Thoughts on Fall Garden 2007

Well, after everything I planted, the survivors were, Mesclun (no surprise there), Turnips (handles the winter marvelously), and Garlic (easy cheezy).

I picked a salad today for our guest, Jason's aunt and uncle from New Hampshire. Aunt Carol was delightfully impressed as I picked it just before lunch. This made me happy.

So, I wanted to try an Early Spring Garden this year, but managed only to plant sugar snap peas, broccoli, parsely, and onions. I did not even prepare the soil, just punched holes in the ground with a stick and stuck in pea and broccoli seeds. Who knows if anything will pop up. I am hoping this rain we just had filled in the holes better with soil as I only scratched over them with my hand rake. I have to say, that this pregnancy is pooping me out.

I do want to have a garden this year, but it will have to be a small one. I am actually going to The Farm for the month of April to apprentice in organic gardening and permaculture. I am really hoping to learn alot, so I can apply it to my home garden, and share my knowledge with my garden friends. I am also taking a trip in May to visit family up north, then will return home to begin a summer garden--oh, and get ready for labor, hehe!

I am thinking that I will purchase a load of compost manure this month (March) and spread it over my garden to let rest until the end of May till I can get to double digging. It is an expense that I would not usually make, but I feel like I need to nurture my soil this year since it's been a couple years since my last addition of manure. I will probably spread some more leaves, too (we did cover with leaves in the Fall).

Right now I plan to do companion gardening like last year. I loved all the colors, and attracting all the honey bees! I've actually seen my first honey bees of the year buzzing around the purple flowered ground cover (clover?). Their heads were a fuzzy bright pink. I wish to plant a bee garden just for them...

I have many plans for the garden, but the hardest part is keeping it simple. I will just have to take it day by day, and allow the garden to arise of its own accord. In the very least, I will revamp my garden with my acquired knowledge from the April apprenticeship. Perhaps, even, start from scratch.

Jason Puts Up a Wall

Our Library is on its way to completion. Jason put up a wall near the entryway just before he came down with the stomach flu, Yuck! Poor thing... So, now I just need to put together the final bookshelf for the living room to finish our library.

Other things:

J built the compost bin higher

I am sewing more and more, mostly baby stuff and maternity items

Composting Toilet is still working out great, although J did switch to the city toilet during his illness. We are about to store the peat moss in a covered trash can to protect it from rain (not necessary, just something to make me feel better--I don't like the wet peat moss at the bottom of the bag)

The Garden is going pitifully well. There is still mesclun to pick. Turnips survived without any protection, although I didn't eat too many. J pruned the fruit trees a couple weeks back. I have started my Spring/Summer garden plans. They will be nice a simple to accomodate my pregnant state. I'm thinking, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, radish, and beans, lots of marigolds and cosmos, and, if I feel up to it, some other things.

I've started started laundering my baby stuff. We are starting to implement a greywater environment, meaning, switching to greywater friendly soaps. First is the laundry detergeant. We found a recipe to base a liquid soap made from our bio-deisel supplies. We need to do a couple of experiments, but it looks easy enough.

Bio-Deisel, by the way, is going fine. Production is much slower in the wintertime, saved for warm weekends. We use 70% bio-deisel, 30% regular deisel in the winter, but we drive less too (summer we use 100% bio-D).
So, still, overall, throughout the year, we emit 10% of what we were with our old Nissan gasoline Stanza.

Well, I can't think of any other homesteading updates. I'm just taking it day by day with this pregnancy thing, and nesting when I feel like it. Housecleaning is kept to a minimum, but I am having bouts of deep cleaning too, which is always fun. "J, can I get rid of this? or J, can I build this?"

Oh, forgot to say, drying laundry outside on the clothesline still going fine. I just have to remember, watch the weather, although rain-washed baby clothes are great! (We've had our line for 2 years, now? and probably for the last year I have been using is regularly. I've only used the dryer 4 times in the past year...)

The Inside of my Home, in a Sketch

The compost toilette seems to be working out better than expected. There is no offensive scent (but we are sure to keep the lid shut, too.) Jason has been emptying it and he says it is not so gross. He does wash the bucket out with the hose before returning it to the bathroom, as well as replenishing the other bucket with peat moss.

