a freecycle sunday..

it was a beautiful day today.. chilly, but the sun was warm. my brother and i headed out to our parents' house out in the country to celebrate his quarter-century birthday. my baby bro...! anyway, while we were out there, we loaded up dad's pickup with a few things from around the yard. he had an old beater of a mower, no longer sufficient for his huge plot, but perfect for our city yard.. it should survive the rest of the season. we finally got to cut into that meadow that had recently become home to some unwanted creatures; namely... ticks! eeuugh.. and with the dogs on the main floor it had become critical timing to get it cut.

not only did we score a freecycled mower, but we also got to take their extra garden ties, and a load of wood for the fire. oh, almost forgot to mention what i had originally wanted to take home, the rain barrel! we can collect the next storm off the roof to water... for free!

now that the grass is mowed, and we have more soil [we used dad's truck to grab more after unloading the freebies], i'm looking forward to progressing on the beds out back this week. tuesday, thursday and saturday are market days, when we can go and pick up more seedlings of our favourite fruits and veggies. we should have the beds mostly planted by sunday, and i fly out monday morning for a week. hope the boys can keep up with the watering!

the boys will also hopefully find the perfect home for the rain barrel, and get that system set up soon. i think i remember one of the other tenants mentioning his parents having a rain barrel, the more the merrier! we were fortunate enough that our parents had an abundance of things we could make use of, but there's always places to get good stuff for free. there are existing organizations like freecycle.org that helps make those hookups happen. also there's kijiji, and the local newspapers.

our city has a free mulch pile too, a lot of towns around here do. it's rough cut, scrap from fallen trees and cut branches in the area, but it's free! as for firewood, you can go down any industrial strip in this town and pick up truck loads of untreated pine skids piled up by the curb ...for free! these things are there for the taking, and they will be there regardless if they get used, so we may as well.

that's enough about free stuff, you get my drift.. lots more garden work to come, bright and early...!

staycation in the garden.

it's been a long time since i've taken a vacation.. and this time i didn't want to travel, we are staying home this week and spending quality time in our new backyard. the experiment with the cardboard gardens continues, today we extended next to the first bed attaching the second one to it and leaving a 'key' path in between for good reach.

first we used a hard rake, pulled back the grass that was more or less dead under the cardboard we laid down a few days ago. we used a spade to turn the soil beneath, pulling out some clumps of grass, and turning some back into the ground.

after watering the turned soil, we put the cardboard back down into the shape of the bed we are creating, making sure that all of the tape has been removed from the boxes. we then watered the cardboard. on top of the cardboard we mixed a couple kinds of topsoil, one had a little more sand than the other. then we mixed in black earth, and composted sheep manure.

we rake it out into a nice even bed, leaving a 'key' path to step into for easy reach. we will leave these half-paths all along the bed spaced so that you can always reach into the center of the beds. when it comes time to plant, the soil is pulled back, and an X is cut into the cardboard. we peel back the cardboard, put some fresh soil into the hole, and drop in the plant. the soil is replaced, plus some additional rich mix is added, mulching the plant.

we added more veggies, and some annual flowers that we liked the colours of. herbs were planted in the narrow patch at the end of the 'key' path, and more annuals were planted there at the border.

last year we used white clover as a living mulch to keep soil moist, weeds down, and return nitrogen to the soil. this year we are trying something different. we are using more food between the food to take up the ground space, crowd out weeds and produce as much as we can per square foot of garden.

here we used radish seeds.. in other places we used carrots and parsnips. these radish seeds were planted only a few days ago, and already they have begun to sprout. so exciting! so far so good on the new experimental beds. on the next post, we will look into the lettuce bed!

let the seeds begin...

happy spring!

what better way to celebrate than to start some seeds?! what an exciting time. we found out recently that we will be moving our HQ closer to the core of the city, and we aren't sure how many things we want to start before the move.. being the long weekend there were many desserts purchased by family and friends, and i managed to scoop up a few of their containers to recycle as seed starting domes and trays. i decided first to start some lettuce in a cookie container. it's a quick crop that can stand a small container, and we can trim and eat and let it re-grow.

i put the container together just a few days ago, and already some of the seeds have sprouted. it brought a smile to my face for the rest of the day to see the new life next to my window.we have accumulated a huge amount of seeds mostly given to us, so we have many varieties to choose from this season. hopefully we can get away with starting some of them a little late as we will have far more space for seedlings at the new place.

tonight we are starting another tray of peppers and tomatoes, and also we will be testing some of last year's seeds to check if they are still viable. they may not have been stored in the most favourable conditions,and we will have a chance to see if they will work or if we will have to get more before planting season begins. we will also have to test some of last season's white clover seeds to make sure they're still good. we will be using clover as a living mulch for the third year in a row, only this time at our new homebase.

2013 has been an exciting year so far, and is sure to be a busy one. stay tuned!

Recycled Pallet Planters

free used shipping pallets are not hard to come by in this area, especially the untreated ones. it's free wood, already partially pre-constructed, so why not recycle them? we originally collected old broken skids to use for firewood, but now we are more selective in our picks. all we needed was a hammer to pry the skids apart and nail them back together [yes, we even re-used the nails], some burlap, scissors to cut and a staple gun to attach it with.

first we picked out some solid skids, and pulled the planks off of the bottom. skid number one was turned upside down, and this became the bottom of the box. other skids were taken apart and reconfigured to create open layers to stack up, creating a deeper box. a couple of the skids were left as single layers to be used for shallow planter beds. many pallet gardens we have seen are left in tact to use the existing planks as planting rows, but we decided to use the extra planks to build with to get maximum growing space inside.

 

 

 

to make a deeper planter box, the same frame built for the shallow planter was repeated, stacked and nailed together. the large planter box will be used for potatoes, or broccoli and cauliflower, we have yet to decide. planting things that require special care or soil conditions is easier in a container as the soil can be changed out or added to if need be.

the beds were then lined with burlap, we had extra rolls left over from last year that was marked down to a couple dollars in the garden center.. i have seen these types of containers lined with landscaping fabric, but at that price i couldn't resist. looks nicer too!

one of the shallow beds is being used as a strawberry patch. strawberries tend to spread if they are not contained, so we thought it would be a good pick for a pallet bed. we had some strawberries in buckets last year, but they didn't have enough space to continue fruiting. the planter box will hopefully be a happy medium.

the strawberries are doing well so far, and the second shallow planter bed is being seeded with lettuce, mostly a leafy mesclun mix. the center planter has since been topped up with a triple blend, and it's fate shall be decided later on this week.