew it was going to be a lot of work so we got started early.  It tends to get hotter sooner down here so I’m glad we did.

Heres what we started with.

We had to pull the cement tile up first.

After we pulled up the tile, we had to get rid of the rocks and the tarp that they were sitting on.

Heres halfway through.

Look at that beautiful dirt underneath there!  I think since it’s been underneath rock and cement for at least 5 years, it should make some really good soil for my plants to grow in.  Fingers crossed!

The tarp and most of the rocks are gone at this point.  When we got to this step in the process, we decided to stop.  It was getting really hot and boy were we tired!  Moving rocks and cement tiles is a lot of work!

Tomorrow, we plan on picking up the rest of the rock and tilling the soil.  Then I’m going to lay a border around the outside with some of the tile we picked up.  I also plan on laying a path down the middle with the tile as well.  That way I can reach to pull weeds a little easier.  After that, I finally get to plant something!  I’ve been waiting soo long to have a garden and I’m so close I can almost taste the tomatoes!

RT

A New Home

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Hello all.  I know I’ve been away for quite some time.  2 things have changed since I last wrote.  My husband graduated from college and we moved out-of-state.  Between those 2 things, both of us have been pretty busy.  The move from Iowa to Missouri went perfectly.  Then only problem is that our families aren’t here.  They are about 3 1/2 hours away from us.  Before they were only 1 hour.  This past weekend, they helped us move in and get settled.  Here are some pictures of the new house and the yard.

Heres the living room.  We don’t have any real furniture yet.   The pups chewed the last set to pieces, literally.

Nice big kitchen.  We actually have empty cupboards.  That hasn’t happened in about 5 years.  Sharing cupboard and fridge space is no fun.

This is the other side of the kitchen where we put our oh so small table.  Hopefully we will get a bigger one someday, but for right now, it works just fine for the 2 of us.

1 view from the deck.

The other view from the deck.  The play set was left with the house and were not quite sure what to do with it.  We can’t sell it because it still belongs to the previous owners, but we also think it would be too much work to take it apart.  We would like to have more yard space, but were just not sure about what to do.

Now, I know this doesn’t look like much now, but this is going to be my garden site.  The plan was to take out 2 3×7 sections of tile and plant in the empty space.  That way I would have a little walkway between and around my plants.  But when we went to pull up 1 tile to see how hard it would be, we found out that there is a layer of rock on top of a black tarp.  This makes it a little more complicated, but not impossible.  I plan on leaving the cage up because, as you know, I have a pesky dog that likes to play in the dirt and I’m sure she would love to play in there.

My husband has a week before he has to go back to work so I’m thinking that we should get the tiles up and the rock out before he starts again.  I would like to take pictures of the process but I can’t guarantee that it will happen.  Sometimes I get started and completely forget to take pictures of the whole thing.

Have a great Monday!

RT

Garden Update And A Cute Monster

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I haven’t been able to blog in quite some time so I’m going to show you some pictures of what my plants are doing now.

2 chives and 1 lavender popped up.  I also planted bush beans and little sweetie tomato.

My mini garden was doing great until this happened

Those were the only 3 that had any sort of green in them.  Please ignore the fact that our bedroom was messy.  Seeing this was so disheartening.  I had worked hard to get these started and to have them destroyed by my dog, it was almost unbearable.  Now, I know there are much worse things that could have happened, but it broke my heart.  It took me about a day to decide if I wanted to continue growing anything at all.  I ultimately decided to continue and replant what Dakota had ruined.

This is Dakota

She’s cute yes?  This is the monster that spilled my cups and then decided she thought she could dig to China through my floor.  Did she get to China?  No.  Did she get dirt down to the carpet pad?  Yes.  Be afraid, be very afraid :)

Well, I picked myself up by the bootstraps and decided to make a project I saw on Clover and Thyme (Thanks for the great idea Becky!).  I ended up with this

If you look closely, you can see a little green sprout on the left side

That would be my chamomile!  It’s the only thing green so far after the other 3 were ruined, so I’m going to take extra good care of it :)  I’m hoping to get more seedlings someday soon.  When I do, I’ll be sure to let you know!

RT

Why I Chose To Garden Organically

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Hello there!  Its been a while I know, but I’ve been a busy bee!  I would like to start off by showing you something

If you look really close, you can see a little bit of chives poking through.  I was so excited to see that this morning when I checked on my seedlings!  So far, this is the only plant that has sprouted, but I’m sure that the rest of them will go pretty soon.  Currently, I’m keeping my plants in the bottom of a 3 drawer organizing cart.

