Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Notes from Real Life

Gah, sorry about the lack of posts! so I moved, no internet for a few weeks. Internet withdrawal, so not my friend. But I finally got my computer connected to the internet, whoot!

Some notes from the trenches of the battle that is real life:
  • G's refusing to stop feeding me...oh the hardship ;)
  • Worm bin is doing okay, but I need to make the drainage holes bigger.
  •  Reducing trash needs to wait until I get my hierarchy of needs 100% squared away.
  • Balcony herb garden is flourishing (my immortal basil still refuses to die)
  • House garden is going wild with sunflowers, super potatoes, and GIANT kale.
  • I actually am getting to know folks at the farmer's market. Best strawberries on EARTH!
  • I'm biking or walking to work every day, though sometimes G picks me up when she needs work done at the house.
  • The local co-op is slowly getting on it's feet and I'm thinking of seeing if I can sell some of my up-cycled crafts there.
Hand-woven, upcycled plarn purse or market tote: Spiced Chocolate or Autumn Harvest
I'm slightly obsessed with collecting plastic bags and weaving them. Might as well sell them, right?
         I'm picking my way through American Wasteland, so I'll have a review up of that soon. I have slight issue that every time I read it I want to quit my day job and start a compost business. Unfortunately for all the food waste out there, I kinda need my day job ;)



Monday, April 29, 2013

The Story of a Dollar: Or How Hana Learns to be Smarter with her Money

"A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; 
only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something."
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

It's an embarrassing tale. Last fall, Walmart had a sale, a buck a bag for compost. I try and avoid Walmart, but the deal sounded so good!  Of course, after I bought five bags and brought them home, I found that the compost was clay with a few roots and moss thrown in. It looked much like the dense, non-draining black clay of my yard, in fact. I managed to find uses for it nonetheless, but I still had a bag left this spring. A bag of  finely ground up rocks.
"Compost" Riiiight...
I was in the Dollar Store (another place I try to avoid, but I go sometimes with G), and I realized that a wire trash bin ($1) would make a great compost sifter.

Easiest DIY compost sifter ever!
 I don't have enough compost to make a hot pile, so my compost takes it's sweet time going from kitchen scraps to dirt. The brown chunks in the wheel barrow (above) are a year old and mostly still recognizable as former food and leaves, but there's some fluffy black gold in there.

Fluffy black gold, also known as mostly finished compost.
Left: a dollar's worth of "compost"    Right: a dollar's worth of homemade compost
 Twenty minutes later, I had an equal amounts of clay and compost (above) and mixed them together (below).
Compost and clay mix


I planted some Viking and Yukon Gold potatoes, watered thoroughly, and mulched it with some pulverized straw (the car is too small to fit the cheaper straw bales, so next time I'm bringing a truck!).



Now comes the hard part: waiting for the dang things to sprout!


 

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Where I’m at right now:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15397#sthash.dIwQAfKF.dpuf
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15397#sthash.dIwQAfKF.dpuf
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15397#sthash.dIwQAfKF.dpuf
   
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15397#sthash.dIwQAfKF.dpuf
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15397#sthash.dIwQAfKF.dpuf

 —Emily Dickinson                                                           


     I live in a small rental home with my grandmother. She’s the breadwinner in my family and an awesome human being. She puts up with my eco-craziness but doesn’t see a point for most of it. We recycle everything but glass (the city won’t take it) and we compost. I’ve had a small vegetable garden in the backyard for three years and and a bit. Total harvest so far: a handful each of peas, green beans, strawberries, and carrots. Literally a handful each. I’m stepping up my game this year with two modified African-style keyhole beds. Since we rent and the yard is small, I can’t do anything too off-the-wall, like solar panels, graywater, front lawn garden, get fruit trees, or putting in permanent raised beds. 

Current garden plans have been derailed by snow...in April. I live in South Dakota, it's a special place.*
Chickens are illegal in town, and G (my grandmother) has nixed rabbits, guinea pigs, indoor worms, and bees. I managed to get a chest freezer for cheap (classified ads are awesome) last year, so when I made friends with a deer hunter and someone who had an extra half a hog to sell, I actually had a place to put the meat, yay! G’s mistress of the kitchen, so I have to keep reminding her that we have all this meat, but that’s a whole 'nother issue. 

I finally bought a rain barrel, so I won’t be using my big plastic bin, scoop-out-the-water-with-a-bucket system that I’ve used for the last three years. I have a drying rack in my basement for drying clothes. Less wrinkles than my old leave-it-in-the-dryer ways, and things like linen don’t wear out as fast. I’m working on cloth pads, and I only shower about once a week (don't look at me like that, I use deodorant). 

All in all, I’m being somewhat green in the things I have control over. My dream is to have a small house with a big garden, no trash, grey water, small livestock, be eating local,have renewable energy, and maybe a place out in the country where I turn marginal farmland back into prairie.


This project isn’t necessarily about the destination, though: it’s all about the wild ride!


*Disclaimer: Image taken in North Carolina, though with a similar snowfall to the one we had this week. South Dakota doesn't have Tulip Poplars.