Spring Planting

We had some rain roll in over the weekend so I decided to get some planting done.  Things are getting busy around here so I wanted to get this early planting out of the way.  We are not out of danger of frost yet, but there are some things that can tolerate the early spring cold.  I planted some of the same things last year but am trying a few new things also.

Last year I mentioned I wanted to try growing potatoes, but we never got around to getting the planters built.  Since we have the beds for the rest of the garden ready to go, I put Brent to work on the potato beds.

 Cutting the boards

The idea behind the potato towers, is that you can grow a large amount of potatoes in a small space.  Since a potato is a tuber, it will shoot off potatoes where there is dirt and room to grow.  We found these plans and used them as a base for building them.  Potatoes can be grown just about anywhere.  Some people use tires, others garbage cans or buckets.  They can be grown in the ground and in towers like ours.

Three potato towers

We had enough lumber for three towers so I decided to experiment and plant three varieties and see which grew the best in this environment.  Many websites say that you can grow 100 lbs of potatoes in this type of set-up.  I plan on weighing them at harvest and see what yield we actually get.  I planted Little Reds in the first tower, Idaho Russets in the second, and Yukon Golds in the last one.  It will be interesting to see which variety does the best.

Idaho Russett potatoes

After I placed the 12 pieces of potato with eyes that were sprouting into the tower, I covered them with dirt.  Once they are about 6-12 inches tall, I will fill in dirt until there is 3-6 inches of leaves above ground and we will add another board.  This will be repeated until there are 6 layers.  Some people wait and do a harvest at the end of the season, or you can harvest throughout the season as well by removing the bottom board and harvesting some potatoes and then putting the dirt back in.  I have had little luck storing the big bags of potatoes we get in the fall so I think I will do the harvest as you go method.

Along with the potatoes, I planted some sugar pod peas this year.  I only planted one row because I will probably be the only one eating them, but I wanted to try something different.  I planted a different variety of carrots and radishes than I did last year.  The carrots from last year failed to grow very big.  I think they were a different variety than what was supposed to be in the package.  Then, like last year, I planted lettuce and scallions.  I will have to wait until May to plant anything else.  We still will get frost and there is still snow on Schafer Butte so I cant plant anything that will not tolerate the cold.

I'm excited for this year's growing season.  Everything did so well last year and I am hoping it will do good this year as well.

The girls enjoying the dirt from the grass we dug up

Summers end

It seems like this summer just flew right by.  I suppose having to travel to Tennessee plus having hobbies to keep me busy helped spur it right along.  The garden did 100 times better than I ever imagined it would.  It has totally served every purpose I wanted it to and then some.  My original intent for the garden, was to provide enough green beans to last us all summer and winter in the form of frozen and dilly beans, provide fresh home grown tomatoes, zucchini and squash to eat, and to try to grow a few new things. The amazing thing is that everything I planted, actually produced.  I am pretty proud of myself considering I have never grown anything in my life.

As the summer is winding down, I will be getting back into the groove of things.  I finally made it back to the gym.  I managed to pack on about 8 lbs that I had previously lost since I hadn't seen the gym all summer and only tracked my food sporadically.  It felt really good to get back in to the gym and back to a routine.  Also this coming week, I return to school.. again.  I took last semester off and am back at it with only two classes left.  Unfortunately I cannot take the classes simultaneously so my projected graduation date is Spring of 2013.  I cannot wait to be done with this.

This year all four older kids are in the same school.  I realized after sending them off that first day that this is the first time in about 10 years that I have only had one kid at home.  It is a strange feeling and I can't get over how quiet the house is during the day when they are gone.  That silence disappears quickly though as soon as they walk through the door.

Ever since my mom passed away, I have been trying to reflect on a lot of things.  It's been a difficult few months and some days it is still surreal and I can't believe she is gone.  I honestly think the more time goes by the harder it gets.  I have had plenty of bad dreams and still can visualize her with the panic in her eyes as she was telling me she was not doing ok that day I was there.  It has helped me reflect on my role as a mother and I have been trying to change the way I parent my children.  I appreciate my role more now than ever before, but it also makes that role very hard.  This was definitely an eye opening experience, and I know it will take a while to heal.

We are still budgeting but we changed from Pear Budget, to using Dave Ramsey's budgeting tool and his Total Money Makeover book.  I have had the book for years and tried abiding by it before but quit shortly after starting it.  Today, we don't have much debt and have a pretty decent income.  It allows us to do things we have not been able to do previously, such as go on a family vacation, purchase things for hobbies and fund expenses ahead of time.  However we feel we must stay on a strict budget or else we will find ourselves in the pitfalls of major debt.

