wanesta garden project: "winter" 2011 crop

end of february i got antsy about my empty raised garden bed and decided to try some "winter" plants.  tossed in some (too many?) carrot seeds, lettuce seeds and green beans. i had no idea what our weather would do or if any of them would take to the environment, but after thinning the lettuce and some warmer weather lately, it seems like they are doing just fine. i may have waaaay too many carrots planted in there, but its all a big fun learning experiment, says me.  now my only problem is: how do you know when to harvest those yummy little carrots? can't wait to see pete pull them up one by one and declare each time, "that's a carrot!"  he love to help water too, and only once (so far) has he spun around to talk to me while spraying the hose....directly at me.....

the neighbors palm tree must block the sun on that back row-ish that's empty...should be lettuce growing there but it was quite wilty and yellowish and not thriving so i pulled it up.

you can tell my first son helped plan the carrot seeds, there are some carrots growing helter-skelter in the ground around the garden bed. wondering how they'll do?

no beans yet. i remember them taking awhile last summer.

bouncing the ball off sister's head while mommy waters the garden.

wanesta garden project: harvesting

i've actually eaten green beans from my garden. sadly that one tiny harvest of beans was enough for us to share one evening for dinner and no surplus - but they were wonderful and it was fun to actually enjoy something from the garden. its doing quite well, actually - and i take no credit for that. its all mother nature at work back there. all i do is water it.  although i should probably pay attention to my poor leaves, there is a little wormy eating to its heart's content. recommendations on what to use that is earth-friendly?'

so, the dead looking stick thing used to live in my kitchen window and dad and i transplated it and its pot-mates to bigger pots and moved them outdoors. dad said something about it going into sun shock. i think that is maybe what it looks like. however - while i was gone this new beautiful green thing sprouted up from under the soil....so excited to see what that ugly stick was supposed to be and so glad this new guy came into town. to think i almost dug up that dead looking thing. :)

tomatoes are getting pretty big....super excited about THIS harvest. but what will a girl do with all those tomatoes? perhaps i'll make spaghetti sauce again. :)  is canning tomatoes worth the effort?

planted 2 plants of this variety.....each plant got one big fatty pepper on it. :)

planted two plants of this variety.....got a couple tinier peppers coming along, but this one is looking ready to eat!

zucchini is doing fabulous in there. :)  grandma and i actually ate a teeny one on our salad one night during her visit.  so how do i know when they are ready to harvest? anyone?

such a big change from that empty raised garden bed we planted a few months ago!

so, my son is now obsessed with fish. he calls them "eesh". he's also pretty stoked about stickers. his very first sticker was a chiquita banana blue sticker label off the banana the other day. i put it on his hand to see what he would do. well, he walked around all day with that sticker there touching it over and over like a prized possession.  then the lady gave him a sticker at target the next day in the check out line for being so good and cute (and she asked me if he was in preschool.....awesome!). that one didn't last as long since mean mommy took it away as a punishment for insane-toddler behavior syndrome.  today as a reward for being so stellar while running errands i bought him some fish stickers from michaels. needless to say, he is all about it. i'm wondering if maybe these stickers are the way to go for the potty training i think i'm going to try for.  in 2 days he has sat on the big potty 3 times and all three times he has managed to fart on command. that has to mean SOMETHING, right? i mean....he has to get it.  i walked in his room yesterday after his nap and the first thing he said to me was "diaper"...and enough, he had done the number 2 in his diaper. he totally gets it. now i just need to do some research on how to go about potty training a 19 month old. any body have any good resources?

here's a tiny culprit who is eating my leaves. i killed a big brother of his earlier in the day - he was much bigger and fatter. so sad that i want to start quoting "the very hungry caterpillar" in this post.  are those little black things baby worm eggs or poop? and what do i do about these guys? they are really going to town on my tomato leaves. not so much with the rest although they have sampled a little of the pepper leaves. help!

wanesta garden project: phase 2

with my dad here visiting, i've been blessed to have a master-of-all-things around and i've been keeping him busy.  we've particularly been busy getting that garden going and i've been SO grateful for his help, manual labor and sharing of knowledge on success with my compost bin and my garden growing.

we got some excellent treated wood for free from friends who just bought a house and found this in their side yard and it worked out perfectly for our raised bed needs.

so, like the super-hero-guy-who-knows-everything-about-most-everything that my dad is, he whipped this bunch of boards into a rad raised garden bed for me. viola! he's awesome.

we've got a huge space for a garden to go but we decided to start small-ish and see how things grow there with the soil and the partial shade half of the day before putting in more. i'm pleased as punch with the way it all turned out.  so here comes the soil....a good mix of garden soil and top soil and dad added some blood meal to get some good nitrogen into the mix.  we also added that to the compost bin to get some good activity going in there. ah, the priceless tidbits i've learned this week. love it and my dad so much!

the next blustery somewhat rainy morning we headed to the nursery to pick up some wonderful plants.  we got two each of two different tomato plants to try out, two each of two different pepper plants, some green beans seeds and some yellow summer squash seed. we also grabbed some cilantro, basil and italian parsley because why not?  and to jazz the place up i'll probably add some pretty ground cover in the back and along the fence and perhaps a few other low-water consuming varieties that grow beautifully with little to no attention at all. :)

next step is planting. seems like it would generally be an easy concept. make a hole, put the plant in, fill in the gaps and done. well i also learned how to correctly separate out the two separate plans in the containers, fan out their roots a bit, learned how to study the planting depth and distance of separation required, how to account for the height of the full-grown plants in relation to the sun to be sure the taller plants didn't shade out the shorter ones, how to water as you plant and even the different ways of seed planting. its not that any of its tricky, its just a bit more delicate of a situation than i would have known and i certainly appreciate receiving the gift of years of study and trial-and-error-gained knowledge my dad shared. it feels good to be a little less clueless in this new gardening world i'm dabbling in.

