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A (SEMI) URBAN ADVENTURE

live from southern indiana - well, mostly life anyway. we live just outside
Louisville and have recently purchased our first home. this blog will be our
journal, recording not only our gardening adventures, but also renovation
adventures and life adventures in general. sit back and enjoy!
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gardening in the inbetween times
11:35 AM | Author: Michael
I am finding my time right now to be in very short supply.  With everything that
needs to happen with the house (including mowing, etc.), my schedule for
building raised beds and planting has been pushed back two weeks!!!  Coupled
with busyness is the pervasive rains of March and April in Southern Indiana.
 Any days off I have had lately have been accompanied by torrential downpours.

I have a plan, though.  I'm renting a tiller tomorrow after work and tilling to
my heart's content (or until the 4 hour rental period is over).  The goal is to
buy the wood that night, and assemble the beds the next day (after I spend 45
minutes mowing again).  Then it's applying topsoil and compost.  Rain on Friday
and Saturday.  Then adding a little more soil after the previous soil settles on
Sunday along with planting some.

Finally...there's light at the end of the tunnel and gardening can begin!

michael

| comments (0) |
projects
12:03 PM | Author: Michael

We've finished the renovations (for the most part - we plan on a possible
complete remodel of the guest bath this summer).  For now, we have loads of
projects to work through the next two months.  Here's a sample of what's to come
at our homestead:



> > > >  * Tilling - four vegetable gardens, one bamboo garden, one blueberry
> > > >    garden, one raspberry garden and one blackberry garden 
> > > > 
> > > >  * Raised beds - building, filling with soil and compost, planting
> > > > 
> > > >  * Planting our fruit orchard - Dwarf peaches, Dwarf apples,
> > > >    strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and honeyberries
> > > >    if I can find them
> > > > 
> > > >  * Tree trimming
> > > > 
> > > >  * Tree removal - one tree in the front is waaaay to close to the house
> > > >    and is absolute hideous
> > > > 
> > > >  * Garage sorting - everything has it's place...we just need to figure
> > > >    out where that is.
> > > > 
> > > >  * Planting bamboo garden - We need a little more privacy from the
> > > >    apartments behind our house than the privacy fence is currently
> > > >    providing...or I've watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a few too
> > > >    many times.
> > > > 
> > > >  * Decorating the house
> > > > 
> > > >  * Landscaping - once the veg/fruit gardens are established, we need to
> > > >    add some curb appeal to the front of the house
> > > > 
> > > >  * Painting outside trim, shutters, the front door and the rear french
> > > >    doors



Our goal is to have these finished by June 1.  I think it's possible.

-Michael

| comments (0) |
now with even more semi!
1:42 PM | Author: Michael
Last year, my wife and I lived in a one bedroom apartment with a patio garden
affectionately known as the jungle by the rest of the complex.  We grew
tomatoes, bell peppers, ancho's, cabbage, lettuce, swiss chard, herbs, pole
beans, kale and carrots with amazing success considering neither of us had
gardened before.  As we ended the summer last year, I began having grand ideas
of building trendy self-watering containers, a customized cold frame, etc. that
would let us grow even more veg.

That all changed in September as we began playing around on the internet and
looking at houses.  We hadn't planned on buying a house for several more years
but thought there was no harm in looking.  We found a sweet cape cod  joked that
if they dropped it to $5000 we'd snatch it up.  Well, we looked one day and
noticed they had dropped the price considerably.  We looked at each other and
decided to go look at the house.  We then discovered why it had dropped in
price.  It was a gorgeous house in a horrible neighborhood that I did not feel
comfortable traveling on business and leaving the wife by herself in.

Over sushi that night (oye...we're so yuppie, I know), we talked about the
disappointment we felt that we actually considered looking into buying but our
hopes were dashed by the neighborhood.  However...we had actually warmed up to
the idea of buying a house.  What?  Seriously?  Yup, we did.  We pulled out our
iphones (oye...we're so yuppie, I know) while waiting on our sushi (oye...we're
so yuppie, I know) and looked at a few homes that interested us in a price range
we were comfortable with.  We decided on one we liked and decided to contact a
realtor.

Long story short, we purchased our dream home on Jan 31, 2011 and began a
renovation project.  It's a fantastic 3 BR Ranch on a .25 acre lot with loads of
room for gardening.  I've been playing with all kinds of landscape designs and
have a plan in place.  I guess we are a little less "semi-urban" now that we
have a fair amount of land and aren't gardening in containers on a 10x8 patio
now.  That's okay, though...we're at least not suburban!

Many more posts, pics of the house and the remodel along with pics of our raised
bed garden, fruit bushes and trees, a blog redesign are coming over the next
several months.  Stay tuned...er...yeah...

-Michael

| comments (0) |
the bean trellis
5:25 PM | Author: Michael
Here's the finished product, folks:




It's a pretty simple design.  I just purchased three 1"x2"x8'.  I cut two three
foot pieces for the top and bottom and nailed everything together.  Measuring
every six inches I tied a horizontal piece of jute twine and stapled both ends
into the wood.  Once the horizontal pieces were finished, all that remained was
adding the vertical lines, making sure to loop them around the horizontal ones.

