Tuesday Garden Update

Well everything is growing, though we do have some out of control summer squash. We have yet to plant the corn, though I plan on getting that done this weekend. My only big disappointments so far is the flowers which some little critter keeps eating the seedlings of and the strawberries. Who knew flower seedlings were so yummy. Our garden at this house is at the end of the yard due to most of our yard being shaded. I am a BIG believer in keeping your garden very close to your house, I think you are much more likely to keep up with it, if it is right out your door. One of the draw backs of it being so removed from the house is that all the little animals have no fear of going and stealing our strawberries. Next year I will have to put the strawberry container right next to the house and maybe we will actually get to eat some.

We have tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash almost ready to be picked.

So here it is in all of it's late spring glory. Sailor has been doing a GREAT job tending to her pumpkin plants.

Wordless Wednesday: The Garden

***all photos are unedited and were taken by Sailor, age 4.

July Garden Update

Last time I did a garden update we had harvested 5.25 pounds of food, we are now up to 43.9 pounds!!! Thanks to some big juicy watermelons, some delicious cantaloupes and the amazing corn we ate for 3 days straight. We are still getting handfuls of tomato's and more cucumbers than we can keep up with.



Every time a sunflowers blooms it seems to be bigger than the last. They are about the size of Sailor's head as you can see.



The bees seem to enjoy them more than any of us. They are always there covered in pollen.



Our second planting of corn seems to be doing well. We will definitely be doing three Garden Patch Grow boxes of corn next year if this planting goes as well as our first one.



We have a few more watermelons on the vine almost ready to be picked, we also have 1 cantaloupe left. The best part is when I went out to weed and clean up the garden the other day I noticed 4 new baby watermelons starting to grow on new vines growing off the main stems. So it looks like we will get more watermelons come August, the kids could not be happier. Which surprises me seeing as they may turn into watermelons any day now but I guess you can't ever get tired of eating watermelons.

Here is our harvest from yesterday. The peppers have already been grilled and eaten and most of the tomato's went into a salad for lunch. I just love those pear tomato's. This was the only watermelon that grew in a kinda funky shape, all our others where pretty perfectly shaped, it looks like a gourd to me but still tasted delicious. The cucumber has to be sent to a neighbors house before I start seeing cucumbers in my dreams.



The only sad gardening news to report is the pumpkins, which were doing so well just a week or so ago. Well now they have some sort of blight or mildew that seems to be killing them off. I am still going to be hopeful though, I will just be so sad if we don't get any pumpkins. I also pulled our all our bush bean plants, I was sick of watching them suck up water with no beans in sight.

June Garden Update

We have been really enjoying the garden. So far we have harvested 5.25 pounds of food, not included in that are a few handfuls of cherry tomato's that seem to have a hard time making it into the house. At least I know who the culprit is and I am guilty as charged.

The watermelons are just unbelievable, this is our first time growing any sort of melon and it has just been so much fun to watch them grow.




Our corn will be harvested this weekend. We may have to have a BBQ to celebrate the occasion. The only disappointment is I should have done another planting or two, spaced two weeks apart to keep us in corn all summer. Oh well there is always next year.



Sailors flower cutting garden is looking so beautiful and it just makes you smile when you walk through the house and see flowers everywhere. Our neighbors across the street were so happy to see the first sunflower before heading back to their full time home. I think by 4Th of July we will have many sunflowers.




We have been getting a ton of cucumbers and I am hoping to make our first batch of pickles weekend. We have never canned before so this will be a new adventure for us.



The big excitement as of late was the pumpkin patch which got set up last week and is already in a pumpkin race. Hopefully we will have enough for us and some friends as well.



We have had one main problem and it is the squash and the stem burrowers who are inhabiting them. You can try to save your plants by cutting a slit in the stem and removing the worm and then covering with soil, one of the first signs is yellow wilting leaves. I have tossed a few squash plants that were to for gone to save. I am hopping to get one more planted this weekend to make up for it.

We do have one slow producer, our summer beans. They are growing very small beans that seem to not want to grow any bigger. I keep trying to remind myself it is only June. Last week I called my mom, also know as the master gardener, worried about my watermelons. They had slowed down in growth. She gently reminded me it is JUNE and some people have barely gotten seedlings in.



I think my neighbors worry my garden will die of stage fright. I can just stand out there and stare all day. So I am making a resolution to sit back, relax and enjoy a little.

Tutorial Tuesday: Going Green

So this is not so much a tutorial as it is a list of the small easy changes our family has made in the last year to help make a smaller impact on our earth. This has become a big topic these days and nothing could make me happier. The truth is I don't care if people are making changes to help the planet and insure a healthy future for our kids or because it is currently the cool thing to do. Either way, in the end, every small effort we make does make a difference.

