Diy self-watering planter

I have been making these self-watering planters for years. They're great! Start to finished you're looking at about 7 minutes. Whomever came up with this is a genius. Straight up, smarty-pants. Check out my super-over simplified directions after the jump.

Garden starter kit

Someone sent me a lovely gift for my birthday! The kids and I started the seeds on the 9th of March. The kit was super simple, straight forward, even toddlers and little kids can get right in there. The kit says there is At least 10 seeds each, heirloom tomatoes, heirloom zucchini, heirloom eggplant and let me tell you, there is much more than 10! Take a look at what's inside.

I don't know what I was thinking starting 10 zucchini seeds. I have no desire to grow 10 plants but at this rate it doesn't seem like we're going to have much of a growing season. We have rain the forecast for 13 out of the next 15 days. I'm ready for some sun, anytime now.

After a week, we have definitely made some progress! We have lots of tiny little sprouts! Very encouraging! Here's what I've done during the first week, after planting I gave each pod a good drink. It took a while for the water to absorb into the soil. I put tooth picks in and laid plastic wrap loosely on top. Doing that helps keeps the moisture and heat in. Any water that spills into the bottom adds to the humidity. After the first good soaking, I gave the pods a good spray with a spray bottle in the morning and at night. I left it beside an eastern facing window and that's it. Easy Peasy. 

There wasn't really any direction besides depth of planting, which is fine if you know what you're doing but if you're someone who has never planted before I bit more direction would have been benificial. I will say that the soil was packed pretty tightly into the little pods. I definitely needed to poke a tooth pick in a few times to get the water to saturate, otherwise most would just sit on top or run off. 

Out of the 50 pods, so far 12 have sprouted, not terrible. I'm sure in another week the rest will be out too. I didn't start the basil, it should grow quickly once the garden is ready, I'll sow it directly. I added 5 bean seeds instead, the kids and Scribs love beans. I can't wait to have fresh beans again. 

After the week we've had, I'm glad to see some progress. The second wind storm destroyed my green house. I'm going to see if I can repair it, but I'm not holding my breath. 

Have you started your garden yet? Are you in the planning phase?

2016 garden plans

This winter can end any time now. It wasn't particularly cold, we did have a few sprinkles of snow. The rain and the floods, Ugh! We had another tiny flood, just in the low spots. Someone told me that this winter we had over 2 feet of rain. That is a whole lot of rain!
I don't know what it is about this year (well ok, I do) but I am exhausted and ready for the sun to be out before 7 am. I'm starting to think about hibernating next year. Bears are onto something! Any chance I get, I've been doing small bits of work in the garden, but it really needs to dry out before I can really get working.

Our bulbs have been coming up since December, and are ready to bloom! The neighbors already have flowers. The time has come to start planning and working out what we're going to do for our garden this year. I've already started pulling up what ever is left. There is already some slugs that will be to be taken care of. I have a nice pile of compost ready to be spread. I'm guessing I'll need a few yards for top soil and manure.

I put the green house up on the deck this year, that thing is on it's last leg. It's filthy but it's doing it's job. It's 55 degrees outside and 82 degrees in the greenhouse. Thanks person who gave that to us!

In case you forgot, our garden is 60'X40', last year was our first year planting. First things first, we need to pull everything and get the add-ins in. Compost and manure. We will have our rows running north-south, not that I think it'll make much of a difference. I'm hoping for 8 to 10 rows this year, last year we had dozen or so running east-west. Each row will have weed barrier fabric around the plants and a nice thick layer of straw between the rows. Weed control is going to be top priority as last year it was out of control.

Next up is a chicken fence, the chickens discovered late in the season that the garden was full of delicious treats. Not this year, they can have the bugs. Realistically I'll end up going with just chicken wire and upgrading to something nice in a few years.

Up next, watering. Last year was dry, we went months without rain. We're putting in drip irrigation to minimize the water loss and get the most bang for our water-buck. We'll be putting gutters on the barn and getting a few rain barrels for the fall and winter. It seems silly not to collect the rain.

