Garden Progress and a DIY Wasp Trap

My Mister and CP worked on digging a trench to run the sprinkler line to our new smaller "big" garden.  Since the house is going to be under construction this year, we'll have trucks driving over our regular garden spot.  My Mister plowed up an area further south, leaving room for trucks to get through where they'll need to.  It makes the big garden smaller than we'd like it, but we'll survive.  Originally he was going to run a line all the way up the side of the garden, but the side by the sheds is so rocky that we decided to run the line just next to the sheds, and from there, just do some sort of above-ground line.  We don't know if we'll need to use this garden again next year or can move back to our regular location which will soon be my back yard.  (Imagine- gardening in my own garden in my own back yard....sigh...)

12 rows of green beans.

3 rows of potatoes.

One peach tree.  This replaced the peach tree we planted with my dad two years ago that died over the winter.  It's a little taller than I like for a new fruit tree, but it had the best shape of all the trees at the nursery.  I can't remember the name, but it's a mid to late producer (which means it's safer from frosts), freestone, and very sweet. 

One Bartlett Pear.

This is my potato tower.  I plated 12 or so seed potatoes in the bottom.  Once they sprout, we'll screw the first round of slats around the bottom of the tower and fill it in with soil or something... It will end up being a lot of soil, so I'm not totally sure about what I'm going to use.  I have a big bag of peat moss, so I may use that.  I also have a lot of old potting soil, which I may use.  The idea is that as the plants grow, you build up the sides of the tower.  I'll be able to harvest early potatoes by unscrewing the bottom slat and pulling the little potatoes out- all without disturbing the rest of the tower.  I've posted the link before, but I got the idea from pinterest, and this website.

The strings are to deter Inti dog from romping through my newly planted garden.  This is the bean side.

The potato side (well there are more beans over there too..).  My Mister says I need to work on my straight rows.  Whoops.

These are the raspberries we got from my cousin.  We were going to plant them somewhere else, but it was filled with weeds, and we didn't have time to get it ready, since the raspberries were a last minute trade for some of our tomato plants.  This will be a fine place for raspberries.  I'm just happy to have a year head start from when I thought I'd be planting raspberries in my yard.

The far end that isn't planted yet will hold squash and as many tomato plants as we can fit in.  Along the right side of the picture I planted a row of giant sunflowers.  

Gratuitous chicken pic.  I have two broody hens, and they weren't tempted out by the greens I tossed in.

I saw a tutorial on pinterest for a homemade wasp trap.  We had several crawling around in the chicken coop, so I cut the top off of a 2-liter bottle, inverted the top inside the bottle, and filled the bottom with vinegar and sugar.  I caught three wasps and several flies the first couple of days, but haven't caught anything since.  I think it needs to be refreshed regularly.  

Hello Egg.  No reason for this picture, other than to express my joy that it is spring, and the grass is green, and the eggs are aplenty.  

In the Bleak Mid Winter

Since we barely got our first decent snowstorm of the winter, it seems a little inappropriate to say it's mid-winter, but I'm ready for spring.  My favorite seed catalog came in the mail, so I'm dealing with the winter blues by planning my garden.  There are some fun online tools that you can use to make a really fancy plan, or you can get out the pencils and graph paper.  Raised bed gardens are meant to pack a lot into a small space, so it's best to plan ahead so you don't end up cramming things in after your trip to the garden store got a little out of hand.  Plus, planning now allows you to start your own seeds...

I tried out this free trial garden planner.  It's fairly easy to use, although to make all the vegetables the correct size takes a little more work- for me it wasn't a big deal- I know how many tomato plants will fit in my space, so I can just make notes of the exact number and use the cute icons to just mark what area of the garden will be filled with each plant.

My quick test run of the garden planner software had a few minor kinks, but nothing major, and I do like to see things in color...

15 is a zucchini plant or two- on the assumption that my artichoke is not going to survive the winter because the windstorm blew away all the leaves and straw I had insulated it with, and now it's probably dead.  If by some miracle it survives, I'll have to find somewhere else to plant my zucchini.

