Sunday, April 24, 2011

So now what?

Wondering what to do with all those egg shells from the yummy colored eggs? Throw them in your food processor and grind them up, then put them on your worm beds. Worms will love you!


Thursday, April 21, 2011

Got Garden?

The answer here is no.

I did go to a fun little gardening class on Wednesday night. There were some really fun ideas that I want to try. One of them was growing potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket (or even a garbage can). You plant your potato(s) in the bottom. When the plant(s) has grown about 8-10 inches you bury 1/2 of the plant with dirt. You keep doing this until you reach the top of the can. At the end of the season you dump the can/bucket upside down and it is full of potatoes.

The second idea was a sala bucket garden. This once again is done in a 5 gallon bucket. Drill drain holes in the bottom as well as a larger hole to put your tomato plant through. You will want to put some of the meshy screen you buy to keep out weeds in the bottom of the bucket to keep dirt from coming out when you water. Plant your tomato plant and then have someone hold the bucket while you dump in your dirt and then plant your peppers, cilantro, jalapenos etc out of the top of the bucket. Don't forget to top dress everything with worm castings! Then you hang it outside and you have what you need to make fresh salsa in a few months. The lady teaching this also mentioned a spaghetti sauce bucket using all the plants for the herbs you would put in your bottled spaghetti sauce.

The ladies also talked about the hanging tomato plant containers you can buy at stores and everyone said "do not use these." They aren't large enough for a good root system for your tomatoes. They all suggested 5 gallon buckets for the hanging tomatoes.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Still no garden

It is already April 11th and we haven't been able to even start gardening yet. I managed to get weeds racked up to burn and the next day when we were going to burn it was way to windy. By that evening my piles of weeds were lining the fences and it has rained/snowed every day since.

The sun is shining today, but everything is still wet from the snow we got yesterday. Hopefully by Thursday (when I will actually have time again) it will be dry enough to get the weeds raked and burned.

We got baby chicks last month. They are getting so big. Can't wait for fresh eggs later this summer.

Chuck is getting anxious for things to dry out so he can get harvesting all the castings that have been accumulating over this long winter. We need things to dry out! The local news is telling us that Utah is in for some pretty bad flooding this year. I remember the flooding of 1983 when one of the main streets in Salt Lake City was turned into a river to divert all the flood waters.