Earthboundgrowth's Healthkicker

Pictures from the fourth, a small update.

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:57:25 GMT

We went to the demolition durby. Had a little fun, not as much as we wanted. Darned rednecks screamed in the stands until the cops came.

Here's our deck as of the first week of July;

And here's the front yard as of that week;

And here's one picture of our more wonderful surprise additions to our little place;

Sorry!

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:54:56 GMT

So last you knew, it was dug and we were taking the plants out, right?

Pictures;

But since then we've planted everything, some in pots, some out in the dug spots...and we've dug a few other spots than that, and gotten a few more plants since then.

Also; had a crapload of trouble with rabbits. Happy fourth, though, and I promise to get ya'll more pictures over this next week.

Until then; enjoy pictures of kitties!

Norman is paying attention to you.

And...

Bear wonders why we didn't have the windows open for most of his young little life (October kitten).

But the warmness of the loverly sun is too much for him. He cannot stay awake for your answers.

What? Not mollified by cute kitties? Well then, a small tidbit of how exciting things've been around here for you;

^ Gail storm. Nearly had three tornados outta this one. Absolute downpour...and yes, I was out in it to take this picture and shut the stubborn kitchen windows. This was about two and a half weeks ago.

You'll see how busy I've been, no worries. The pictures will show you 'nuff.

The garden's tilled, now for the rest.

Fri, 22 May 2009 20:26:36 GMT

It was a rainy day when Cory tilled the first half of the garden plot.

He got windblown.

See?

Finished!

This week we've been working on the rest. Namely, Cory's on small garden plot;

Hot peppers and mint! What a combo. He also planted some chamomile seeds.

Pretty! And, we put all our plants outside. Today I'll take a picture of the near-empty plant room, the plant covered back deck, as well as of some of the beds we've already planted. We're gonna be working on the potatoes next, and finishing up digging the front yard for the corn, melons, amaranth (thanks J.!), and pumpkins. Our shovel broke. Oh no =O
...I told Mom our hoe'd be our best friend. The tiller also broke...and the folks who let us borrow it told us we couldn't break it! Ha! >_<

So there's gonna be some delay in getting it all finished, but yeah.

I'll also see about taking pictures of all the wood we've gotten for the chicken house, and pictures of my dog's pen where I wanna put a small pond for ducks.

A few details I haven't mentioned;

Thu, 14 May 2009 03:19:34 GMT

We have several more plants than we did before...started more seeds, got a few more plants, and I promise to take pictures of them and explain what they are (if I know, because I recall a few mystery seeds we sowed).

We'll be rescuing a few, tomorrow, from the side of the road, before the mowers nab the poor things.

And Friday through Sunday's gonna be crazy-busy.

Everything's pretty happy, we've pretty much all we needed...almost everything we wanted to get (so essentially everything we needed to be happy).

So now I'm just fiddling around with that pond idea, thinking about the seeds I need germinate (guava and cherimoya), and just in general being restless.

Pictures;

Thu, 14 May 2009 02:22:50 GMT

Our cats love the fresh air and are no longer kittens!

My brother didn't want any pictures taken of him on his birthday.

I managed to snap a shot of his silloette in the car.

But a picture was tricked out him anyways, as my Dad lurked in the background.

My brother insisted on eating cake shirtless. Mom's the one with the knife, I'm holding the camera, Cory's sitting there on the end, and my Dad and brother are the most obvious ones.

Dandelions populated the front AND backyard for the first couple weeks of May.

I turned the compost pile by myself when my Dad talked himself out of it. "It's too hard" The next day, it had already cooked down to this and gained a wonderful compost-y smell.

Charlie's worn out by the heat but you get to see him bouncing around his pen for most of the day, which makes him seem deceptively young.

We give him several water bowls when it warms up, just in case.

Unfortunately, Charlie likes to tip over his bowls alot.

By the end of two weeks the grass was too tall, though. Dad had just enough gas to mow the front, but not the back. We managed to mow a small chunk, Cory and I, before our neighbor took pity on us and insisted on mowing the rest of the back yard for us even though we originally only gave into saying OK for the graden plot. We got a ton of compost materials from it. Ran out of space for this pile.

