Garden 2013 - Back To Eden

I have recently learned about Back To Eden style of gardening. If you want to learn more yourself, go here and watch the film.  Basically you do 3 simple things:  1. Lay down wet newspaper or cardboard, 2. Layer it with compost, 3. Layer that with tree mulch.  Now technically, I should have started this way back in September or October, so we shall see how well it goes for me starting so late.

I called a local tree service company and they were more than happy to drop off a load for free and will bring me more anytime I want.

I have already put some mulch around my strawberries, grapes and tomato plant.  Can't wait to see the end results.  This weekend we are planning tripling our garden bed using this system and planting all our seedlings.

Garden 2013 - Seedlings

It has been two weeks since I planted my seeds into the starter kit and thought I would show you how they are doing.  All of the corn, beans & carrots have sprouted.  2 out of 5 cantaloupe and watermelon have sprouted and about one of each squash & cucumber.

Pumpkin seeds have sprouted!  Remember my experiment?  Well, so far so good.  Once the pumpkin starts to rot, I will plant the entire thing in the ground and see if we end up getting pumpkins.

Garden 2013 - Planting Seeds

I went ahead and planted seeds in an indoor starter kit today.  I planted the following: Early Golden Bantam Sweet Corn, Early White Bush Scallop Squash, Early Prolific Straighneck Squash, Squash Greyzini, Cantaloupe Minnestoa Midget, Hale's Best Cantaloupe, Cucumber Spacemaster 80, Watermelon Bush Sugar Baby, Contender (Bush) Beans, Scarlet Nantes Carrot and Long Imperator #58 Carrot.

And for a fun experiment, I saved one of our pumpkins from October and decided to open it up today and put in some potting soil and a little water.  Wonder if it will produce?

Garden 2013 - Controlling Weeds & Adding Nitrogen

It has been about a month since my last post and the garden bed is finally all cleared out of weeds.

The next step was to lay down cardboard and wet it.  This will kill any weed seed left in the ground and prevent future weeds from growing.

After I wet the cardboard, I laid down some old horse manure, followed by some dirt and then am letting it sit until I plant in May.  My hope is that the horse manure will decompose more in the hot sun, helping the ground to become for fertile.  When it comes time to plant, I will also lay out a layer of top soil.

Garden 2013 - A New Garden Bed

I decided to upgrade my garden from a small raised bed in the front yard to a large in ground area behind the house this year.  I still plan on using my raised bed to grow spinach and lettuce, but am looking forward to a much larger harvest from the back.

Before any planting could be done though, we had to clear out a large amount of weeds & junk.

Looking at the future garden area facing towards the back field.

Looking at it facing the back of the garage and our tour bus.  

As you can see, we have some work to do!

After hoeing up the weeds, I went back through and picked up by hand all the weeds left laying on/under the dirt.

Over half of the garden bed has been dug up and weeded.

All the wet soil you see is from our washing machine.  We originally thought this would be a great place to put the garden because the grey water from the laundry would help water the garden, but have since realized that it keeps this area too wet and will more than likely rot the roots.  So my husband will be moving the drainage pipe to another location soon.

A better view of  how much more we need to dig up.

Cowgirl Decor

My 5 year old wanted a Rodeo themed birthday party this year. I decided to go with the colors brown & pink.  I was pleasantly surprised to find paisley print paper & ribbon, so I also incorporated paisley into the them.

I used my Silhouette to make all the paper decor.  Here is the goodie bag using a brown paper lunch bag with a horseshoe on the front.

For the Watering Hole, I made a sign & stuck into a bale of straw.  I also glammed up the drink dispensers with the pink/brown/paisley ribbon.

A close up of the Cowboy Cafe sign.

One of my old boots served a great flower vase!

I love the Banner I made.  I will have to use this for all future girl birthday parties.  Just need to make a name one for my other daughter.

I didn't get any pictures of the centerpices.   :( But they were mini straw bales, wrapped with the brown/pink/paisley ribbon and then had cowgirl & cowboy paper silhouettes stuck into them.  I also added pink & white flowers to them.

The sign that greeted all our guests.

I tried my hand at making chocolate caramel pretzels, which were much harder than I anticipated, and then totally forgot to add them to the goodie bags.

Cannings Done!

Here is the final out come of my 1st year canning (minus a few jars).  10 of the cherries jars are down in the basement and we have already opened/eaten some of the pickles, applesauce, apple butter,  and jam.  I was hoping to make orange marmalade, but never did get around to it.  Maybe next year.  One thing I have learned, it I need a larger stock pot to hold more cans and an apple peeler/slicer thing.  These will definitely help the process go much faster!