For Our Family:

Cloth Diaper - We started to cloth diaper with the arrival of Hudson. We had many friends that cloth diapered when we had Sailor but I just couldn't believe them, I mean how on earth could you LOVE cloth diapering. I was convinced they were just not telling the real truth, I couldn't believe it could be easy. I was wrong, we love cloth diapering. It is sooo easy and Hudson seems to love it and even more important my husband who was adamant we not cloth diaper in the beginning is a true convert and can't stand to see him in a disposable. If you want the details on how cloth diapering works and how to choose from all those beautiful diapers out there Kelly at Our Lincoln Log did a great post on it a while ago.
***"DISPOSABLES: The 18 to 23 million disposable diapers sold in the U.S. all end up in the landfill once soiled. That’s 3.5 million tons of poop and plastic going into the ground each year. They are the third largest users of landfill space in the U.S. And the diapers, because of the plastic content, take approximately 500 years to breakdown. It is illegal in most states to dump human waste in landfills but that law is unenforced when it comes to diapers—though the packages of many disposable diapers say to scrape the poop into the toilet before disposing of it, almost no one does—and that human feces can leach and cause contamination or spread communicable diseases when disposed of in the landfill."-From the Green Mama


Diva Cup - I switched from using tampons and cloth pads to the Diva Cup. The Diva Cup is simply a non absorbing cup that catches your menstrual flow. It is worn internally and is made of silicone. Simply empty it every 12 hours. This means no sanitary pads and tampons in land fills. Between 1989 and 1999 more than 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along US coastal areas.

Homebirth - When we chose to have Hudson born at home we did it for personal reasons, it wasn't until later that I thought about how much "Greener" having an out of hospital birth is. We were so lucky to have Adrienne at our birth. She is a midwife assistant and recently wrote a post about how Homebirth benefits the planet on her blog Abundant B'earth.

Toys - This is also a personal choice of ours that has turned into a green one. We have some rules about toys in our home. The biggest one is that we are battery free. This was an easy one for us, we just don't like the noise of them. We also think kids simply miss out on something when the truck makes it's own noise and therefore the child doesn't need to do the sound effects. We also try to limit the amount of toys that pile up. I try to buy from companies that are filled with great natural, imaginative toys. Often this can mean more cost upfront thought we have found these toys have a much longer "shelf life". They last longer and our kids play with them longer. I also don't mind spending some money on a great toy verses a lot of money on a lot of toys. We also love to purchase hand made items for both the kids and us, there are so many amazing and talented crafter's out there. We also love a good yard sale, we have a bag of Lego's collected from many garage sales. Here are some of our favorite places.


*Nova Natural
*Stubby Pencil
*Sprig Toys
*Dream Child Studio
*Green Mountain Wee Woolies
*Syrendell



For Our Home:

Cloth Napkins & Non Paper Towels - We made the switch to cloth napkins 8 months ago and it has been great. I bought them on Etsy, I did not buy napkin style ones but instead smaller sized ones sometimes called picnic napkins. We like that they are about the size of a regular paper napkin. I bought them in a pattern so stains would not show as much. These would be super easy to make yourself. We still have paper towels in the house but we rarely use them. Instead we use rags, old towels and the Sham Wow(thanks to our friend Sara).



Rain Barrel - The hubby recently installed a rain barrel and so far so good. It cost about $40 for the barrel and parts and he had it put together in about 20 minutes. I still use our hose for my morning watering of the garden but use the water from the rain barrel for my afternoon watering. Here in the south watering once a day or not at all isn't really an option. We placed it under a piece of gutter that had no downspout. It seems to catch a lot of rain water this way, it got almost completely filled in one thunderstorm.


Keeping a Garden & Shopping Locally - We have a good size garden so we can produce some of our own food. We are also blessed with a weekly farmer's market that is within walking distance. This year is the first year I am undertaking canning, we will see how it goes. We also freeze extra veggies from the garden. This is especially great for overproducing squash plants. Simply slice them up and put them in a freezer safe container or bag and throw them in the freezer for an easy side dish come winter.


Cloth Bags or Bagless - We have cloth bags for our groceries. We even made our own produce bags thanks to Kelly, here is her tutorial on produce bags. When we are in the store for one or two items we simply say, No Thank You to the bag and carry it out or throw it in the diaper bag.


The 3 R's - Reduce, Reuse & Recycle
We also try to remember to use the basics. We try to keep the lights off unless we really need them, turning off the water while we brush our teeth, doing laundry on nice days so it can be hung out to dry, separating out all the recyclable, re-purposing old items and reducing our overall waste. Nina at Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea gave us a glimpse of her trash. I only hope ours can look that good sometime soon.

