LETTUCE!!!!!!!!

This week is insane.  I am co-ordinating our elementary school's plant sale.  Orders were due yesterday....getting delivered tomorrow.  Last night someone found 4 orders that had been placed in the wrong bin.  This is currently my biggest fear and is giving me nightmares.  I am terrified that someone's order has been missed.

Luckily, we do business with a VERY local garden center.  And they have been awesome.  I got nothing but kindness and support....even though they had started gathering our order already.  There really are some major advantages to doing business with local mom and pop places.  REALLY.

In the WAY cool part of my day, I just found small lettuce sproutlets in my pallet garden.  I was so excited that my husband thought something major was wrong.

Sigh.

Here's my little babies!!!!!  You might have to look REALLY closely.

Lettuce pallet garden

So, somewhere in my travels, I saw this cool idea to use a pallet to grow things that don't need huge root systems.  One of the items I saw in a pallet was a lettuce garden.  I can't find the exact picture I have in my head that I saw.  It could have been in a website, or a book.  But, it looks something like this.....

So, I researched....like always. Found a variety of instructions.  Mentally compiled and decided to give it a go.

I used one of my donated pallets.  I checked to make sure there was no pressure treated stamp on it.  Don't want arsenic in the lettuce.

So, I put it where I want it to be...because there is NO WAY I am going to move a pallet full of dirt.

I used landscape fabric.  I unrolled it so that it draped on the ground and cut it 6 inches past.  Then I lined up the edges with the edges of the pallet...and started in with the staple gun.

Because the landscaping fabric didn't cover the entire half.  I had to repeat the process with the other side.

Then I turned it on its side and stapled the "extra" to the bottom to create an envelope.

I filled it from the top with dirt.  Then I planted the seeds.

I did the top left side with buttercrunch and the top right side with spinach.  Then the 1st row, I filled with a mesclun mix and the second row, with arugula.

I am planning on doing another planting in 2 weeks to keep the lettuce going in waves.  And I will probably put some herb seeds....maybe mint....in too.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Putting in my new garden - Part 4

Coming to the finish line on starting the garden.  And trust me, it felt like a race putting it in.

The first thing I did was find a local place to purchase hay and straw. I basically typed in "straw [ZIP code]" into google.  Then I called the two closest ones that came up.  The price was the same, so I picked the closest

I did some calculations to figure out how much hay and straw I'd need.  It was like revisiting high school all over.

To do 4 inches of hay or straw in a 80 square foot garden, I multiplied 1/3 x 80.  [4 inches is 1/3 of a foot....4/12=1/3]  That resulted in 26.6666 cubic feet.  I found information that said there were 7 cubic feet of straw in a bale of hay/straw.  Dividing 26.6666 by 7, I came up with 4 bales of hay and 4 bales of straw.  Just a tip......that is SOOOOO much more than I really needed.  What that number didn't take into account is that hay and straw bales are highly compacted and when you spread them out, it goes so much farther. I really only needed 1 bale.

Just for comedy's sake, here's my minivan after putting in 5 bales of hay and 5 bales of straw (4 of each for me and 1 of each for my best friend who is allergic to hay, so I did the transport).

And here is what my car looked like after they were removed.  It took me 2 hours to vacuum it out....even with covering the back area with a tarp. 1.I spent the rest of the afternoon picking the hay out of my hair and my bra.....lord knows how it got there.

Then I debated about where to get the compost/leaf mulch.  Our county has a free composting program.  Townships drop off their compost material, the county composts it, and it's free to pick up. From what I understand, most counties have something similar.

Doing the math (correctly this time), I wanted 8 inches of compost.....which is 2/3 of a foot deep.....I came up with 80x2/3 = 53 cubic feet.  I looked up how many cubic feet in a cubic yard and came up with 27.  Meaning I'd need 2 cubic yards (53/27=1.975).

To get 2-3 cubic yards of leaf mulch delivered from my township is $60.  To get the quantity I needed for free....using 5-gallon buckets, it would take me 8 trips of 30 minutes of driving time (15 minutes each way).  I decided to go with the $60. I'm all about saving a buck, but the gas for a total of 4 hours of driving time would be comparable to that...if not cost more.  So, I went to see the township, wrote the check and got my delivery date.

Here is the lovely delivered leaf mulch. You can see pieces of my broken down pallet in the background.

So, with the back wall built, and the blocks evened up to create the front wall and sides, we were now ready to go.....FINALLY!!!!!!

We took cardboard boxes that we had pulled from our recycling bin, ripped them into pieces with a box cutter, and laid it down covering the grass.  Then we used rolled newspaper under the edges where the cardboard didn't match up properly so the grass won't grow through. We put the cardboard under the edge of the concrete blocks so that I can use them for planting too.

Then we watered the whole thing to soak the cardboard so it would mat down and compost well.

Next came the hay.  We spread it out to a 4-inch depth....and watered it thoroughly.

After that, the beautiful leaf mulch.....I made my husband shovel, while I wheeled, dumped, and spread.  I filled in the holes in the concrete blocks.

Put down a soaker hose and topped it all off with straw.  And now it's ready to plant!!!!!!!!!

