Salad Fiend

I go through a lot of salad. Usually about 1 pound every 3-5 days or so. I try to eat salad for lunch at work most days, and at least once over the weekend. I’ve got a salad dressing that I adore (and that people at work seem to like too) and that, all things considered, isn’t too bad for me either.

The end result of all this salad eating, though, is that we have lots and lots of those one-pound plastic boxes that salad comes in. We can’t grow salad all year in this climate, so I had just kind of assumed that for part of the year, I’d be spending $8-$10 a week on leafy greens.

Pete, however, had a much better idea. We took the salad boxes, added soil and water and seed, and put them under our seed-starting light. We’re just starting the cycle, but thus far it seems to be working. It’s cut-your-own salad, and thus far it is very tasty. We aren’t up too the production level of keeping up with my salad habit yet, but we’re making progress.

On a similar note, one of our garden beds appears to have been taken over by broccoli. Some of our crop went to seed last year, and I guess we didn’t get the seeds all picked up, because it’s overgrowing half of our garden space. I’m going to rip up a bunch of the greens to give what we actually planted a chance, but I am curious what to do with the broccoli greens. They’re still young and relatively tender, but kind of bitter. That is my challenge this weekend.

The Tomato Cages!

It’s been a very rainy few days, but we have managed to get our tomato cages at least approximately placed (we still need to dig down and get them securely anchored) – but we finally got home early enough tonight I can provide the many-times-promised photos. I am so excited about them! My only worry is that Jaspenelle may come in the middle of the night and steal the orange one They are about 150% the size and 300% the strength of the standard lite-metal cages, so they should stand up much better to the weight of the tomatoes this year.

The Front Yard Garden

It was a beautiful day outside. After lounging in bed for a while this morning and making breakfast, Pete and I decided it was the perfect day to make some serious progress on our yard and house.

When we first moved into our house, I didn’t get a heck of a lot of pictures. We moved in summer solstice of 2008, and with moving and everything else, we didn’t get very far beyond planning the first year we were in the house.  The first spring we were in the house, I was conveniently mostly unemployed, so we were able to plan and put in a fairly substantial garden.  We played with the idea of putting the garden in our back yard, but the fact it is north-facing combined with the fact our neighbor was using chemicals on his apple tree that drifted into our yard encouraged us to put it in the front yard.

So, we planned five garden beds, each about 2-3 feet wide and between 6 and 14 feet long. I am still working on digging up the photos I have of that time, but here is the not-so-great cell phone pictures of before and after putting in those beds:

Yeah, our neighbors all thought we were crazy. We were told that kids would dig up the garden, that putting it in the front yard was “dangerous.” The biggest problem we had with putting our garden in our front yard, honestly, was that we didn’t have enough room. Neighborhood kids showed interest only in the fact that we were playing in dirt. We grew, harvested, and preserved carrots, bell peppers, tomatoes, hot peppers, herbs of all descriptions, corn, beans, pumpkins, radishes, snap peas, potatoes, broccoli, spinach, arugula, and lettuce. So, this year, we decided to add extra space.

It was a beautiful day outside, and we were done adding the extra 50 sq feet or so by 1 p.m. So we made a pilgrimage to the local hardware / general store and got some extra soil, some *awesome* tomato cages (don’t worry, pictures coming soon), and a new tool that I very much intended on attacking the dandelions with. I may have gone a bit overboard when we got home… I dug up the dandelions in the driveway, in the front yard, and then started on our much-neglected back yard. Because the previous homeowners / tenants had parked an RV in the back yard, it wasn’t in great shape when we moved in. Combined with pretty much ignoring it last year so we could get the back porch ripped down and rebuilt, it had pretty much entirely reverted back to weeds. I dug up weeds until I got a blister on my hand… then kept going for a while. Whoops.

BUT – we got grass re-seeded in a fairly sizable chunk of the yard. Pete put down shredded newspaper to help insulate and fertilize the grass seed, and we’re hoping it’ll actually grow. If not, well, we’ll have to see what else we can do. We have to have some chunk of backyard to have BBQs in over the summer, after all.

To see more pictures of the day, including the Smudgie cat enjoying outside time, check out the Flickr set.

Experiments in Growing : Aquabeads

For a while, Pete and I have been playing with the possibility of growing some things in a soil-less medium. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing better then getting dirt under your nails and digging into the ground. For some plants, though, there are benefits to growing without soil (at least to start them, if not entirely). Feeding my one-to-two pound a week salad addiction is one of the most obvious uses. By growing without soil, we can control the salad growing much more easily – and have a lot more fun with the growing containers!

After getting to play with some AquaGems that my sister-in-law got as a freebie with an Ebay purchase, we decided to give them a try. We actually found them at JoAnn’s, and surprisingly the company is out of Rigby, very close to where I grew up.  A tiny little 10 gram packet will hydrate up to a quart of water. They claim to be colorfast, entirely biodegradable,  non-toxic, and environmentally friendly. So – we picked up a packet of black and a packet of green to give them a try.

Two quarts of water in a container later, and in went the totally dehydrated gems.

Five hours later, we added catnip seeds (we’re trying catnip because it grows very quickly and is relatively forgiving. Plus, our cats will love us) to this:

I’ll do my best to keep you all updated on how this experiment goes.

Welcoming Spring : Eight weeks out

Unlike some of my more brave counterparts, I still can’t bring myself to put plants outside yet. Yes, there have been days of 60+ degree weather, and yes, I am enjoying nothing more than watching the bits and pieces of green that have been spoiled by our incredibly mild winter popping out to say hello to the world once again. It’s the feeling of spring, and it’s intoxicating.

It’s so intoxicating, though, that there are days I want nothing more than to spend the entire day outside, feel the cool soil working its way between my fingers, and to help nurture small plants along. Yet, like all things in nature that know what’s what, small plants don’t survive the frosty weather and all-too-possible cold snaps very well.

The good news is, it’s only eight weeks out to planting season here. So tonight, Pete and I started the first of our garden starts. Tomatoes of six different varieties, bell peppers of many colors of the spectrum, and salad all went into the starter trays tonight. They are joining the pines, onions, and catnip that have spent the winter inside, as well as the pineapple plant, bigger pines, aloe vera, and various varieties of succulents that live inside all year round, greedily drinking in the sunlight from the south-facing windows.

It’s not much, yet. And there’s the constant internal struggle between “I want to grow EVERYTHING” and “we should grow what we will actually eat and use” – but it makes me happy. Spring is on its way, and the plants, like little gifts from the soil, will be reaching their way towards the summertime. I look forward to watching them grow and measuring their progress out of the ground as well as the sun’s progress through the sky.

Spring, I can’t wait for you to get here!