I am still working on the rest of my 40/40 list.  I have about 9 more items to add to it before I can publish it.  I never thought it would be so hard to think of things, but I want to make sure the things I list are realistic.  Hopefully I will have lots of new exciting content over the next few months.  I have lots of content ready and pictures archived, I just need the discipline to get them posted.  Thanks to all my readers who have stuck by my side, not deleting me from their blog roll, and checked in from time to time.  I'm glad to know the little following I have is loyal.

Garden Progress

Beds 1&2- 5 tomato varieties, zucchini, crookneck squash, cucumbers, green beans, and jalapenos

Beds 3&4- butter crunch lettuce, basil, scallions, carrots, bell peppers, more green beans

Bell Pepper

First ripe sungold cherry tomato

 Beef Steak tomatoes

Green beans

Cucumbers

Aphid infested jalapenos

Basil

Scallions

Buttercrunch lettuce

Aside from the aphid infestation on the peppers and carrots, and a small bout of squash beetles on the zucchini and squash, everything is coming along nicely.

life interrupted

It seems I have slipped a bit again.  So much has happened since my last post and I don't really know where to begin.  On May 12th, Taylor and I ran in the Race for the Cure-Boise.  It was a gorgeous day and I felt really good.  I beat my first race time by 2 minutes and of course Taylor was waiting for me at the finish line again.  She is a speedy little thing.  It was a lot of fun and I look forward to my next one which is probably in August.

Boise Race for the Cure 2012

My friend is a nutritionist and I decided to work with her and try and get my nutrition on track and I am so glad I did.  I also took progress pictures for the first time since last September and all I can say is I was so shocked at how much my body has changed for the better since then.  I attribute it to beginning weight lifting.  Even though the scale hadn't moved much at all, I have definitely lost a lot of inches.  The first week of working on my nutrition I lost 5 pounds.  Its a 30 day program intended to help me become a "cleaner" eater and eliminate added sugar and processed foods.  It has been challenging and I will have to incorporate a lot of this for the rest of my life but I am happy with it so far.  I am officially coffee-free and have been drinking green tea instead.   For anyone that knows me... this is HUGE! I can't wait til the end of the 30 days so I can compare it again.

My garden is doing wonderful!!  I have four types of tomatoes, jalapenos, bell peppers, cucumbers, Lemon cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, summer squash, lettuce, scallions, spinach, wax beans, green beans and carrots all growing now.  I have room for two more cucumber plants and then they will all be full.

My first radish

The radishes I have picked since this are a bit bigger and the plants in the beds are a lot bigger now.

Mother's day this year was great.  My husband (and children of course) thought of the perfect gift.  When we bought this house, the front landscaping was a MESS.  There were three huge nasty rose bushes and I wasted no time digging those up immediately and I pulled out all of the myrtle that had taken over.  I uncovered a truckload of river rock and listed it on craigslist for free so it would get hauled away.  The bed has sat empty for over a year now.  On Mother's day I woke up to this beautiful sight-

Mother's day 2012

This wasn't enough to fill the area so the next week I went and bought some more to fill the space.  I am so happy with how it looks.  It is different than most people have around here with their bushes and daylilies.  I wanted lots of color so I have it now.  Now all we need is some mulch and it will be complete.

Summer has officially started and we are going to have a busy one.  My son graduated from kindergarten, my oldest is officially a middle schooler, we have two kids in tee-ball and games or practices 4 of the 5 days a week.  I have decided to cut back on work so I can be more available at home.  It was a hard decision to make but one that was needed and I think it will really help on many levels.  As it was before, I would have missed every single game of theirs and that was just not acceptable.

I am sorry I was neglectful and I hope I have been able to play a little catch-up with this post.  Thanks for visiting!  

A place of my own!

 Finally! I have something I have wanted for a LONG time.  I have a real garden area.  I have a reputation for not being able to grow things due to my own negligence and frustration and it is often a topic of humor around the home.  I have never successfully grown a vegetable in all the years I have tried and even my flower pots wither away by the end of the season.  I really hope to change things around and actually get something to grow.

Last month we finalized the design of the beds and off I went to Lowes to pick up my lumber.  I managed to successfully pick out un-cracked and un-warped wood and Brent went on and put them together.  Our original 2-bed plan was swapped for 4-4x10 ft beds that stand 9 inches high.  He really did a fantastic job and I am glad we decided to double the amount of space because it doesn't seem like a whole lot of room.  I may be a little over ambitious though with what I intend to grow.

