What I've Been Up To

I've been up to my eyeballs in woodchips! FREE woodchips! Thank you Ameren (power company) for dumping an enormous amount of woodchips onto my driveway. I think used 1/20th of them, or less, to surround my garden. Now that the garden has a path around it, my final step will be to add the soil & get planting! A new idea of mine is to add a tall Rubbermaid shed for all my garden tools. I think I'd like to put it against the fence, on the right side. It's been kind of a pain to haul all my tools in & out of the garage for this project.

Looks like the weather is going to be rainy & cold this weekend, so I may have to wait another week or so before I get any more of this project done. Almost there!!! (And the total cost of this project has been under $100 so far!!!)

The Bed is Built

What a busy weekend! After getting some good advice & doing a little more research, I decided to go with a 4' x 8' garden. First I bought some weed control cloth to lay down. Even though I measured the space, I was a few feet off, and I was NOT going to buy another roll for just a few feet, so I improvised with a section of a plastic drop cloth. (I didn't even have large, black plastic bags - oh well!) Here's a shot of the area - you can see the plastic here. A big THANK YOU to our friend Gary G. who loaned us his electric saw so we could cut the wood. I went with cedar - a little bit more expensive up front, but it resists decay.

It helps to have a great, wonderful, fantastic, smart & strong guy who will give up a good chunk of his day to work on a project for you. Thanks to my husband, Dwight, for a great build this weekend!

Yay! Finished box! Now I just need dirt for inside the box & woodchips to go around it. I also was informed by someone very close to me (see above pic) that I did not do a great job getting the ground level, so he suggested that I soak the ground around the box & then walk on the box to get it set in the ground.

I hope to have this thing all finished and ready to plant in a couple/few weeks. I can start with my spinich, that I have been growing inside from seeds & then add a few more veggies. The picture makes my garden look kinda small, but I think it will be manageable for me this year & if I feel like I need more space, I can always build another box! More pics hopefully soon!

Craft Project Time - Make a Recycled Frosting Container Planter

I have a huge spider plant. I love these plants because they grow little baby plants that you can cut off of the "mama" plant & repot to grow a new plant. First, cut off one of the "baby" plants & soak it in a glass of water for a few days until the roots appear.

Next, make yourself a yummy cake & then clean out a frosting jar & remove the label. The lid is the perfect size for a saucer. Turn the jar over & use a hammer & nail to punch some drainage holes in the bottom of the jar.

Next, decorate your new planter. I chose some scrap material & hot-glued it to the jar, but you could use stickers, colored paper, etc. Be creative!

Finally, add some dirt & your plant and, viola! You have a fashionable planter made out of a recycled frosting container!

Paper or Plastic? Neither!

I love my reusable bags. Helping the environment, by reducing the amount of plastic in our landfills can be more than practical - it can be fashionable as well! Besides the basic grocery store offerings, you can get bags to support a favorite sports team, or even promote good art, like my 'Starry Night' bag. Also, whenever I use my 'Target' bag, I get $.05 off of my order. It may not be a huge benefit, but it's better than nothing! I think that's my focus for this whole "greener" thing - a little bit is better than nothing!

The only problem that I have with my bags is that I forget them at home half of the time!!! I'm getting better at this, but it is so frustrating to get to the grocery store & realize that I left them at home. I've tried leaving them in my van, but when they're full of groceries, have to take them inside & then they get left there. I need to be more disciplined!!!

So what do I do with all the plastic bags I've collected? Here's what they mostly get reused for: dog poop!

Progress!!!

This weekend, I finished the initial phase of my vegetable garden: clear the space, trim the bushes & plot the layout. It may be hard to tell from the picture, but I put some metal rods in the 4 corners & then laid out some wood to get a sense of the space. When I measured it, it turned out to be 7 feet wide & 9 feet long. That was a little bit bigger than I was thinking, but it is aesthetically pleasing for the space. As long as I can find some 2x4's that come in a 10' length, I'll be OK. I went to Lowe's & priced out some of the wood, but it was for 8' long boards. Next weekend is build week - I need to buy the lumber & get started! I'm really getting very excited about the garden & even though pulling weeds isn't my favorite chore, I had a lot of fun working outside this weekend. I will probably enlist Dwight's help when it comes to

putting the boards together - it's been a loooong time since my Theatre Stagecraft days & I want to be sure to get this project right!

I also e-mailed the Town of Normal & they have free landscaping woodchips for residents when available, so I will be checking back with them next week, as they didn't have any right now. In the next couple weeks, I need to figure out how much dirt I will need & where to get it from, so that I can be on track for planting in a few weeks! I hope I still have this much excitement for my garden after the plants are in!

Spring Project

My first order of business this Spring will be to transform my messy, not-often-used vegetable garden, into a user-friendly space. Here's a picture of the space I'm working with:

As you can see, I have a big mess to clean up first! Then, I plan on putting a path of wood chips or rocks next to the fences on the left & back, and between the garden & the bushes on the right. That way I can walk around the garden & my dogs can too. Finally, I am going to build a raised bed in the middle of this space, hopefully making it more difficult for the bunnies & ground hogs to get to my veggies & to keep my dogs out, and...oh, yeah...it's better for my back! Right now, it's looking like I'll have a 6' x 8' garden, but the size may change once I start working with the space.

There is a great video for making a raised bed on Lowes' website: http://www.lowes.com/cd_null_94400869_?ytID=vBKcoezxqkU

I have a few obstacles to overcome with this project - #1 is that I really want to get started now, but it's too cold...STILL! Grrr. #2 is financial - I have to save up a bit for my supplies. I know this is going to be a bit of an investment, because I need to buy the wood, dirt, weed fabric & wood chips, but I am hoping that it will pay off in the long run. #3 is that I really want to get my family on board with this garden. As much as I sometimes want it to be "MY" garden, I really want the garden to be a place where our family works together & grows more than just vegetables - I want us to grow stronger bonds w/one another as we work together, side-by-side. My husband is in a reading group & he had me read a chapter of the book they're reading now called 'Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight' by Norman Wirzba. In it, the author mentions the importance of working together along with the lessons learned about the goodness of God and the practices of patience, cooperation, and interdependence. I need more of all of that!

So that's my plan. I'll be posting on my progress as I go. Which veggies do you think I should start with? I'm thinking tomatoes, green peppers, beans & spinich. Since I am going "greener", I will be trying to avoid using chemical pesticides on my plants - any ideas on how to keep bugs away? Thanks for reading!

Welcome To My New Blog

I am a work in progress, just like this blog. I am attempting to journal my journey towards living a "greener" life. I'm not sure how that will look, but I hope it involves more ways to reduce, reuse & recycle. I also plan on posting what I am growing in my gardens (or attempting to grow) along with some better food choices along the way. I'm not perfect & some of my "experiments" may fail, but I want to chronicle all of it anyway. Feel free to add comments, suggestions, even criticism. I'll start posting some of what I'm working on in the next day or two, but for now, I need to get back to the ones who call me "Mom".