18 and 19 are green beans. Mel Bartholemew's book Square Foot Gardening has a great section that goes over spacing.  I use his suggestions, for the most part. His suggestion for bush beans are one seed every 4 square inches.  I've had more success by just digging little trenches and filling them with bean seeds- maybe I'm over crowding my plants, but they seem to figure things out, and I get more beans.

17 is a hot pepper plant, and 16 will be as many bell and anaheim pepper plants as I can fit in.

14 are tomatoes, mostly paste, but one cherry and one beefsteak type as well.

7 and 8 are garlic- this past fall was my first attempt at planting garlic, so we'll see how that goes.

12 and 13 are strawberries- this bed started out as about 1/2 strawberries, and they've taken over.  The kids love sitting and eating the strawberries, so it's hard to get any to keep, but last year we did manage to eat plenty and even freeze some for smoothies.

9 is peas, which will be followed by 20, a cucumber plant.

10 and 11 are my experiment for 2012 is the potato box.  I've tried potatoes in a bucket and didn't have much success, putting the "bucket" (or box) inside the garden bed would fix my watering problems since my garden is watered on an automatic sprinkling system.  I may not need as much space as I've allocated, and if that's the case, I'll plant more peas.

6 is asparagus.  This is the 3rd year, so I should be able to harvest spears this year.

Normally we do corn (if the raccoons don't eat it all) and green beans (enough to can and eat for the year) and pumpkins and squash in the big garden, but we're going to be building a house on that lot this year, so the garden would get run over by construction equipment.  Hopefully we can find somewhere to do some squash and pumpkins.

Christmas News Letter

J is in fifth grade this year, and can now wear my shoes.  His interests are soccer, electronic games, beyblade (although I’m told that beyblades are no longer “in”), and origami.  At school he sold origami creations as part of his class store, and got really good at folding ninja stars.  Mom got really good at folding boxes.  For his birthday this year, he invited his whole class and had a movie outside in the field, and found out what happens when you put mentos into diet coke (we did that on purpose, we were’t just feeding kids diet coke and mentos...).

A is in second grade, and is still just a happy kid.  He loves his teacher, his friends, soccer, and legos.  His smile is infectious, and his teacher has told me several times that he really knows how to make her heart melt.  There are few things better than knowing your child’s teacher loves him as much as you do.

CP is in preschool this year.  When I pick him up he likes to ask me, “so, what did you do today?”  He also played on his first soccer team this year.  Preschool soccer is fun to watch, since most of the kids don’t know what’s going on, and are busy climbing their coach or playing house in the goal net.  CP, thanks to his older brothers, knew what was going on, and we got some good footage of him running down the field to score a goal.  In a few years when the other kids figure it out, that may be a little trickier.

E is finally walking, at 15/16 months.  His favorite things are going down the slide, being carried around, and playing fetch, I mean catch.  He’s a happy kid, except when he’s teething, and we’re so happy he’s part of our family.  CP especially likes having a younger brother to play with (and carry around- E is not so fond of that).  Time is going by so fast, that we’re just trying to enjoy his babyness as much as possible before it’s gone.

This year I’ve discovered that I have hobbies again!  I had forgotten about them for a long time.  I ran a couple of half marathons and my very first full marathon this year (after which I promptly stopped any form of exercise- I’m still recovering- I’ll get back to it one of these days...).  I also rode (and finished) a 100 mile bike ride with some of my friends.  I felt great until mile 70 or so, after that I was grateful to my friends for keeping me going.  

Kyle had a pretty busy training schedule earlier this year when he was training for the St. George Ironman.  He finished, and is crazy enough to want to do it again in a couple of years.  He’s decided that triathlons are more fun that single-event races.  (I tried a sprint tri this year, and am unconvinced.)  

We’re still working on getting our houseplans ready for building in the spring, and are keeping our fingers crossed that everything works out to proceed as planned.  Hopefully next year I’ll be writing this letter from the comfort of my very own home.  Maybe you can all come visit.    All Our Love,  Kyle, Alice & the boys.

Track the progress of our house at http://flaglotliving.blogspot.com

Damage, Round One

Notice the pine tree.  I'm not sure what happened there, but it looks like something took a bite out of the side.

A couple of the posts for the grape vines have fallen over.

