Gardening

Well we got our garden finished today, added some seedlings, and a few more seeds to our already growing garden. Here's what we hope to grow this year, some are new additions, some are oldies that we love.

Our Strawberry plant, which we started last year.  Last year we only got 2 or 3 strawberries, this year it looks like we'll have a lot more, we'll have to wait and see.

Our grape vine, we actually planted this 2 or 3 years ago.  I think this year we finally see a cluster starting to grow!

Our "salad" garden, we started from seeds with everything except the 2 broccoli plants there.  By the time the broccoli plants get bigger the lettuce will be all gone.

In this garden, from top to bottom:  Row of Carrots, 2 Broccoli Plants, Sweet Salad Mix, Row of Arugala, Row of Green Leaf Lettuce

Fruit/Veggie Garden.  We have a couple seeds starting, but everything you see was bought from seedlings.

From Left to Right:

 - Green Bean Seeds (8 plants)

 - Radish Seeds (8 *to be planted)

 - Back, 4 Watermellon Plants

 - Front, 4 Celery Plants

 - Broccoli Plant (middle)

 - Eggplant (middle)

 - Broccoli Plant (middle)

 - Back, 4 Cucumber Plants

 - Front, 4 Green Pepper Plants

 - Far Right, 2 Tomato Plants (big boy, cherry)

 - Basil Plant

Herb Garden, it it we have Rosemary (we LOVE on chicken and potatoes); Oregano (comes back every year); Peppermint Plant - Cause caleb picked it out cause of how good it smells; We also have 8 stalks of green onions that I got at the supermarket, used up and just plopped in there, we'll see if they grow.  The big thing is a rosebush that we transplanted there way before we ever knew we'd use this spot as an herb garden.

And the one thing I forgot to take pictures of was our Asparagus 'field' lol, we have 2 rows of 23 asparagus crowns/plants growing.  We actually let them go to fern this year, next year we'll start harvesting!  And I can tell we're going to get a lot!

A little curb appeal

If you have been to our house in the past you've seen our horrible front flower beds, maybe its just me, but I absolutely hated it. I also probably just got sick of looking at it. Anyway a few weeks ago we ripped out the center evergreen tree along with 3 overgrown holly bushes. And I've spent the last 2-3 weeks putting 'new' stuff in. Everything you see (aside from the 2 evergreens on the left and the tree on the right) has been moved or planted. Total Cost of this renovation... $15 on 4 bags of aged pine bark that we used to work in the soil, which happens to be mostly clay. I got a lot of new plants from my mom who splits her perennials every year. Thanks MOM!

7-11-10 Garden Update

I haven't posted an update since the original planting post. The garden is going great. We got a lot of big zuccinis and a lot of cucumbers, as well as green beans, brocoli, and lots of tomatoes. All of our lettuce was harvested earlier in June.

Cucumbers and Zuccini

Tomatoes, Green Beans, Broccoli, as well as cantelope and watermelon in the back

Our Herb Garden: Dill, Parsley, Rosemary, Oregano and Onions

DIY Outside Project

Ok so here's one project that I did not initiate. Tony decided he wanted to take on this huge task and took 2 days off of work to get it done. The weather in Michigan has been crazy rainy this spring, so when beautiful days were forecasted for this week he jumped on the opportunity.

He decided he wanted to add a hardscape to our backyard, for a couple reasons.

1. We love doing our gardens but mowing around them well isn't fun, we decided to add a second (smaller) box this year so he wanted to put the hardscapes around them.
2. Caleb has a very big, very heavy play house, it was on grass and that was just killing the grass and impossible to mow inside of the house. So we wanted to put some hardscape under it.
3. Less lawn to mow - I mean isn't that a good reason in itself!!

We don't claim to know anything about landscapes, maybe we did it wrong - who knows, but I think he did a pretty great job!!

On to the pictures!!

Here are a couple before shots of the area:

Tasks Completed: Built smaller raised garden bed, and got up the guts to do project.





After Day 1:

Tasks Completed:
~ Pulled up all the sod using a rented sod cutter
~ Repositioned old raised Garden Bed and positioned new garden bed
~ Mapped out area for play house
~ Pulled a bunch of weeds





After Day 2:

Tasks Completed:
~ Laid down weed barrier
~ Put in flagstone and pea gravel
~ Filled in play area with Rubber Mulch
~ Moved a TON of pea gravel around to various locations













Tony couldn't have done this without the help of his friend Shane or his Mom, so thank you for the help!! I can say I didn't do much for this DIY project and yeah I'm not complaining!!

