Steady yourself dear reader... what you are about to witness is largely boring. It's not very interesting at all. Seriously, at one point Meghan looks at a chickens butt. However, toward the end, right before I am laughing hysterically behind the camera... Meghan gets pecked in the eye by a chicken.
Sleep with one eye open... because you can't open the other one because a chicken pecked it.
Some of you may remember our raised beds from last year. We used discarded pallets, broke them down to individual slats and rebuilt them into raised beds. Overall they worked wonderfully , but the major flaw was that they we a lot of work. It took us nearly two weeks ( on days off and after work ) to assemble 5 beds. This years effort took only about 2 hours to assemble and yielded over 80 square feet of growing area.
As always we start with pallets.
12 in all, all cut in half.
Using wood screws we begin to piece them together.
It's a surprisingly fast process.
We lined the bottom with tree trimmings that
would have been heading for the compost otherwise.
add 4 bales of straw
Break up and spread the straw
Add a layer of compost
Spread to near the edges and make sure it is 6-8 inches deep.
Water thoroughly
Plan and Plant.
The medium of straw and compost has maintained an ideal temperature for growing. Our sprouts are coming up strong and fast. Some seeds ahead of their expected germination. As always we let you know how it progresses.
Now enjoy this silly video of us ( and the dog helping ) build these beds.
I apologize for the poor pun / word play of the table. I assure you that this is a serious post about making a table from a pallet and will involve no shenanigans or squirrels drinking beer.
In the beginning there was a pallet & no where to sit.
Nowhere to enjoy a meal.
Nowhere to pry the fruit of its pit.
Only bad poems written with zeal.
This table was built in the background over a couple of months, you may have (literately) noticed in the background in photos since we began.
We started with a pallet, a pry bar and an idea. This is our idea of re-purposing.
It turned out one 4x4 wouldn't hold up the table.
We added 3 more
The last two pictures have our benches in the background :) ...
We built them so the squirrel had somewhere to drink his beer
Is your soil alkaline or acidic? If you aren't sure here is a cool ( 9th grade earth science kind of cool ), cost effective and easy way to find out.
Science Rules
You will need two containers approximately one cup in size
1/2 cup of vinegar
1/2 cup of baking soda
A couple handfuls of your soil.
Go out in the garden and get yourself a nice fistful of dirt and split in into your two containers.
In the first container mix in 1/2 cup of white vinegar. In the second container mix 1/2 cup of water ( mix ) and then 1/2 cup of baking soda.
Product Placement ( I'm waiting for my check )
If container #1 begins to bubble and fizz it is alkaline.
If you have no reaction turn your observation to container #2. Is it bubbling ? Well, you have acidic soil.
I observed equally mild reactions placing our soil somewhere in the middle. A nice place to be since we can tilt the soil to the needs of a certain plant. Roses want some acidity... that's easy... just add some coffee grounds and the soil is suited in a couple days.
Enough about my dirt let's get back to you. If your soil turned out to be acidic you can amend it with wood ash or lime. If it was alkaline add sulfur or pine needles.
So, the question popped into my head when I looked into our shopping cart at the plant store last week... "Are we saving money by growing our own vegetables?".
The short answer is no. The long answer is yes.
2012-2013 being the first growing season at +The Littlest Farm we are saving no money at all. We didn't keep detailed records ( which I regret ) but we have spent quite a bit on dirt, compost, seeds, new equipment, etc. Even with all of our re-purposing and reusing ( raised beds of pallets etc. ) there were things that we just had to buy.
We are growing things that when we compare the price of a seed to the price at the supermarket are remarkably cheaper. Tomato is much cheaper to grow at home, as are lettuces and squash and next year when all we are buying is a couple cubic feet of soil booster it will be solid savings.
It's important that all gardeners learn that the investment phase of the garden is crucial. I don't speak only of the investment of money, but the investment of time. A properly planned and maintained garden will bring great amounts of food and enjoyment year after year.
Looking at the above graphic you can see the return on investment ( bottom right corner ) is quite impressive. Add to that the gratification of growing your own food and frankly... who cares if you are saving money.... you are gardening.
We've discovered a new friend in the garden, a slightly reclusive yet diligent participant in taking care of our flowers. The females dig, the males dance and everyone pollinates - it's the miner bee ! Also known as a digger bee they are very different from honey bees and just as important.
Unlike honey bees they do not form long term colonies and don't have a queen therefore they are not at all aggressive and rarely sting. They also do not produce honey.
I have used other methods to attract solitary bees but none seems to work quite as well as having flowers and dirt.
The female bee digs a burrow to rear her own young. Their holes are approximately 1/4 inch in diameter and the burrow structure is often a vertical tunnel with smaller side tunnels ending at a single cell.
The female stocks each cell with nectar and pollen she has collected (from our beautiful flowers) and then deposits her egg on the food mass.
nomina ludo
The benefits of the bees cannot be stressed enough. As we have pointed out they are great pollinators but they also aerate the soil and add an entertainment factor when you catch the male dancing outside the females burrow trying to get her to go out for a drink. There is also varieties of wasp that are diggers and ferocious cicada killers. Remember that in 2030 my East Coast friends.
So, we are new to gardening in the Bay Area of California and are literally stumbling through this season trying to figure out what to do. We are so used to Oregon weather and throwing everything in the ground at the slightest hint of spring that we were not properly prepared for the tumultuous and unpredictable weather of our location. There was a sharp spike in the temperature with no rain and we lost several plants who went to seed prematurely.
Please join us in a moment of silence for our fallen plants.
Rainbow Chard- we hardly knew yee
Red Stalked Celery you were too beautiful for this world
Also among those lost were our daikon radishes and our snow peas are producing prematurely at a height of only 2 feet.
But instead of filling the void on our plates with sadness we are promptly moving on to younger and better looking plants. Added to the fold are green and purple tomatillos , early girl tomatoes, piquillo pimento, orange and red bell peppers.
We are firm believers that if you don't fail you don't learn anything and boy are we learning a lot this year. It truly is an adventure in urban farming.
I do love our monthly update, getting to look back at the work and the rewards is a very satisfying experience.
We picked our first crop of radishes & made a delicious soup from them. Check our recipe for Radish Greens Soup.
Yum
Our potato system seems to be working out very nicely. In just over two weeks we are seeing marked growth improvement with our updated watering system.
Before ( 4-12-13 )
After ( 4-29-13 )
While it is not yet quite canning time for us in California we did come across these cool 100th Anniversary Ball Jars that we can't wait to fill with jam.
Because we have Blackberries & Strawberries coming in
Finally, for anyone interested there will be a new Chard Wars post on Star Wars Day ( May the 4th )
Episode 1 : A Very Confusing Cast
Coming May the Fourth ( be with you )
As spring turns to summer more and more is happening on The Littlest Farm. Things to look forward to in May include our chicken coops, lots and lots of growth in the veggie garden and a detailed tour of our flower and herb garden.