So we made another one!

And another one! The camera got blurry because of the rain when I took this picture today.

Friday, we till! Saturday we get a few more plants and seeds. And either that afternoon or Sunday's, we plant!

I'll take more pictures then! Tomorrow, we walk to rescue plants from the side of the road from the mowers.

Okay, I've some overdue pictures, and I'll have more really soon...but here's an update

Fri, 08 May 2009 03:49:51 GMT

Just to tide you over. I know my updates are sparse. I do like a couple per month, it seems. Maybe I'll do more as things get busier, here, I dunno.

Okay, so we're gonna trade in the aluminum cans we've been collecting from the side of the road, in order to have the last bit of money we need for the last few seeds and plants we need. That's what we're doing this weekend. Meanwhile, I've been trying to "harden off" all the plants we've started inside (that got rather big)...because we'll be digging next week, if we can't till.
The hard work begins next week!
A couple weekends ago I started working on the compost pile we have had started. Turned it, added some soapy water. I've more soapy water to add once we have another non-rainy day. We've already started on a second compost pile, as well.
We've collected alot of wood, from our walks, cleaning out the local church's backyard, offa freecycle...for the various things we need it for around here. Trellises, fence posts (as Mom's gonna be getting nylon deer fence this month as well), poles for the tomatoes, for building a compost bin, etc.

We only need a couple last seed packets, and only a handful of plants, so yeah. It's mainly the potatoes I'm worried about getting, at this point.

Also on our adventures I successfully transplanted a small wild rose from the church's backyard to the side of our house, we got a black rasberry bush from a lady on freecycle (as well as some daylilies), I rescued a small tree (I forget what kind) for Mom from the same place I got the rose from. We've sold spare plants to four people, we've given away spare plants to at least two.

We're way ready to get going.

Cory's blended quite nicely here, and is very helpful.

It's been interesting, lets just leave it at that.

And lastly, I've news and thoughts from today.
On our walk, we met a lady who owns a small tree farm and nature preserve -- a greenie, on our road! Who knows where my Mom's missing cat is! She also gave us a bag of cans, ^_^ it was cool.

As for thoughts, I've been thinking about maybe putting in a small pond in Charlie's pen...for ducks.
My old dog could use the company, and they'd be safer with him. We'll have to see though, I'm not sure I can do that this year. Maybe if I've some spare time, eh?

Next update: pictures!

And spring comes sooner than you expect

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:40:39 GMT

AAAAAAAHHHH! June bugs! While digging the edges of our garden to make a physical representation of our garden plans...they were digging up baby junebugs and grubs alike! A ton of them!
Apparently, I'll need to make some sort of garlic, oil, water mixture...thing =/ and mix it in the soil as we till and dig somemore. Egads, I hate junebugs, >_<

Dad digging, this past Saturday.

My brother resting.

Believe it or not, but it's all dug now and I helped dig all that.

The tables NOW! We've run outta room.

The garden huckleberries. They're very happy.

And now to the next big update;
My ex is arriving a full month ahead of schedule! I gotta tell my Mom and finish setting things up for him here. It is gonna take my family a bit offguard. Oh, how early? Next week. I'm guessing...Wednesday. Possibly.

He'x nervous and anxious and excited and dreading it. Heh.

"Like a bandaid" I tell myself. Like stepping out into the tundra only halfway prepared. I can do this. All I gotta do, is make sure it goes smoothly.

Luck. Wonderful luck. Fresh air, warm weather, too many plants.

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:10:20 GMT

Transplanted the kohlrabi after it got horribly mangled today. And the brocoli.
And most of the serano peppers.

Not much left to transplant. Red bell peppers. Wonder bells. That's pretty much it.

Bloody Butcher tomatoes, Tennesee cheese peppers, and ancho peppers are all on their way...so we'll be starting those this april. My new school books are coming mid-April. We're gonna start working the ground this April.