The corkscrew willow in the front yard has been dying/falling over for a couple of years now, so it was decided to cut it down to prevent it from falling on any houses/cars.

Snapped branches on pine trees in the field.

Strawberry bed is missing a side.

Screen door at grandma's house.

The rest of the screen door- looks like it was more glass than screen...

Porch support.  

Oops, one more piece of door.

Siding on a shed.

The new backyard, minus some trees/bushes.  Maybe grass will grow back there again?

Firewood!

Good thing we didn't have a dog living in here anymore.

Fruit tree in the garden.  I think this was a peach.  Not too sad, because it would have had to come out anyway, it's where our house will be.

Broken fence, where the tree broke off and crushed it.  The clean up crew had the fallen part chopped up and hauled away amazingly fast this morning.

New, flat roof, on the chicken coop.  Hopefully it will work until spring.  We can now call it the chicken cube.

Siding damage from the coop roof hitting the shed.

We'll need to get a new boat cover.  The boat looks okay, maybe a little scratched up.  We haven't looked under the cover to be sure.

There's the roof!  It put some nice gouges in the back corner of our camper too.

Siding damage, so that's where the wasps were coming from.

Up high there's siding damage where the cable wire was pulled out of the wall.  The cable is now laying on the ground.  

Wind speeds reached 102 mph.  That's class 2 hurricane.  School was cancelled Thursday and Friday.  Church was cancelled today to allow everyone to go around and clean up the debris before the next round starts tonight.  It's not supposed to be as bad, but who knows.  I moved the cans into the garage, and picked up as much as I could so there are fewer things to blow over to the neighbor's house (or beyond).  We still need to put the small sailboat somewhere safe so it doesn't blow away again (last time I grabbed it before it went too far- that was fun), some big pieces of plastic, and maybe do something with the wood from the former chicken coop roof and the dog run.  Probably ought to clean up as much as we can with the door next door too.  The boys are hoping school is cancelled tomorrow, we'll see.

It's been a really great feeling to see all the neighbors out working together to get things cleaned up.  They're piling stuff up at a church building down the street, and from there it's being hauled to the dump.  I'm not sure how the dump is going to keep it there, but at least it would have to blow a long way before it hit anything from that point.  Kyle brought home a load of pine for our wood pile when he came home for breakfast/lunch.  I'm not sure when they'll be done.

The majority of trucks going by are full of pine branches.  It's surreal.

UPDATE: Round 2 of the wind storm petered out, so YEA.  No more damage.

Fall Clean Up (part three)

I didn't take pictures again.  But, we forced the boys out the door this morning and they did great picking grapes until the first bucket was full, after that it was painful to keep them working.  We ended up with four buckets to put in the steam juicer.

While we were picking grapes, my Mister mowed the field, pulled the hoses from the big garden and stretched them out on the cement to get warm so he could coil them up and put them away, then he mowed the garden.  We didn't plow because we're not sure if we'll be able to garden there next year when the house is being built.  He did plow the neighbor's garden while I sat and visited.  Our neighbor gave us some horseradish, a huge banana squash, a turkey egg, and some walnuts.  It was a fruitful visit.  :)

Next, I wanted to get the yard mowed, so I pulled out the rotary mower and made the boys come out to rake the grass up so the mower would catch it.  It was really long and matted down, so that took awhile.

My Mister cleaned out the boat and laid the cover out to dry.  We need to cover it with a more waterproof tarp this winter so we don't get water build up inside it.  He also weed whacked around the driveway under the grapes.

Next up: making grape juice.  I also need to clean out the black raspberry patch, but I'm not sure I'm going to get to that.

Miscellaneous Happiness

Today I was sitting wondering why I am generally pretty happy when there are so many things to be overwhelmed and frustrated about.  Here are some of the things I thought of...

My kids are outside riding bikes in the driveway, and laughing.
My peas are planted (the garden bed was frozen a few inches down, but there was enough defrosted to put peas in).
Progress with the city to get permission to apply for a building permit is moving along at a decent speed.
The chicks are entering their awkward teenage weeks.
The chicks are playing angry birds with each other.  Running, flapping their wings and bowling into everyone else.
The chicks are establishing a pecking order.  Some are getting aggressive, guess which ones will go in the canning kettle first...  (Should it bother the feminist in me that chicks adhere to traditional gender roles so much?)
I'm married to someone I really love, and I would rather spend time with him than anyone else.
I've been getting regular exercise and have some big races this year!
The Girl Scout cookies arrived today.