Tasks still needing to be done:

~Fill in garden beds with the good soil/compost and stuff
~Plant my yummy veggie plants and herbs!

Strawberry Picking!

So we're in this new kick with gardening, and we really love the fresh lettuce - more veggies to come - so I thought that we should try to get some fresh fruit as much as possible.

Today was a great day for going strawberry picking, not to hot, nice gentle breeze. Caleb had a great time. I wasn't even going to bring my camera, but that's nearly impossible for me these days. Caleb does the craziest stuff when you're least expecting it so I really gotta be ready.

He had a great time helping daddy and walking through the rows of strawberries. YUMM!

Growing Garden

I can't believe how big its getting, these pictures were taken after I harvested 4 big salads worth of lettuce! AWESOME, fresh lettuce is seriously the best. I can't wait until the cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots and onions are ready to be harvested!! The soy beans have yet to even sprout up, I'm not sure they are going too :(

slightly different perspective you can really see the height of the tomato plants.

Just a cool picture of a drop of water on a broccolli plant!

More Gardening

So we're still working on our Garden out back, this weekend was so nice so we got up early both days to get some serious work done. A couple weeks ago Tony pulled up the grass to make room for our raised bed, I wasn't able to get a picture because the rain came soon after he finished. Here it is. We have some serious clay in our yard hence the reason for the raised beds.

So earlier yesterday when Tony was working on other chores for our rental unit, I decided to put some old paver stones to work, I created a little flower bed in the backyard. A few years ago we transplanted a rose bush from the front yard to the back so its the first thing in the flower bed. I also planted some bulbs and some various seeds, we'll watch it throughout the summer to see what grows!!



So today we started piling in the dirt. And went to the farm greenhouse to buy some seedling plants to go with the seeds we also planted.

here's the list of what we planted:
From Seedling Plants:
3 Tomato plants
4 Broccoli plants
4 Basil plants
2 Green Onions
2 White Onions
8 Red Leaf Lettuce
8 Green Leaf Lettuce
8 Romaine Lettuce
8 Slicing Cucumbers
4 Pickling Cucumbers
1 Oregano
1 Cilantro
And from Seeds:
Carrots
Soy Beans



And finally a couple pictures of my little man!

Lazy Sunday... not

So today we started building our Garden, phase 1 - build a raised bed box. We decided to go with a Cedar box, something about other wood leaching chemicals into the veggies, I don't know Tony did the research. So we built our box 8'x4'x1'.

Here's the before:

Here's the after: (I think this is where we are going to put it, the house will block the wind but it still gets 8 hours of sun a day)


Caleb was quite surprised by the new addition to the yard:


And Tony finally let me take a picture of him.


Then we had dinner and played a little Wii Fit with the Lathrops, it was a good Sunday!

Being Green-er

So one of my goals for the New Year was to be Greener. In 2008 we were recycling, most of our stuff, and we were trying to bring our canvas bags when we shopped, but in 2009 we WILL recycle anything and everything we can, we WILL use canvas bags. I also decided to try and stop using so much paper towel in our house in 2009.

Stuff I wasn't recycling before but I am now: baby food containers, soup containers and tin cans, duh just rinse them and put them in the bin - easy!

So... we are about 2 weeks in to the new year and where are we... I am happy to report that we haven't changed a roll of paper towel in weeks!! probably 3 or 4 weeks and we still have lots left. I bought a package of 60 white shop towels from Costco to use for cleaning, and we no longer use paper towel for napkins, we use cloth napkins!!

I am also happy to say that for my first grocery shopping trip of the new year I used my canvas bags!! It is so much easier in my opinion, you can fit most of your groceries in 1 costco canvas bag, thus reducing your trips from the car to the counter. Also I don't have to store all those darn plastic bags, although they are recyclable so if you have them laying around, please don't put them in the garbage, put them in the recylce bin.

Also today my lunch was totally green. I have these wonder bread sandwich plastic containers that I made my sandwich in today (also used one for Tony). Then to save a little cash, I usually buy a big bag of chips and separate out a portion for lunch (I do the same with cookies and other treats). Well instead of putting it in a baggie, I decided to use some of my rubbermaid tuperware. I'll just go home and refill it for tomorrow and voila, all set for my green lunch with little garbage! So that's portion control / cash control / and eating green all in one meal!!

Have a nice day!