Voila!

| comments (0) |
need a safe pest killer
8:51 AM | Author: Michael
We have noticed some pests have started eating the foliage from our veg.  While
my first reaction was to shove arsenic down their little insectoid throats,
cooler heads prevailed!  We researched several different organic pest-killers
and came across GardenSafe.  While ladybugs may work for some, Garden Safe has
several products that one can use on their flowers and veg that are, well, safe
to use.  You can possibly win a free gift basked from Garden Safe from The Cheap
Vegetable Gardner.

| comments (0) |
another look at upside-down gardening
8:25 AM | Author: Michael
Originally, I thought upside-down gardening was a great idea.  We purchased
three upside down "kits" and planted two sweet bell pepper plants and a better
boy.  Within a month, all three were dead.  When the first pepper plant passed
we replaced it with a Roma tomato plant.  When the other pepper and the better
boy died we decided upside-down planting wasn't worth it.

One of the gardening blogs post a link to an article in the Grey Lady (a.k.a.
The New York Times) on upside down veg gardening on it.  The author swears by it
as do many other urban gardeners around the nation.  Perhaps we chose the wrong
types of plants (I mostly see smaller varieties of tomatoes and pepper
plants)...perhaps we just flubbed it up.  Regardless, there are many who have
had success doing it and we'll see if our upside-down Roma does better than the
its right-sided siblings this harvest.

Until then, feel free to check out this article and decide for yourself. 
Considered the tarnished reputation the Times has taken this past decade on the
"prowess" of it's journalism, I make no claim to the accuracy of this article. 
;-)

tomatoes, upside-down gardening | comments (0) |
trellising - how to?
5:40 AM | Author: Michael
This is a fairly helpful video I found while surfing the net yesterday on
trellising.  It gives four different options for using trellises on different
types of veg.  Personally, I wouldn't use PVC pipe but that's just me.  Having
our entire garden on our patio in an apartment complex means (at least to us)
that we want things to be both functional and attractive.  Wood is much more
attractive than pvc!

Trellising is a valuable tool when growing beans, cucumbers, melons, squashes,
tomatoes or peppers in an urban (or semi-urban) setting.  It saves your
horizontal space so you can plant more and looks incredibly nice as it,
eventually, will be this incredible wall of green.  Another benefit is that it
keeps fruit off the ground which will help keep it from rotting and help with
pests that tend to feast on fruit and veg lying on the ground.






We just put purchased trellises in our tomatoes, peppers, anchos,
squash/cucumber and our beans a couple of days ago.  Sadly, the beans are
already overtaking their trellis so I will be creating one from scratch using
wood and twine.  I hope to have it finished in a few days and will post pictures
when it's up and running (no pun intended).

trellising | comments (0) |
soil for a container garden - an expensive subject
7:41 AM | Author: Michael
Anyone who has decided to do a container garden needs to know that you can't use
regular dirt in containers.  We discovered this and were dismayed because
potting soil is so much more expensive.  This year we have spent over $75 on
potting soil alone.  Gah!


Potting soil is a necessity, though.  "Real soil from the garden compacts under
the pressure of repeated waterings. It literally turns into concrete and then
your tender plant roots will not be able to grow. Not grow much – but grow at
all. Your plant growth will simply stop and along with it all flowering or
fruiting." (www.simplegiftsfarm.com) 


We began talking about what to do next year to help cut costs so as we make a
greater return from our veg with less investment.  One of the issues was soil.
 We knew how much the cost was this year and didn't want to incur that next
year.  I wondered if there was a way to reuse our soil or even to make a
homemade version of potting soil.  After much research, I did find a "recipe"
for a fabulous potting soil that we plan on using in the future.  It's known as
Al's 5-1-1 mixture:




> 5 parts Fine Pine bark

> 1 part Perlite

> 1 part Peat Moss



All of these ingredients are available at most home improvement stores.  If we
replanted all of our pots we would now spend less than $20.  Simply add 5 parts
of a compost and viola, you have potting soil!  We are planning on reusing our
potting soil (another topic for another day) by composting much of it over the
fall, winter and early spring.  By the time planting season rolls around in 2011
all the organic material will be decomposed in to an uber-rich composted soil.
 We'll need to reconstitute it into some potting soil.  Using the above formula
and adding 5 part of our composted soil, we'll have an enormous amount of
incredible and rich potting soil for less than $10.


Saving money is S-M-R-T, smart!  D'oh!



container gardening; potting soil | comments (0) |
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LABELS

 * beans (1)
 * bell peppers (2)
 * carrots (1)
 * container gardening; potting soil (1)
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 * nurseries (1)
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BLOG ARCHIVE

 * ▼  2011 (3)
   * ▼  April (3)
     * gardening in the inbetween times
     * projects
     * now with even more semi!

 * ►  2010 (18)
   * ►  June (7)
   * ►  May (11)


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