In the gutter

It has been a busy couple of weeks here at The Littlest Farm... busy enough that we haven't had time to post but here are the latest updates and a quick instructional.

Let the updates begin!

Our starts have started.

It has only been a couple of weeks and we have all of our herb and ( bee attracting ) flowers poking their heads out.

Meg picked up a straw bale from a local horse farm for only eight dollars and built a planter box for it. 

Carrots were promptly planted.

There is also purple broccoli and red stemmed celery getting started in another set of beds.  

This posts instructional is a great space saver for folks with little room for growing. 

Gutters!

I purchased a ten foot section of vinyl gutter and cut in into two five foot pieces and using some masonry screws mounted it above our raised beds giving us a new space to plant our pick-able lettuces. 

First cap off the ends.

Drill some holes for drainage.

Mount brackets

I spaced them at 2 inches, 30 inches and 58 inches for a 60 inch section.

Insert gutter

I will be adding roughly 10% vermiculite to the soil for water retention.

Getting Our Herbs and Flowers Started

It's a lovely day here in the East Bay. We hit around 70 degrees in the hills and with the sun beating down on us we were highly motivated to get some seeds going.

The focus was on herbs and flowers today. Somewhere between 150-200 of them as a matter of fact. We aren't growing 200 different herbs and flowers we are starting that many seeds in hope of a 50% success rate.

Our bag of boxes

You remember how to make seed start boxes right ? 

Fill 'em with dirt

Water & Wait 

* A couple notes that apply to our ever increasing effort to reuse as much as possible. 

The boxes are made from grocery bags and the plant identifiers are made from a cut up milk jug. 

Re-using + Re-purposing = Awesome

I had my first day off in a while today and decided to make a concentrated effort in reducing our pile of "scrap" wood. If you have been following The Littlest Farm you know that we make use of discarded pallets for most of our projects. When you use pallets you end up with seemingly useless scraps. My goal today was to use the useless. I think I did an okay job...

The scrap pile

My first idea was to add to the table we had built earlier in the week. So I threw together a condiment box for our many BBQ's.

Yes, that table is made from a pallet. 90% of what we build is made from pallets... why are you surprised?

I had some 2x4's laying around and so after the box I started making benches. I wanted to make chairs but frankly I'm not that gifted a carpenter. 

Kilgore approved

Squirrel approved

Now we have a complete outdoor dining area. Table, seats... squirrel people and cheap beer. By the time it's BBQ season here this is going to be one awesome garden.