Free Materials + Imagination and Sweat = Fun and Food

Starting a new raised bed is easy with some cardboard over the grass and then pile soil on top. We got the soil free off Craiglist!

The boards were free too, laying around the yard when we moved here. We pounded short 2x4 stakes in the ground at the corners and then screwed the boards to them.

I back filled the box with the soil and then planted it with the tomato and cuke starts from the greenhouse. On the ends I planted a couple of squash plants, figuring that those and the cukes can cascade over the sides of the box as they grow.

These little boxes were another free Craiglist find from last year, filled with our free soil and then the bamboo stakes were found on the side of the road and make great places for the peas to climb!

This little bed is going well with peas and some yellow bush beans on the outside of the circle. They're climbing on some bamboo poles we got off...you guessed it, Craigslist and the rocks came from our neighbour accross the street who gave us several wheelbarrow loads of black, gooey soil dug from his ditch. I considered it black gold and my good husband brought it all back, rocks and all, for our gardening use.

All of our neighbours are great, though I must admit I do like a little privacy in the garden. We planted the hedge last year and now as it grows I am making more trellis contraptions from bamboo. This pot will have giant scarlet runner beans and in the background is a trellis I made for the hops to climb on.

These tomatoes are quite happy with the south western exposure and the lettuce goes along for the ride. Free bricks from Craigslist surrounding... Behind is the patio screen we built in the fall and next will be a planter on the ground in front of it, filled with climbing cucumbers and some nasturtiums I think. Gardening is cheap entertainment for me and we get food as a bonus. Hope you get a little inspiration from seeing what can be done with a little dirt and some imagination. Have fun!

Rainy Day In The Garden

Someone saw my garden the other day and she said "It looks so organized!" I laughed because really, besides my little plan of where I'd like to see things, the garden feels like a totally creative process and pretty adhoc. See the grass clippings I scrounged from our kind neighbour accross the road, the day she was mowing the lawn. I like to put this between the rows to keep weeds down and put nitrogen back into the soil.. When it gets hot I like to surround the plants with grass clippings too, to keep the soil moist. See my potato cage in the background by the compost bin.

This whole area was gravel and thanks to a couple of truckloads of woodchips, lots and lots of raking and then some soil, rocks, free bricks from Craiglist and just some seeds, trust, sunshine and water. It's turning into a nice little oasis with St. Francis presiding over the herb garden.

Just a few rainy day garden photos. It's great to see things coming up, now that all the hard work is done for a while. The potatoes are doing what they're supposed to in their cage, getting gradually backfilled as they send out shoots, till the whole thing is full of a million potatoes. The rest of things are growing well, with the sun we've been having and days like this are also welcome! I have some different stuff like okra and eggplants growing in the greenhouse, where they'll stay all summer because it's hot in there!

Self Sufficient Salad

 I made a beautiful salad this morning...

Arugula from the greenhouse, chives from the garden, sunflower sprouts from the window sill and eggs from the backyard flock. Awesome tasty....

I'd cut the greenhouse arugula yesterday and the sprouts had been growing on the kitchen window sill for the past week or so. I boiled the eggs last night, intending to eat them sometime today...So I went outside, got some chives, put it all together and sat down to eat, then said..."Wait a darn minute! This is amazing!!! I have to at least take a photo or two and just marvel at it all and give thanks. Thank you earth, chickens, rain, sun and birds and bees for all of the miracles in the food we eat.

 Life should never be taken for granted.

Creating Community with Kitchen Scraps

We made this little place for people to sit and rest while they're out walking.

I thought I'd see if people would drop in their kitchen scraps for the chickens....Why not I say!One of our neighbours, my new friend Jeanine left these jars of crushed eggshells for the garden this morning! She'd been saving them for years and they are so good for the soil.

Every day is like Christmas because I go outside and look in the bin to find kitchen scraps that people kindly leave when they walk by. My good friends all know they can bring me a load of scraps any time and I will grin from ear to ear! Look at the happy chickens. What I love most is how a little thing like the chicken scrap bin in it's own way helps to create community and a shared sense of doing something good for the planet. Because of the chickens and the scraps and the garden we know almost everyone on our street by name and that is a wonderful thing! 

Seattle Slug Salvation!

Thank you Starbucks for the coffee grounds that stopped the evil slug invasion and nourish my garden <3

Safe and happy romaine lettuce!

Look at my poor savoy cabbage baby..

I feel today that I have triumphed over evil! The evil slug that is....I've seen slugs before but never like these ones here in Seattle. I've gardened in some of the wettest and grayest places, like Quadra Island, battling deer, squirrels and bunnies and still, the slugs here are the most relentless predators I've ever come accross. A week ago I planted out tender, greenhouse raised savoy cabbage and romaine lettuce seedlings and they are decimated by slugs, despite the plastic collars I put up around them for protection. The slugs just slimed their way over the top and came inside for a midnight snack! The other day I tried cucumber slices put around on tin foil and the slugs loved that, but also my plants.

So, you can imagine my jubilation this morning at seeing the last two protected romaine seedlings standing there, unscathed, surrounded by a ring of STARBUCKS ESPRESSO GROUNDS! Yes, you heard it right. I am an inveterate scrounger and so when I go to Starbucks I always ask for their left over coffee grounds to put on my compost pile to add tilth and nitrogen. Waste not want not eh? But then I read on an obscure post online that coffee grounds are toxic to slugs and Voila! Slug problem gone! I'm stoked. Think I'll go have a Venti espresso and celebrate!

Greens and Happy Salad

This December I planted some arugula, rainbow chard and mustard greens in our little cold frame/greenhouse we'd just built. It took a while for things to come up and they looked pretty spindly with not much light and only the chicken manure planted under them to keep warm but slowly the green emerged, much to my delight! I watered just once in a while and used fish fertilizer, wanting to pamper the baby plants as much as possible. Once the sun started shining for days at a time, the leaves appeared, large and green and now look! The salad is a decadent mix of baby arugula and sunflower sprouts with a bit of carrot and olive garnish. Sinan made some sprouted chick pea humus and stir fried the mustard greens and chard with some garlic and ginger to put on rice. Heaven. It is my wish for everyone to grow a little something to eat. It connects us all.

A Million Potatoes the Easy Way!

This was one of my compost piles where I put leaves, grass clippings, pine cones and the chicken droppings I clean out of the coop. It's a nice, fertile place for potatoes to grow! So I moved the pile of compost and laid down a couple handfulls of some exotic purple, red and banana potatoes with eyes growing on them. The next part is the key and will save you a lot of digging. Using a piece of fencing wire made into a round cage, I just set this on top of the pile of potatoes, which I've lightly covered with compost. I used some bamboo poles, gleaned from neighbours who were cutting a bunch down and didn't want to deal with it and it is a great find for me I'll tell you...Anyhow, I just used three skinny poles, stuck into the ground, to hold the wire cage from tipping over and voila! Instant potato garden! The pile of compost I have reserved to gradually pile on top of the growing potato plants as they emerge. By the end of summer it'll be filled to the top and flowering potatoes will be shooting out everywhere! Be sure to keep it watered but other than that, when the flowers die off, tip the whole thing over and have a million potatoes to enjoy!