So....what Id I spend?????? $50 for the concrete blocks, $60 for the hay and straw (some of which I am now re-selling to friends at a huge discount....recouping about $30 of that), $60 for the compost/mulch, and $25 for the soaker hose (not a necessity, but sure will make life nice).

Grand total.....$165.  And almost all of that is a one-time expense.

Next year's costs will be almost nothing. The joy of this type of garden is that it's almost maintenance free.  Next year I will use my home-made compost and buy 1 bale of straw (which I will split with someone....lesson learned) for $7.

Putting in my new garden - Part 3

The garden walls are up!!!! Now what to put in the middle?????????

Originally, I had thought I'd need to order a load of top soil and fertilize the h3ll out of it.

Once I started researching I then thought I'd go down the road that Mel had done in Square Foot Gardening....a mix of peat, compost, and vermiculite.  Then I tried to find vermiculite.  I found it.  But darn was it expensive.  Ordering online would have been $24 for 4 cubic feet....and I needed 7 times that......$168!!!!! ....Not including shipping. I found some relatively locally, calculated that I would have to drive a half-hour each way.....AND pay a total of $150 dollars just for the vermiculite.

I was a bit stymied because it had sounded like such a great and easy solution....but for me it was unaffordable and inconvenient

I kept researching other types of options.  I loved the ease of what SFG offered, but not the price.  My head was spinning with all the different information that was out there.  Then came the class at my local arboretum.  They talked about a lasagna garden....layers of "stuff" right on top of your existing yard to get good growing results.  It was the same ease as SFG, but had many more choices for the lasagna "filling."

This image is the same one that was used during the presentation

I questioned WHY the hay???? WHY the straw?????  WHAT type of fertilizer?????

The hay is basically straw with seed.  It is more nutrient rich.  As it decomposes, it releases a ton of good things for the garden to use.

The straw is to help keep moisture in.

The fertilizer could be almost anything....chemical fertilizer if you don't want an organic garden, peat moss if you do, etc.

What I finally decided to do was fairly simple. Cardboard, hay, leaf mulch, and straw.  Because the leaf mulch is so nutrient rich, I skipped the fertilizer.  I may add some next year and I will also have my bokashi composting to add.  But this year, I'm thinking I might be good.

The next step....gathering it all and putting it where it goes!!!!!

Putting in my new garden - Part 2

Now that I had decided that a garden MIGHT be helpful in more ways than just growing food, I had to really sit down and figure out the how.

I wanted to do it as cheaply as possible.  What I really wanted to do was buy lovely cedar and get someone to build it for me with cute posts with caps on each end.  Something like this......

However, you'll note the price on this lovely thing is $314.95 for a 2x8 bed.  Considering that the area I wanted to cover....I mean use......is 2x40, that would mean 5 of those lovely things.  The total...$1574.74!!!!!  And that didn't include dirt or plants.

NOT quite the cheap way I'd been hoping to go.

Then I looked into pallet wood and concrete blocks.  I like the free price of the pallet wood....but not the look.  And getting enough concrete to go around an 80 square foot garden was still on the upper end of what I hoped to spend.

I did look into the fear that pallets have chemicals from pressure treating.  They used to.....YEARS ago.  The newer pallets have to be labeled.  

Finally, I settled on a half and half thing.  I decided to use wood pallets to create the back wall of the raised bed....because I am SURE that my *lovely* neighbors won't be bothered by the unattractivness of my makeshift wall.

I put in my FB status that I was looking for pallets.  Two neighbors replied and kindly even dropped them off to me.....I TOLD you the rest of my neighborhood is awesome!!!!!! I ended up with 8 total.

My sweet husband (SH) and a friend of ours spent half a day breaking them down.  SH and I tried doing it the "old fashioned" way of using a crowbar and mallet.  It took us (SH doing most of the work) an hour to get 4 pieces of wood off.  While free, I was starting to question the wisdom of using the pallets.

Then our friend stopped by to drop his son off to play with ours....our way of keeping the native happy while we were busy....two boys are more occupied than one.

He had a brilliant idea.....use a circular saw to just cut down the side of each stud.  It worked AWESOMELY.  In an hour, they got me a nice pile of pallet slats to use and a pile of the studs that we are going to use in our firepit.

Now, what to do with the wood.  I'd seen all kinds of idea, but they were mostly to build small boxes out of..

Finally, I came up with a concept.  I cut some of the pallet boards in half.  Then I hammered two of them into the ground parallel to each other, slotted the pallet boards down into it and screwed the front and back boards together with the long pallet boards in between.  The pictures below should give you some idea of how I did it.  (Please note the trash in the background of the photos is NOT on my side of the fence.)

The cut boards driven into the ground with the longer boards slotted down into the channel

A front view of the joining between two sections after the screws were put in.

A view of several assembled sections.

Top view of the wood slotted into the channel (thank heavens I had my toes painted, right?????)

It took me about 3 hours total to do 40 feet of this.  But the first hour was spent doing just the first section.....I had no idea what I was going to do when I sat down.  There are 13 sections total covering the 40 feet.  I got the remaining 12 sections done in 2 hours.  

