Homeopathic Mosquito Repellent

It's starting to get warm in this sauna of a state. With all the resent rain we have had the mosquitoes are starting get thick! I look down while in the garden and my legs are covered in those blood suckers! Naturally, I start beating the heck out of my legs. So we got to thinking, how about some repellent. Wait a minute! That stuff stinks and it has ingredients we can't even pronounce. Why not make our own? We didn't hesitate... We headed to Drug  Emporium to get Eucalyptus and Lemon oils. We mixed the oils with rubbing alcohol into a spray bottle at a ratio of 10:1 alcohol to oil. It smells great and we aren't putting something on our body that is known to the "state of california" to cause cancer! The oils are great on the skin but the alcohol can dry your skin so we will try witch hazel next batch.

Homemade areoponics planter

As dirty little tree huggers, we don't like to buy stuff that we believe we can build. Instead of purchasing those really expensive "Toppsy Turvy" planters, we got creative. Imagine that! We decided to purchase some cheap, small pots from the local Home Depot. With those and some wire coat hangers, we produced our own "Toppsy Turvys". Cool huh? The pots were about $2 a piece. We made 5 of them. That saved us about $65!
Directions:
1. Drill two 3/16" holes in the pot, one adjacent from the other.
2. Straighten a metal coat hanger.
3. Put both ends of the hanger through the holes and even them out.
4. Twist and bend a hook at the end.
Congrats! Now that's being resoureful!

snakes, frogs, and rocks... oh my!

Busy weekend in the land of stinky farmers. We have the second bed completely installed except the seeds. It's going to have two different types of cucumber, variegated lettuce, and basil. Today were hard at work clearing out all the debris that has been accumulating along the side of the back porch for the past two or three years. All the leaves, sticks, and other mess filled up an entire composter. Underneath we found all kinds of wildlife, our final count was 7 frogs and 3 snakes.

After we cleared out all the debris we re-released them into the plant beds so that they could eat the pests that have been munching on our squash leaves.

The initial bed, onion bed, and melon bed are now equipped with a great drip irrigation system via cloth soaker hoses. I'm personally excited about not spending as much time hose watering.

We've also lined the space outside of the back porch area that was previously occupied by debris in rocks. Our plan is to fill it with pea gravel, stepping stones, a fire pit, seating, and raised flower planters as an additional chill spot for spring gatherings. Moving all those rocks(yet again) was hard work but I got some help from a very special person.

Thats right, my little prince came by and loaded an ENTIRE wheelbarrow of rocks for me. He also used clippers to trim out all the saplings that were trying to take over the foxglove bed. Until next time!

April 2, 2011 Second Bed

Here is the begining of the second bed. In addition to Grassy Toes Last post, these are the 84 blocks we found for 60 cents per. She can stack them well. Don't worry, Dirty Feet helped. This load really made the truck squat! It was way better than having a pallet of blocks directly over the axle. This load was way more spread out.

Melons and More Cinderblocks

Saturday was another VERY busy gardening day. On Friday night Mr. Dirty Feet and I drove out to Justin (about 30 minutes away) to pick up more cinderblocks for the wonderful low price of 60 cents each. We nabbed 84 blocks total and made it back to town for games.

Saturday afternoon Dirty Feet and I unloaded all the cinderblocks then took off to the City of Denton dump grounds for MORE dyno dirt (the old man that runs the booth is starting to recognize us).

Going to get Dyno Dirt is always fun until you get home and the shoveling starts. Luckily we had help shoveling again, my best friend's husband came by to get all sweaty and filthy with us. He and I emptied out the first truck load while Dirty Feet started digging out roots along the North fenceline where we had decided to put the second raised bed.

His root digging got interupted because the bestie's husband and I had the truck cleaned out in record time and the three of us had just enough time to make a mad dash back up to Dyno Dirt for another load before they closed at 3. Here is a video so you can see how the dirt is loaded :)

We returned from our excursion and got back to work on unloading yet another bed of rich, wonderful Dyno Lite Blend. Midway through Arab the Tree Climber came to lend another helping hand.