I cleaned under the sofa today, and made some designs to build a second sofa, that will double as storage. Also made some table/bench designs that will be used as storage also. The foremost project is the bookshelf that I will attach the the wall next to the futon sofa. I've got a lot of projects brewing and I can't wait to get going.

My objective is to utilize space and create an environment that is conducive to our lifestyle. Oh, and look good too.

We tend to read, study, research, and create in the living room. It also is our entertainment center, dining (esp. in the summer), fireplace, piano, ingoing/outgoing mail, and entrance.

Our "dining room" gets alot of traffic because it is the main exit to the back porch/backyard. It holds another bookshelf of all my cookbooks, and some gardening supplies, and a few cookwares. This is an awkward space. In the winter we move the dining table to this room to free up the fireplace area.

The main bedroom is used for sleeping, dressing, and reading.

The guest bedroom is currently my craft room, and junk room, which I need to organize and sift out.

The "sun room" is our office, exercise room, pantry, and some more junk. The utility room holds bike gear, garden stuff, some tools, laundry room, and another exit to the backyard walking by the hot tub.

The kitchen is the kitchen... another mess to organize, and in the future renovate.

The bathroom is the bathroom... a future room to renovate in my dreams.

As for outside, Jason will be finally building his shed! I can't wait! We already have the concrete slab poured (2 years old now), and it is begging for a roof and some walls. More to come on this, as this will be a momentous project! I'm hoping for him to finish this for my Christmas gift, but we will see. I know you have to plan for problems to arise when building so, I will not be surprised if he finishes in the Spring.

A busy weekend,

This weekend was chock full of gardening, laundry, um...brback! forgot to hang up the wet load, silkscreening t-shirts for my breast cancer 5k team, computer stuff, and planning for this busy week. Oh, and most importantly, Jason built for us a nice compost bin for ... drum roll... our compost toilette! Well, we just ordered the seat to put on our 5 gal. bucket. And we bought the peat moss last week (you can use partially composted sawdust, too).
Humanure Handbook
amazon link
I have yet to read it, and it is free to the whole world at the above link. Very cool guy!
We will save so much water from not flushing the toilette, I can't wait. I think our standard toilette uses 1.6 gallons? a flush. Already we only flush when we take a crap (sorry to offend...) and, there will be no stench of pee! Hooray! We will compost this stuff for at least 1 year, or is it 2? I will have to read up on it, but the concept seems simple. More to come on this subject soon!
I ordered mesclun seed from HarrisSeeds.com, and they should be here this week. I've already prepared a 4x4 bed just for it.
I picked up some nice plywood on the side of the road. I consider myself a trash collector, and Monday is the prime day to go collecting in my neighborhood. It amazes me what people consider garbage (and what I find as treasure:)

Time to Plant Some Greens and Jot Down Ideas

I planted Arugala a few days ago. Sprouts are coming up.

I was tentative to plant greens earlier because of the hot weather and draught conditions.

This will be my second year of having a Fall Garden. Last year I grew simply a 4x4 of mesclun. This year I plan to expand.

I can't wait to get my mesclun seeds in. I ordered them from HarrisSeeds.com. because I was having a hard time finding them locally.

I will be planting other greens and veggies later than recommended, so I will have to see what will happen. Last year I place a window pane over the mesclun to hold in the warmth. I may need to plan for more covers (glass, straw bales, etc...)

I will be collecting my neighborhood fall leaves soon for compost/mulch around my yard. I am planning to begin a front yard herb and flower garden for the Spring. I can't wait to utilise this space.

Jason and I set up a couple rain barrels this summer. I am wondering how they will hold up in the winter. Out Winter is about 3-4 months long, and not extremely cold. Zone 7b.

I had to kill 5 big Black Widow spiders and 2 egg sacs the other day in my garden. Yikes!

I went ahead and mowed over the pumpkin vines to prepare for the fall planting.

Today I pressure canned 8 quarts of pumpkins and still had some leftover to make pumpkin butter. It's been a long day.

I will need to write a post on my summer garden. It did well, and I want to make an overview so I can more clearly improve upon it. I also should do a post on the Fall Garden plan.

Ideas
small pond
honeysuckle perfum
dried herbs (stevia, sage)
blueberries
milk paint living room
start herbs in house.