Not bad for a crazy girl and a pile of free wood.

For the front side of the bed, I went with concrete blocks.  I picked out some that were 6x8x16.  My hope is to use the front cubbies to plant flowers and herbs.

I measured out 24 inches from the stud in the ground for my back wall and placed the cement blocks.  The 24 inches is to accommodate two rows of square foot gardening...a taller or vertical row in the back and a lower growing plant in the front.

As you'll see, some of the ground isn't even.  So I just used some of the compost dirt underneath to raise up the sections that were all crazy.

The cost for doing 40 feet on the front and the two 2-foot side walls, came to about $50.

Putting in my new garden - Part 1

I have long wanted a food garden.

I have tried a couple of times, but not in a well-thought-out way.  Before it was more like.....hmmmm.....I could stick some plants in here.  This looks like a good spot?????  I need to put something to fill in over there.....

What happened is that the vegetables grew all over the lawn.....then the dog...who loves squash for reasons I just don't get....decided to eat anything that got remotely ripe and wasn't half rotting....and I got bupkis.

Another problem I face is that my neighbor on the one side is not the best neighbor in the world.  I want to be super clear.....every other neighbor I have is awesome.  I love my neighborhood.  But these people are not who I wish I had living next door.

Their yard is a mess.....to put it nicely.  There are several pieces of decaying furniture out there (the indoor kind), trash all over, recycling not in cans, general yuckiness....and their porch has so much junk on it that I'm going to call Sanford and Son soon.

The grass often grows beyond 2 feet in height.  They didn't have trash service for over 6 months.  They never clean up after their dog. ETC. ETC. ETC. No. They aren't elderly or incapacitated.  They...Just. Don't. Care.

Other than the obvious, the additional problem for us is that we end up avoiding our yard.  We have a couple of strategically placed bushes that block most of the disarray when we sit on the back deck, but spending time in the rest of the yard.....not enjoyable with that view.

I'd love to put in a 6-foot fence, but the price we were given was outrageous (probably not really....just nowhere near anything we can afford). In addition, they have let some "bird-poop" trees grow on their side of the fence that would need to be cut down before we could put in a 6-foot fence.

Again....read....cost we can't afford....or have no interest in affording.

So this winter, I came across the concept of vertical gardening.....growing plants upwards to decrease growing space and increase viable food.

I fell in love with the idea.....in love, love, love, love.

In addition to blocking the view.....and getting to use our yard to hang out in again.....We would get vegetables!!!!!!!!

I went nuts looking at free kindle books and websites.  There is SO much information out there.....probably a bit too much.

I came across the Square Foot Gardening method....one of the books I bought that actually cost me cash.....i.e., not free.  I love Mel's concept of doing more in less space.  It's flipping brilliant.  Check the book out....you won't be sorry.

I also took a course at my local arboretum about growing a vegetable garden.  It was insanely helpful.  It took all the ideas I had floating around in my head and helped me coalesce them into a final plan.  It was $12 well spent!

Over the next couple posts, I hope to explain how I got from crazy concept to a ready-to-go raised garden bed.

DIY Bokashi Composter

For the past year I have been researching composting methods.  I have a VERY small yard.  So, my needs are limited by that.

I tried using a trashcan with holes drilled in the bottom that I rolled periodically.  What happened with that.....  a RAT (from my crazy neighbor's yard) chewed a hole in the bottom.  I DO NOT want to have the crazy people's infestation on my property.

So...I gave up for a bit.

Then, I found bokashi composting.

After doing a lot of searching, I determined this was the method for us. Supposedly, bokashi can handle all types of food products, meat, dairy, vegetable...whatever, without paying attention to any green/brown ratio thing.

For the last 6 weeks, I have been collecting our family food products in large ziploc bags and putting them in the freezer.

And....here comes the fun part....I researched how to make my own bokashi composter.  And I made one!!!!

Here are all the steps....

I started with two buckets that I bought from my local home repair supply center. They cost me $5 each.

I drilled holes in the bottom of one.

Then I used some left-over screening to cover the bottom of it.

The big deal was adding a spout to the bottom of the 2nd barrel.  With a great deal of advice from my FIL plumber, I put a faucet into the 2nd barrel to drain the liquid. 

I drew a circle around the faucet that I intended to use. 

Then....because I didn't have a 3/4-inch drill bit, I drilled small holes and then used the bit to ream out the edge of the remaining bits...until the faucet/spigot fit.

Once it fit, I used a waterproof, silicone sealant to seal off the spigot.  I also used the sealant on the screw holes that held the spigot in place.  Once it was in, I also used the sealant on the inside openings to seal them off.

24 hours later... the bokashi composter was ready to use.

I took all the bags I had stashed in the freezer out.  I alternated each gallon bag with a handful of the Bokashi mixture.

 When I was done, with the 8 bags, this is what it looked like.

Then...because Bokashi is an anerobic process (ie, needs to have no oxygen), I put a kitchen trash bag over top.

 Then I carefully filled the top of the bag with water....creating a seal over the to-be-composted waste.

And lastly, I placed the lid over the whole thing.

Will update in a few weeks when the composting portion of the hopeful experiment is completed.