What to do when you have the winter Blahs, and a greenhouse...

Plant some peas with your 3-year-old.

Fill some pots with lettuce seed.  

Hopefully we're eating lettuce before march...  I can't remember how long it takes to grow.

Finally get those grape propagations going.

Clean the greenhouse so that you don't have to put on work boots just to go in it.

Clean out all the dead tomato plants and be thrilled to discover that the still-living parts have new flowers.

Dream about how tall your peas are going to get.  (if they grow, that is...)

My Mister and I were trying to figure out where we'd do stuff like this in our dream house... It won't have a greenhouse attached to the living room.  We're thinking something like this would be a combination mudroom/living room project.  Dirty work in the mudroom, pots in the living room (which is where the south facing windows will be).

Merry Christmas 2010 in review... sort of...

Merry Christmas to our friends and family!  I thought I'd make things easier on myself by putting a link to my blog in our christmas card, and not sending a million copies of our christmas letter around.  Also, I didn't write a christmas letter.  I sat down to start one, but was interrupted in the first attempt by J throwing up.  The next week when I sat down to do it again, my Mister and A had come down with the flu.  The funny thing is that I've put off writing anything on my blog because after nursing sick people for two weeks, I am sick, along with CP and baby E.

Due to my lack of sleep/general achyness, I can't really remember everything that happened this year.  My most recent memories involve trying to get the binky to stay put in baby E's ear, until it dawned on me that that was not where binky's go, and taking a handful of wet burp rags to the garbage can instead of the laundry.  (I caught myself in time).  Remind me not to hold the baby when trying to do anything else, or he's likely to end up in the bread box or something.

The second-biggest thing we did this year was, after unsuccessfully trying to sell our home for a year, we decided to try the rental market, and had renters within a week or two.  We then moved in with my parents, and are now living in their home while they are on an LDS mission in the Lima Peru Temple.  We miss them, but are glad they're doing something they love and serving in a wonderful area.  (My Mister also served his mission in Peru, which has J (age 9) very excited about serving a mission in Peru someday also.)

We're currently crossing our fingers and jumping through hoops in hopes of building our dream home on some family owned property adjacent to my parents' house.  Send good building thoughts our way, and also to the city council and planning commission.

J (age 9) is in 4th grade this year, and has a wonderful teacher.  We love her!  He's growing up so much- the other day I looked at him, and couldn't take my eyes off of him.  I can see signs of maturity.  Luckily he still wants to snuggle with mom on occasion.  His favorite things are his wii games, (preferably anything lego), his bike, and books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians set.  For christmas his brother bought him The Heroes of Olympus, Book One: The Lost Hero, by the same author, and he's loving it.  J also likes basketball and soccer, and can't pick one over the other, which makes for a couple of crazy weeks when the two overlap.

A (age 6 11/12ths) is loving first grade, although he has decided that kindergarten was "more fun".  He's learning to be independent and is testing limits, which has been an adventure, but he's also the first to give me a hug and a grin.  A also played soccer and basketball for the first time this year.  We're hoping he can pick a favorite, but we're not holding our breath.  My Mister has been giving him piano lessons here and there, and he thinks that's pretty neat too.  His absolute favorite thing to do is build things, whether it's "paper wallets" (mom has had to be really careful about throwing random papers away in case A has stuck his life savings inside), or working on his miniature tool bench that he got for christmas last year, or building forts around the yard.  If you come to our house, you'll see off the front porch an elaborate system of rope, wood and cardboard boxes.  A also enjoys playing with legos and does that pretty much anytime he can't go outside to build something.

CP is 3, and continues to be a fun and happy kid.  We've enjoyed nearly everything about him for his entire life.  He likes to help A build things, and play on mom's ipod.  He's gotten pretty good at some of the puzzle games, which has convinced mom that he's going to grow up to be a genius.  He likes to "play toys", and will do pretty much whatever his older brothers will let him tag along for.