We made our first sale, yesterday. To a lady in the city who's gardening. 10 beefsteaks, 4 jalepenos, 2 of each of these tomato varieties; red zebra, green zebra, purple cherokee, red brandywine...and she recently added two red bells to her list.

Works out to be 12 or so bucks, at fifty cents a plant. The lady's really happy to get them, really appreciative, my Mom says. So I'm glad.

We think we may have to put up most of the extra cherry tomatoes on freecycle. Just a ton of everything. We've got...maybe 39 serano peppers, that we added to the list today. I reckon we'll have a TON of red bells, and a decent amount of wonder bells, too.
We'll see about trying to see some at a flea market, this April. Not sure if we can afford splitting the spot with Alicia, but it'd help us alot, with space, if we could sell off some of the plants there in April.

I promise, I'll take as many pictures as I can as things progress. I still need to take new pictures of the tables.

It's been a nice Friday, it was warm enough to open the windows for a little while...inspiring our neighbor to work with his power tools on his porch and for one of our cats to slip outside...which meant we had to chase her down and lug her crying self back inside (she loves the outdoors, xD -- and she's the cat that we can put a collar on and walk, without worrying she'll slip out or anything).

On the "what's left to get" front, I've got five things on my ebay.
Bushel gourd seeds.
Prickly pear cactus seeds
Black beauty zucchini seeds
Black aztec corn
Par-cel seeds

I'll be buying the cactai seeds Monday, when the auction ends 'cause they're only a buck and I have that much in my paypal, heh. The rest're buy it nows that last for another month, so I'll be able to get them by time I get paid again (from mylot). The most expensive item, is the black aztec corn. Blue dent would be cheaper, if Shumways took paypal.

Paper pots; lifesavers

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:41:14 GMT

So, at the start of this week we started transplanting the tomatoes because they'd begun to become too big for the little greenhouse boxes.

All cherry tomatoes, Monday.

We have a 106 cherry tomato pots all in all. I know, ALOT, right? Well, you know how you put a few seeds in each spot when you plant, in case some of 'em don't work? They ALL sprouted...and we did an entire flat of them. So you can imagine.

How the tables looked on Monday.

My Morning glories, Monday.

My dracaena was repotted.

Some random cat pictures;

Grims sleeping on the sunny floor.

We discovered that Norman likes paper bags.

Here's pictures from Tuesday;

We added a third table!

More of these are not cherry tomatoes, but other varieties. Here's a list of how much we have of each;
Nyagous -- 11 pots
Speckled striped Roma tomatoes -- 7 pots
Red German Strawberry tomatoes -- 5 pots
Beefsteak -- 33
Red zebra -- 8
Green zebra -- 8
Purple Cherokee -- 13
Red brandywine -- 9

Tuesday, my morning glories began trying to vine.

I don't have pictures for Wednesday, but I can tell you that our tables no longer have non-plant items on them xD and are quite full. I can also tell you that we started transplanting things -other- than tomatoes.

Here's a list of what we have so far;
Standard Black Eggplant -- 36
Jalepeno Peppers -- 36

Plus, a few Garden Huckleberries (aka, the poor man's blueberry). ALL this bounty for a few dollar packets of seeds! A little too good luck, but hey, we can sell all that we don't need, right? (And we only need about four of each plant, haha).

I may have to separate the morning glories by the end of the week, though, lest they get tangled up in eachother. Not sure where I should put them all...maybe I should sacrifice some pencils to give them something to vine on? Not sure. We'll see, I suppose.

Really though, if it weren't for the invention of paper pots we wouldn't be able to handle all this. Every night we transplant more and more stuff, and we're about out of normal pots. Only one month until spring planting, though. And until flea markets start picking up in full swing. So if we can just look after everything until then...and give away/sell as many plants as possible, we'll be good.

In other progress, I'm going to have to buy most of the rest of our seeds on ebay it looks like. A second hollyhock came up, finally. The red bell peppers'll be ready for transplanting in a few days, the serano's will be ready sooner. We've kohlrabi and brocoli to transplant. More garden huckleberries. We planted a flat of flowers, too...and by the end of the week, we'll have three empty greenhouse boxes and probably only plant one more of them.