We unloaded all of the second load onto a tarp, removed all the giant roots, and got EVEN MORE of those darn Irises pulled up then all of us got to work moving rocks to the other side of the yard for our (slightly) raised melon bed. Under the rocks we found some really beautiful spiders (the pictures don't even do them justice). They were almost the color of merlot with white spots. We left the egg sacs and mommy spiders alone so they could help with pest control this spring. We had to call Saturday an early day for gardening due to our evening plans but in summary: we have a fully lined (but not yet filled) melon bed, the cinderblocks are almost in place for the second raised bed, and two cubic yards of dirt are sitting in the back yard waiting to go in both of the beds. We wouldn't be nearly as efficient without our stinky help, Arab the Tree Climber and the Bestie's hubby.... who has yet to create his stinky farmer name. Great work boys!

raised bed = FILLED

Saturday we got back to work on the yard. After a mean 9 am work meeting we went up to Dyno Dirt to get the compost mix for the veggie beds. It took two loads but we finally got them filled for cheaper than we thought with a very rich soil. Lucky for me, Arab came to help so he and Mr. Dirty Feet did all the hard shoveling (really they did ALL the hard work today).

Except for having to make two trips, it took almost no time with those boys hard at work. While they did the tough stuff I pulled up daffodils from the foxglove bed to transplant them into their very own pot. Bleeding Hearts are going to go where the daffodils were. We also added an additional raised bed onto the end of the big one for onions and potatoes because we ended up with extra dirt and blocks.

Arab and I had been talking about putting CDs in the trees to help keep the birds away for almost a year and figured while we were out working we'd go ahead and get it done. Dirty Feet and I sent him up the tree armed with CDs and pruners.

We had dinner then put all the veggie seedlings and the onions into the newly filled bed. Dirty Feet got the peppers started in the peat pods while I ordered our new bees. May 17th I'll be picking up 3 lbs of Russian honey bees with a marked queen from a very freaked out post office. Until next weekends adventures....

Grassy Toes in the foxhole

Here is a project we had to do to get the raised bed set up. Were the hole is, there was a clothes line pole and a massive piece of concrete. We dug it up and cut the pole off. We then decided to bury the massive chunk of concrete but before that could take place Grassy Toes wanted to play in the foxhole. She is a cutey! It seemed more logical to just bury the chunk a little deeper rather than look for fill dirt. What a way to conserve huh?

The beginning

This year we started a huge adventure together.... urban gardening(and this blog). Instead of excitedly bombarding people with picture messages we'll try to keep all you far away people (Hi Jesica and Jesse's dad!) updated here. As of right now we've got all kinds of seedlings started: broccoli, squash, cauliflower, zuchinni, three kinds of tomatos, brussel sprouts, spinich, honeydew, watermelon, and canteloup. The peppers are going to be started this week, too.

Yesterday we spent the better half of the afternoon putting in our very first raised bed. Thanks to Daddy for letting us jack his truck to haul 90 cinderblocks. It was super hard work but it looks amazing. Of course, Jesse did most of the hard work and showed no signs of tiring :) That's my baby. The interior dimesions are 22' x 4' x 16" The bottom layer is filled with composted leaves from our yard and I can't wait to get the dyno dirt to fill it the rest of the way up.

In addition to getting the garden started, I'm also super excited about getting our bee hives going. My super amazing craftsman built the hive, now I'm just waiting to hear back from the Collin County Backyard Beekeepers as to whether or not I can hive the new babies in May (the only time I can find a delivery for 3 pounds of Russian bees and their queen). The box isn't painted yet but I LOVE it and can't wait to be munching on local honey.

On top of all the gardening we've also got to get the back yard whipped into shape after a long period of neglect on my part. We've built two super awesome composters out of old pallets and chicken wire that we've already filled to the brim with lawn clippings, ashes, and kitchen waste. On saturday Arab came over to help us trim the sweetgum tree and clean off the tin roof and Jesse cleaned out the Foxglove bed. The weather was fabulous over the weekend but we've got a high of 55 going today.

The first composter without the hinged door on yet

Composter #2 work in progress



Our kiddo scaling the limbs to be cut. Note the super clean Foxglove bed below!



Today I'll try to teach the cute guy how to use the blog and get some pictures that weren't taken with my cruddy cell phone camera up. Happy Monday!