Baby E (about 5 months) is an adorable baby (he's the biggest thing we did this year!), but we wish he'd sleep more.  He likes to be held and played with constantly (I can't blame him, we're a fun family- who'd want to be stuck of in a baby chair at the side of the room!).  He can roll over from front to back, and gives the best baby smiles.  He was doing pretty well sleeping until we messed up his schedule by taking him to Oregon for Thanksgiving, he still hasn't forgiven us for that car ride, and wakes us up several times a night to remind us not to do that again anytime soon.

We hope you all had a peaceful Christmas.

All Our Love!

Getting Through the Winter/Propagating Grapes

It's supposed to snow.

Yesterday, I sat in the garage loading sliced and peeled apples into jars, and admitted to my Mister, that canning apples (and grape juice) made it finally feel like fall.

If it snows, that means the garden will freeze soon, and there won't be any more fresh tomatoes. I like fall, with the leaves changing color, and the garden in full swing. I like eating squash. I don't really like winter. The only redeeming thing about winter is playing in freshly fallen snow, and drinking tea or hot chocolate by a fire. I'd be good if winter was condensed a bit and we had a week around christmas time where it snowed, and no one had to go to work or school, and we could play and wrap up in blankets around the fire. Then it could be spring again and I could start a new garden.

Since gardening is my main hobby, winter gets a little old fast. This year to get me through, I'm planning on bringing a cherry tomato plant indoors and see how long I can keep it going, as well as a couple of regular tomato plants we have growing in the green house already.  We'll also do indoor lettuce again, they were a little leggy last year, but it was fun to have fresh home grown lettuce in december.

The thing I'm most excited about is propagating some grape vines. My parents house, where we are living was build around 1890. There are grape vines that we're not quite sure how long they've been around, but know that they were here before my parents got married. My mom says they're called agwumps. They make the best grape juice. Concord grapes are nothing in comparison. They grow along the driveway, and when we build our new house, we may not have as easy access to them (not to mention that when my parents get home from Peru, the might want to use the grapes themselves), so we're going to take cuttings to plant in our own yard. I got the instructions from this website.  It looks pretty easy.  Cutting dried stems with three or four buds, dipping them in rooting hormone, and planting them in potting soil and repotting in individual pots as they get bigger.  The website says that by spring when it's time to plant them outdoors, they should be around 6 feet tall.

Dream Yard?

This Old House (yes, I've stopped getting Parents magazine in favor of TOH, I must be a parenting Pro by now, or it's too late to learn anything else... I'm not sure.) magazine had a neat article about a woman in Seattle and her sustainable yard. I've always thought that kids need a big patch of grass for running around on, and to some extent I still do, but when I think back about playing in the yard as a child, I think about picking raspberries, and rose hips, and those little cheese-weed things, and putting them in a bucket and rigging up sticks to pretend we were cooking our bounty over a fire. The pretend fire-cooking usually happened under the overhangs of two lilac bushes, or in the center of a close grove of trees.

We did regularly play soccer or baseball in the field next to our house, which was mostly grass, but I don't remember the grass being central to my adventures, and I look out at my backyard with no places to hide or pretend is a cave and I feel like my kids are losing out on such an important part of childhood.

I've planned so much of my yard for growing food (or grass that would have to be pulled up (and a Mister who'd have to be talked into pulling up grass)) that there are few places I could grow any kind of fort. We did make a play house out of PVC pipe and sheets several years ago, so we may have to get it out this summer, but I'm also thinking about growing a sunflower fort on the side of my house where the compost bin and nothing else is currently. Wouldn't this be fun to play in?


I had looked at the article in TOH when it came a couple of months ago, and I remember thinking how cool the yard was, and then thinking how there just wasn't enough grassy space for kids to play. Since I've changed my mind about how much grass a kid really needs in their backyard (especially considering the proximity of several parks), I'm looking again at this and thinking how much I'd like my kids to have places to imagine and hide and pretend.
Here's the layout-and to see pictures and read more information about this cool yard, click on the "sustainable yard" link above. (The only thing wrong with this layout is that it needs more fruit trees and garden beds)