Strawberries in the PC Grow box (UPDATE #2)
The strawberry plant is doing better than I ever expected, should have some fresh strawberries in a week or two. Hopefully no one tells them it is not June…
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SHOWDOWN: PC Grow Box versus The Sun
Versus I am running out of space in my PC grow box now I have added lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers along with the original inhabitant, the strawberry plant. I noticed that the two cucumber plants were approximately the same size and taking up quite a bit of space, so decided to have a little competition and experiment and see which grows better given different environments. I will have one in…
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compost | sieve | soil sifter
Make a cheap soil sifter (sieve)
Unfortunately I only have one compost bin which I continuously add materials to, so I never have a complete “batch” of compost at one given time. In order to be able to filter out the finished compost from the non-composted material I created a soil sifter (sieve) I checked out soil sifters online but didn’t find anything that I liked so I decided to make one myself. I went…
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Fall bulb planting surprises
Not sure if it is the long winter, or just me getting older but I have no clue what bulbs we planted last fall. Guess I will find out in a couple weeks.
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Releasing ladybugs in your garden
When we started my garden at my our current house my daughters and I noticed we didn’t have any ladybugs roaming around the leaves. Now I would like to think that aphids and mites feared me so much to dare to step foot in my garden, but the reality is I live in a newer neighborhood with vegetation in its early stages and with the lush forest around me…
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Hunting for spring at our local nurseries
Since nothing is blooming in my yard and my wife convinced me that Northwest Flower & Garden Show would be a little too busy for our young girls (I know she was right, as usual) We decided instead to go on a nursery tour, I normally get my plants from our closest nursery or the local home and garden center but was curious what the other dozen or so…
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Using alfalfa pellets as cheap organic fertilizer for your lawn and garden
We all know if you walk into a grocery store the organic produce is always more expensive than produce grown using non-organic methods. Using deductive reasoning it seems easy to determine that this would mean growing vegetables organically will cost me more than if I used non-organic methods. What is a cheap vegetable gardener to do? One disadvantage (and advantage) to organic fertilizer is that it is not as…
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Make your own homemade newspaper pots
As you probably know we shouldn’t be using peat pots due to environmental concerns, buying terra cotta pots is too expensive, what is a cheap gardener to do? Make your own homeade pots out of newspaper of course. Muddy Clogs describes how to exactly do this on her blog. My only complaint is that I didn’t think of it first.
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Harvesting seeds from the grocery store – Update
I definitely can’t complain about the current results of the garlic and potatoes I planted from my original post Harvesting seeds from the grocery store Every clove of garlic I planted has come up and seems to compliment the onions well and is supposed to keep the slugs away which I can always use help on. The potatoes have finished developing above ground just hope my soil is not…
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Harvesting your own seeds
This past fall I made my first attempt to harvest my own seeds. If you can’t tell from the picture I chose cilantro (or coriander if you eat the seeds) and seem to be worth the minimal effort. Just as a warning, if the plant you are dealing with happens to be a hybrid (parents of different species) what you get the next year may not be the same…
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My Lettuce seeds have sprouted
My lettuce seeds sprouted faster than usual this year, I expected to have some problems since I have saved the seeds for 3 years now. I don’t have a heating pad (yeah I’m cheap) so just put them on top of the refrigerator in a makeshift greenhouse out of an old strawberry container. They would have still germinated in my mid-60 degree house, but the extra heat gained from…
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Strawberries in the PC grow box (UPDATE)
Well the strawberry plant seems to be doing great in the $20 PC grow box. Can’t wait to try it out on my recently planted seedlings.