I'm going to try and get the kids to start some seeds with me in the next 2 weeks. It's tough to get them interested, it takes a long time to get things growing and they lose interest.

Coming soon will be selecting our plants and planning our rows.

2016 goals

Can you believe it's 2016, I certainly can't! 2015 was a big year for us with really great highs and really low lows.

This year I've got goals!

• Paint every ceiling and the 3 bedrooms
• Build a fence, even if it's just cattle panels.
• Improve the garden (more on that coming up later)
• New play set for the kids, the death trap has got to go!
• Upgrade a few things in the house the dishwasher, get a few bookcases, figure out a better toy stage system, some new light fixtures for above the table and the bed rooms. 
• Stop looking like a hobo all the time. I should to start getting my hair done regularly (once a year doesn't cut it and that'll give me some knitting time), get some new jeans. Mine are bad! And just take a little bit of time for myself, I'd like to not be so tired all the time
• I'd like to knit something nice for myself, it'd been a long time since I made anything for me. I have a ton of this I'd like to make but always end up starting a project for someone else. 

I think my goals are reasonable and all very do-able. I'm keeping it simple for 2016.
What are you working towards this year?

lilacs 6 months later

Way back in October we planted our first plant, lilacs! I ordered this one from White Flower Farm

Here's a reminder! I'm so excited to say our tiny little plant is growing! We even have teeny-tiny flowers! 

Nothing reminds me of spring like lilacs. Have you gotten out to work in your garden yet? 

day trip up the mountains

Scribs and I took a trip up to the mountains for a little day-date sans-kids. Thanks Mother-In-Law for  watching them! Let me tell you, I understand why Pacific North Westerners say PNW is best. I am becoming one of them. I love it here, it is unbelievably beautiful!

Everything is covered with moss which is both magical and destructive. But lets focus on the magical part! It's like living in a fairy tale. 

There's more photos after the break, a by more I definitely mean more! 

Garden update!

I've been meaning to talk about the garden for a few weeks but sadly I haven't made much progress until the last 2 weeks. We were planning on getting straw and top soil to build up some raised rows but after a visit from our favorite master gardener we scraped that idea. He suggested that we were just making more work for ourselves since our soil is good (I wouldn't say good, but what do I know), it's already tilled and has a lot of compost and organic materials. His suggestion was to just build up raised rows using the tiled earth. That's what we've been doing.

It takes me about a hour and 15 minutes to get one row finished. Our soil is heavy clay and is especially tough around the edges. We bought this Prohoe hoe and that is helping a lot but a lot of the soil still needs to be broken up into smaller pieces. I've found just stabbing and twisting it with this hand cultivator works best.


We have 11 30 foot rows. I've already planted most of a row of tomatoes, I'm going to wait a few weeks to plant the rest so we don't have a billion tomatoes that are ripe at the same time, aside from tomatoes I planted a row of onions, a row of various carrots, half row bell peppers of varying colors, half a row of egg plant, broccoli and cauliflower. Something…rabbit… has eaten 2 of my broccoli plants. I went out to check everything is morning and 2 were mysteriously missing. You want to play this game rabbit, you will lose!

I've got to say that my body is sore. Last week I hurt my already sore back and needed to let it rest. Unfortunately things still need to be done, after almost a week of resting it's finally starting to feel better. And it's going to rain today. The perfect excuse not to garden.

Next month I'm sure I'll be able to show you a bit more! One of our tiny pepper plants already has the beginning of flowers! Thank you started in-doors seeds!

I'd love you hear how your garden is coming along, I know after the longest winter in history it's going to take some work!

Counter top lemon trees currently coveting

I am very into these dwarf lemon trees. Don't they make these kitchens looks so bright and cheery? I'm in full-on garden purchasing mode, every impulse buy is being curbed right now. Perhaps in the fall, until them I'm going to sigh longingly at these mini-trees and pretend I can smell the lemons.

Do you have plants in your house? Any recommendations?

1 from Houzz
2 from Heirloom Philosophy
3 from Williams-Sonoma
4 from White Flower Farm