All the rest of the work is in May after we're done with all this!

Digging, lugging the pots out, general farm construction and care. The big ticket items...namely the trees and potatoes, Mom'll be after...and it's gonna take some doing, since they cost more than just a dollar or so a packet of seeds! Even the flea marketeering'll take some doing. I'm hoping that some posters, net ads, and a sign at the end of our drive if I can get my hands on some decent wood and nails, will do the trick.

It's exhausting, the sheer volume of our luck. I'm in charge of looking after the plants, keeping 'em watered, making the paper pots, and labling them...and normally, I gotta do it as quickly and thoroughly as possible. I even made the list. Mom and I're planning out where everything's gonna be planted, we've been sowing the seeds together, and mostly, discussing what we need to grow together. But so far, most of the work's me. From poking holes in the plastic containers, to cutting up old water bottles to make pots, my hands are a little nicked up, so I've been wondering why I enjoy all this and if I'm gonna be sick of transplanting soon, but yeah. We're into this full swing now!

I'll post more recent pictures soon!

Long overdue update: Starting plants indoors

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:01:42 GMT

So, two weekends ago, my Dad got Mom some mini greenhouses for starting seeds indoors.
The day after that Sunday, we put all the seeds in all the little non-dirt, dirt...things, and five days later, things started sprouting. Since then, I've transplanted some things out of there, more things have gotten bigger, etc. But here are pictures from the first week so that I can clear out my camera and take new ones:

^ Brocoli!

My dandy's. OK, so I started these last November...but now that the light's stronger they've gotten much bigger.

Each of the mini greenhouses has a list of what's in it on them. They'll need revising several times before the risk of frost is done with, if this rate of growth is any indication. As you can tell, this flat has kohlrabi. The green at the end of the flat you see? That's the kohlrabi.

There's the kohlrabi up close.

Morning glories. Why? Because I heart them. I know, I know...as a farmer I should despise them entirely, but I've a soft spot for sensitive plants. And, yeah, I tend to love "weeds". Morning glories ARE poisonous, this is true, so they don't have practical applications like most other weeds I like (clover, ground ivy, dandelions for example)...but my home must have these growing by the mail box, elsewise, I can't really consider it as my home.

My morning glories are now actually out of the starter flat and into larger pots in another flat. They tend to grow a few inches every day or so. What did I expect from weeds? xD

My dracaena has doubled in size since you last saw it.

The first week, no peppers sprouted. There are actually a handful of tomatos in the flat to the left of this picture, but they didn't sprout either.

My chives have been growing rather enthusiastically. Unfortunately, my cat (Grims) likes to mangle the poor thing. We have more chive seeds, which I'm probably gonna sew outside as soon as it's warm enough.

Table number two. As you can tell, all these pictures were taken in the morning.

The non-peppers flat that refused to sprout much the first week. This one's mostly onions.

There are more seeds in that box.

Tomatos! They hadn't ALL sprouted by the first week, but they're all well up by now.
Here's a list of all our tomatos so far:
Beefstake, about twelve or so of them.
Cherry tomatos, a whole flat, (over seventy two of them)
Green Zebra (six, so far, of them)
Speckled striped roma tomatos, one row (six)
Nyagous, one row
Purple Cherokee, one row
Red German Strawberry, one row
Floridade, about twelve of them
Red brandywine, one row

Hopefully, bloody butcher tomato seeds will be arriving soon as well so that we can plant them.

Stay tuned! More pictures on the way!

Things are progressing far better than I hoped, though we are having a hard time finding money for the last of the seeds. Things are rather tight right now.

Before you say, "HOLY CRAP, girl, that's alot and most of your things have to be planted by spring and not earlier, that's not even half of your stuff!"...I'll have you know that we're selling surplus plants. There's a church that's sponsoring local growers (due to popular demand by victory gardeners) and their plants and produce that lets you set up and sell things for free in their parking lot on the weekends as soon as it's warm.
This year's adventure's just getting started and I assure you, we're thinking on our feet with all this.