(i may have to bring the laptop out and skype with my dad when i put in my fall garden...having his watchful eye there to help me out made me feel good about the fact that i was doing the right thing with these little babies...kind of felt like he was my wise gardening doula and this little garden is my nature baby)

putting in my bean seeds. i thought it was interesting to see what the seeds looked like - guess i had never given it any thought as to what the seeds would look like. i seriously feel like a more complete person knowing this information. i know that sounds dramatic but its true! can't wait to teach petey all about this stuff, perhaps he'll better understand the words 'delicate' and 'gentle' by the time the fall garden planting happens and he can join me at the task.

this is what my little nature-baby looked like on earth day, april 22, 2010.  we'll see what transformations happen from here. i'm excited about all that this little baby is going to teach me! and a big thank you to my hero, my daddy, for helping me make this happen! love you!!!!

my compost bin

my husband is wonderful, that's just a fact. but this weekend in particular he is my hero!  he spent most of his weekend building me a beautiful compost bin.  if you're not into that sort of thing you are probably confused about how much JOY this has brought to my world.....but my oh my, this is the best gift he could have given me!  and the fact that he made it himself makes it even more special to me.  i am so blessed by this man.  thank you babe for this amazing gift! (and a special thank you to ochs for the tools and truck and assistance in procuring all the materials!!!)

if only this were a video - petey is doing his latest trick, a full-blown dance party inside the compost.  thought this would give you a better idea of its size.

the finished product with hinged lid and claps to keep the cats and raccoons out.  reid took a plan he found on lowes.com for one of these that was basically double this: two of these boxes side by side but connected as one large compost system. we decided this was ample for our beginner needs so he re-engineered the plan to make it just one bin. i am totally impressed and definitely LOVE  my new compost.  i'll keep posting to update you on my composting experiment.  we've already got a bucket of green materials going from kitchen waste. yippee!!

wanesta garden project: day 1

seemingly all at once i have been consumed by a huge desire to do better, MUCH better, at being a very conscious consumer, being a good steward of earth's resources, being hyper aware of what's going into my family's tummy at meals.....and all the sudden am feeling quite granola in a very self-aware sort of way.  these things have always interested me in a someday sort of manner....but now i find myself reading books and blogs and articles and they are all circling back in on one basic thing - i want this to be part of our normal.

some things i am looking into experimenting with (when our supplies and/or current systems run out);
-planting a garden
-purchasing non-processed food, making homemade versions of the processed foods we enjoy (granola bars, for example) and using real food in everything we eat (no synthetic nutrition)
-buying locally grown, organic produce
-finding a meat supplier whose meat does not come from a factory farm
-cloth diapering baby girl on the way and using homemade baby wipes
-making homemade cleaning products that don't contain harsh chemicals but are still effective
-making homemade laundry detergent and dish soap and dishwasher soap
-composting
-trying the oil cleansing method
-eliminating paper and plastic waste from my kitchen system (ie: paper towels and napkins, plastic baggies, tupperware, etc)

this is as far down the rabbit hole as i can allow myself to go at this point.  its overwhelming and where i'm at right now for the most part is reading and researching and allowing myself to be totally excited by this and my wandering thoughts throughout the day to be consumed by this stuff, my curiousities about it and my excitement at getting into it all.

so today, we took step one towards converting the totally unused space on the east side of our house (formerly a fenced off dog-run overrun with weeds, rocks, trash, etc) into a garden. yippee! for so long i was at a loss about how and where i could plant a garden and was almost going to give in and just plant an herb garden in a planter box and call it a day. our front yard is all rock and landscaping. our backyard is ALL shade and half is covered with mulch under a big tree house/playground and the other half is fake grass to cooperate with San Diego's watering limitations and Poway's super-hot/dry summer weather. for some reason i never even considered using this land on the side of the house until the other day when it just popped into my head - why not?  so we spent petey's naptime today pulling weeds, removing trash and rocks and stumps and plastic liners. step one. its small step towards planting a garden but a huge effort that i am proud of us for accomplishing.  its supposed to rain the next couple of days so perhaps by the time the rain stops and the ground soaks up the much-needed water i'll have researched enough of what to do next on this journey.  the soil here is NOTHING like the soil in the midwest so i have no idea what to do to prep it for planting nor any idea what i should put in the ground. but i have some great resources at my fingertips - an awesome agronomist who sells his produce at the farmers market who will come out and help me get started, an awesome local nursery with all kinds of great information for me and my super awesome dad coming to visit in two weeks to really get things going.  i'm actually hoping he'll help me get the composting thing started.  already wishing his visit were going to be longer!!!!  here are some pictures of our progress today.  its hard to tell how big the space is - from the air conditioner to the back fence is 30 feet and its 6 feet wide. phew!

the beginning of it all.....this is where the wanesta garden project began.  wow.

about halfway through the job

our sweet baxter spent most of the time lounging on a cushioned chair in the sun in the back yard. he'd occasionally come through to check on our progress and sniff a thing or two and then return to his perch as though he were our overpaid supervisor.

and here we are at the end of our day's work....just in time for hubby's allergies to kick into high gear. thanks for your help, sweet huband!