I keep them in there to make a little makeshift greenhouse for them.  It seems to be working, as is evident with the sprouting of my chives.  Although I’m really happy that I’m finally seeing some green down in the dirt cups, that isn’t the purpose of this post.  I would like to talk to you about why I chose organic.  I’m not sure how I got to this point, or why it only recently appealed to me.  I think that growing things organically is better for me and my family.  My husband would tell you that it doesn’t matter to him, but I view my job as a wife, is to provide healthy meals to my family, and that’s what I’m trying to do.

I think growing organically also appeals to me because I long for a simpler time.  I would love to be a pioneer on a homestead when they didn’t have a choice but to grow regular seeds and use regular dirt.  They didn’t even know what organic was, at least in todays terms.  It was what they had been doing for decades, and it was their normal.

I also view my growing organically is part of my effort to be a little “greener”.  Now, for the longest time, I didn’t like that term and thought it more of a hippie movement vocabulary word than one that I would use in my vocabulary.  But the older I get, the more I have realized that we need to take care of the planet because we don’t get another one.  Am I 100% green, using recycled and organic everything?  No, but I am trying to do my part in making resources last longer.  I think that if we all did our little part, it would have a huge impact on our planet. Now excuse me while I get off my soap box :)

Next week, I’ll tell you about my first trip to a CSA, bake an apple yogurt cake, and make an all-purpose cleaner so keep checking in!

Have a great Sunday!

RT

P.S.- We had a beautiful cloudy/sunny sunset yesterday with some amazing cloud formations, and I thought I’d share it with you

 

 

 

Garden Update

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As of Saturday, I started a garden.  It started off with just three little seed starter cups and three different types of seeds (Chives, sweet peppers, and chamomile).  Well, I decided to plant some more.  My thought process was that I had 15 cups to put seeds in so why not use them all.  I didn’t end up using all of them, just five more.  And I picked up some lavender seeds and planted those as well.

Here are all of them except the lavender

And here is the lavender

I find it very enjoyable to keep plants, but there is one thing that bothers me

This is the view from my sliding door at about 1:00pm

The road is at the very top of the picture but it was so sunny that you couldn’t really see it.  You see, I have a north facing patio and my building is three stories tall, so I don’t get much sunshine actually on my patio.  If you look to the right about 30 feet you get this

And if you look to the left about 30 feet you get this

So if I want my plants to get any sun at all, I have to start them on my window sill that faces east in the morning and I keep moving them so they stay in the sun until about 1:30.  I’m sure it will all be worth it when I can transplant them into the ground or a pot in KC, but right now, it isn’t much fun.

Here are a couple of pictures of the plants after a few days of trying to grow

Chives?  Nothing.

Chamomile?  Nothing.

And sweet peppers?  Nothing.

I’m not sure how long they will take to poke through the soil but I cannot wait to see some green in there!  If you’ve grown any of these before, do you know how long it takes for them to show their pretty green stems?  Comment below!

RT

My First Garden (Kind Of)

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I spent most of the day yesterday with my mother (Hi Mom!) and we ran all over with my little sister and her friend.  We ended up at a farm implement store and they had baby chicks that I wanted to take home so badly.  The bin with the chicks that were labeled “Pan Fry Special” really made me want to take them home.  I’m not sure if they forgot that you could just call them broilers or what, but my mom and I thought it was a little insensitive.

Anyway, usually every spring, I get a huge urge to garden and/or homestead.  Since I live in town in an apartment, I really can’t have a huge garden, or one at all.  And homesteading is out of the question.  So I decided to start some plants that I can transplant when we move down to KC in June.  The husband chose sweet peppers.  Not my first choice, but I wanted him to feel like he had some say in the whole “garden” thing so I let him pick one.  I chose chives, chamomile, and sunflowers.  Kind of a weird bunch I know, but I was drawn to those so that’s what I picked.

If you look close, you can barely see the pepper seed down in there.

There are my chives!  The seeds were about as big as the pointy end of a pin, and they were black so it was just about impossible to see them in their little pot.

And here is the chamomile.  I’m not sure if I’m going to actually make tea out of it, or if I’m just going to look at the flowers.  Either way I’m glad I planted it.

The sunflowers aren’t pictured because I’m going to plant those right in the ground in June when we move.

And here they are all lined up.  I’m so glad that I started this “garden” because it gives me a chance to actually grow something.  I would love to live on a couple of acres someday and be able to live mostly off of the land.  I think this is a small but great start to reaching my dream.  I’ll post more pictures of them growing, or not growing, in a couple of days.  See you then!

RT