On Friday a HUGE pile of dirt was delivered to the house and most of my Saturday was spent filling up the beds.  I thought I would be extremely sore today but to my surprise, I felt really good when I woke up this morning.  We still have a lot of work before the area looks like we want it to but the most important this was I am now able to plant some things.  Which is exactly what I did this morning.  The back right bed is now holding  seeds for carrots, radishes, scallions, and two varieties of lettuce.  I left about two feet on that bed to plant some more lettuce in a few weeks in order to extend the growing season.

When I was perusing around the net one night, I came across a blog that had introduced a nifty free online program that will help you plan a garden.  This is exactly what this Master Gardener wanna-be needed.  It is called Smart Gardener and tells you pretty much everything you need to know about planning and caring for a garden.  It starts you off with the design, and takes you through seeding, sowing, planing, care and harvest.  it provides information such as climate factors, plant compatibility, pests and control, diseases, how and when to plant and harvest.  It is an amazing tool!  Here is what our garden will potentially look like when it is all planted.

I love that it gives me a weekly to-do list that I can check off as I complete it.  It goes so far as to remind me when I need to water.  I am terribly unorganized and very forgetful.  This little program takes all the guesswork out of my garden.  Now I am just crossing my fingers for some sprouts to show up in about a week.

We decided to omit the potato bins this year and just concentrate on the main beds and getting a compost bin set up.  We are going to take out all the grass around the beds and along the back fence and possibly put some sort of curbing or barrier between the lawn and the garden area.  We still have quite a bit of work to do but I think we will be able to get it done eventually.  

One of reasons we never did this before is because we just couldn't afford it.  I think that is part of the reason why this is so gratifying. Thanks to Pear Budget we have been able to purchase the supplies we needed without having to worry about it cutting into the grocery bill.  Since we have set aside money since January each month for this project and others that we plan on doing throughout the year, it is a huge burden lifted.  Knowing we are going to be growing natural, fresh produce for our family in an affordable and responsible way is so rewarding.  I'm still going to keep my fingers crossed in hopes that something makes it past my black thumb!

Mary, Mary quite contrary....

How does your garden grow? Well it's that time of year,  frost is on the ground, snow is in the mountains, and I am dreaming of the fall harvest. I'm determined to grow a garden this year. We decided not to renew our CSA membership  and we are going to build two or three raised beds and grow our own produce instead.

I have tried many, many times to grow things in pots and  in the ground with very little success.  I managed to harvest about 4 chili peppers one year off one plant and the first year we were here, we were able to gather quite a few cherry tomatoes and zucchini from the garden that was already here.  Now the chickens reside in that area so we have to build a new one.

I don't know if it's lack of experience in gardening or lack of effort on my part that caused the past failures, and honestly it was probably a combination of both.  I figured if I can keep a flock of 7 chickens alive, then maybe I can grow something also.  Now I am just trying to decide what to grow.  I've priced out the materials, and we have a vague idea of where the beds will go.  I just hope installation doesn't become a huge project and that we don't have to do too much to alter the irrigation in order to make it work.

There is just something so gratifying about producing your own food.  I watched a documentary tonight about the South Central LA farm issue back in 2006.  It was called Save The Farm and there is another one that I will watch next that won many Oscars called The Garden about the same situation.  It was very upsetting, yet moving.  Both of these are available on Netflix instant streaming.  If these people can build a huge garden in the middle of South Central LA, then surely I can can build one in the middle of Idaho.  It will be a labor of love and I will definitely keep you all posted.

On another note, I tried a few new recipes this week.  First I made these homemade granola bars and boy were they good! These are something I am going to be making again.. tomorrow in fact.  My kids gobbled them up and even my husband took one for a snack.  Although I think it's because he is in love with anything he finds on Lauren's Latest .  I thought the flavor was fantastic, very rich but not overpowering.  I am going to attempt some other versions also, like peanut butter and a maple one.  I also made this cream cheese banana bread but the verdict on that will be out tomorrow since it will be breakfast.  It is in no way healthy and it had more ingredients than just about any other quick bread I have ever made, but if it tastes as good as the batter then it will be delicious.

I am researching and brainstorming on what I want my blog to look like, and I will start getting some more pictures up.  I know all this text must be pretty darn boring.  If there is one thing I am uncomfortable doing, it would have to be dealing with and learning new technologies.  My husband picks up on the stuff so easily and to me its like another language, so bear with me and hopefully we will start looking a little more high-class 'round these parts.