Garden 2010 Update
Filed Under: Aaron's EnvironMental Corner Site News, Susatainable Living on May 2, 2010
Once again, I’ve been slacking off getting DIY updates to the blog here. As you’ve no doubt noticed from my re-posts from other venues, I’ve been busy writing for NaturalNews, EVMeme, and other sites. My professional stuff is kind of getting in the way of my hobby blog here. :) Sorry.
Anyway, I thought I’d update everyone on the garden plans for 2010. I’ve already got a handful of photos on Facebook, but haven’t really done much here. I’m a slacker.
At right is a photo of some of my seedlings that are now well on their way. These are cherry tomato plants and they’ll stay in those containers. I used my plastic coffee can as planter pot idea, which you may remember from last year’s Home Gardening Containers DIY. That single post is the most-visited page on this site, by the way, and has been for months. :)
Anyway, I’ve collected quite the menagerie of discarded big gulp cups, 2-liter bottles, coffee cans (plastic, the metal ones I use to store odds and ends and tools and whatnot), and so forth. I’ve got 70+ seedlings sprouted (I did them in waves) now and they’re all ready to go into the ground. I’ve also got my onions and potatoes (purple ones) ready to go too. Just waiting for the weather – a couple of more weeks at the 5,400 foot Wyoming elevation here.
I’ll be expanding the garden in a big way this year. I plan to grow tomatoes (both cherry and regular ones) in pots and buckets rather than in the garden to save space and allow me to regulate their sunlight and keep them out of the weather. I lost a plant or two last year to hail and want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Other plant expansions this year include beets, possibly some corn (haven’t sprouted any), more types of beans and peas, and so forth. This will be a bigger year by far – the garden will be tripling in size as I expand the raised beds (again).
In other news, I’ve ordered some Cody Grass to replace the lawn (what little we have). This is a short prairie grass that grows about 3-1/2″ to 4″ in height, deep-roots to about two feet, and is extremely drought-tolerant and stays green year-round. It requires little or no mowing, hardly any water, and is tough and resilient. The plugs for this grass will be showing up in the next couple of weeks and we’ll get busy putting them in. I’ll take photos and write it up for you all.
I salvaged some fencing from a junk pile and will be building a new sort of dog run to keep the dogs off the grass as well and will take photos as that gets done. So far, I’ve set the posts and installed the gates (also salvaged). The whole fence will cost about $30 total, mostly in concrete ($10) and misc. hardware.
So a lot is going on at our house, which is another reason I’ve been neglecting the blog. Sorry! :) I have pictures I took two months ago of the baby in her G Diapers and was planning to do a sort of review follow-up piece to go with the Sustainable Baby series on diapering (part 1 here and part 2 here), but never got around to it. We got those Gs for free, by the way, and just had to buy the washable inserts to go with. Awesome! Way easier than the old-school cloth diapers.
Anyway, I’ll do my best to keep up, but between all of the projects going on around here, my freelancing, and being daddy-day-care, I’m pretty well booked up! :)