Garden Update

It has been about a month since the garden went in and it is taking over. In reality I couldn't be happier, everything is doing so well as you can see.


This is my largest garden to date and the very first time growing; corn, cantaloupe and watermelon. Until now I have stuck with the old stand by's; tomato's, cucumbers, squash, peppers and the other usual suspects.

I have never done a traditional garden, I have always used pots, raised beds and this year the big new addition; 3 Garden Patch grow boxes. These are self watering containers large enough to grow just about anything. I had seen a review of them in an article in Mother Earth News and had to have them. So far I LOVE them, they seemed a tad pricey at the time but now seeing how well they work would probably pay double if I had to. They have a 4 gallon reserve in the bottom that you fill and then only refill when close to empty. This allows the plant to have a never ending supply of water. I chose to plant cantaloupes and watermelon in two of the grow boxes, seeing as the main reason they are so hard to grow is the endless amount of water they need to grow those water filled melons.


***This is two Garden Patch Grow Boxes placed in a line next to each other. To the left is one with 6 watermelon plants and to the right 5 cantaloupes and 1 extra watermelon.


Here you can see some cantaloupe blossoms and you can also see the watering hole for the Grow Boxes. I simply stick my watering wand in there and fill. The melons are drinking almost 4 gallons a day!
*sorry blogger keeps turning this photo on it's side and I can not for the life of me figure out why:(



In the third went the corn, I have discovered that kids love to grow corn and why not you plant a seed, one that is actually big enough for them to handle, and off they go like they are in a race. Sailor will look out the window several times a day and say something along the line of "WOW mom look at our corn!!!".




So to date we have:

3 Zucchini's (a few days away from harvesting)


4 Peppers (that need to grow bigger before we eat them)


4 Pear tomato's (that need to turn red)


A hand full of tiny cherry tomato's (just starting out)


And a lot of itty bitty little melons that the kids and I like to play find the melons when we check in on them (though that is very hard to do in the wild jungle that is our melon patch)



I plan on weighing all of our harvest as it comes in so we can have a grand total of how much food we were able to grow. Here is a family really using their yard to grow their food.

Little Homestead in the City

Oh How I LOVE Amazon

Okay I know there are a LOT of great small bookstores out there that my money would benefit better but I have two kids and limited time so Amazon it is. I will admit here that I am one of those people with a huge Amazon wish list. Now I hate the feeling of needing something but books don't count and for that matter plants and seeds don't either. So my Mother's Day present came two days late but it was well worth the wait. Here are the contents of the box...


The Unschooling Unmanual looks to be just what I was looking for; a book I can turn to flip open and get inspired to let my kids live and learn as they would like. A reminder of sorts for me to put down and step away from the workbooks, they are only 4 & 2 and I am sure there is much more to learn outside.











I have gotten to flip through The Backyard Homestead and it really does have it all, gardening, canning, small livestock and much more. I think it will be perfect for someone like me who is looking to create a homestead in their own yard even if it is in the middle of a subdivision.



The Garden Primer is one I have been wanting for a while as it is considered by many to be the gardening Bible. It is said to be full of info and yet very down to basics at the same time.


You can find the links to these and others on my; Book's I've Pulled of the Bookshelf List to the right.

The LIST

So before we even left Texas I sat down with the hubby to discuss the LIST. It was my dream list; everything I wanted in our new home to be. This would be the first time in 4 years that we wouldn't be living in a subdivision and under the constant watch of the Home Owners Association which can make it hard when you are trying to live a more self sustainable life. I mean how do you teach your kids that hanging your clothes out to dry can make the earth a more beautiful place if your HOA rules don't want clothes lines because they are ugly and could bring down home values. I have personally never seen an ugly clothesline.

So here it is:

1) Large Garden

2) Clothes Line

3) Chicken Coop & Chickens

It is pretty short but does involve a good amount of manual labor by the hubby but he agreed. I don't know if we were drinking or it was just the overwhelming guilt trip my friends had put him on for taking me and the kids off to a far away place. Either way he said yes and the amazing hubby that he is we have been in our new home 19 days and he has done a lot.

Garden-Raised Beds Built and veggies and flowers planted



Clothes Line- Up and Drying Clothes...Though ten minutes after this picture was taken I had to run outside and rescue the clothes from a thunderstorm!




Chicken Coop- Still in Progress



*I must add he also did a ton of much needed work on the house, painted, unpacked most of the boxes and took the kids to the park (I think everyday). I know what you are thinking but he is not for sale, he's a keeper.