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Adventures in Organic Gardening

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Garden Maintenance

Managing Your Homestead While Traveling

March 6, 2019 by Cathi Leave a Comment

As I write this I am sitting in a beautiful hotel lobby in Mexico waiting for a group I am escorting to come check out and head home. My best friend of 40 years is arriving later today and we will spend three days together catching up and relaxing.

At home we are having what I hope is the last freeze of the season. I have many seedlings under lights as well as my 5 hens out on the pasture. I have two bee hives enduring the winter and I have a batch of kombucha fermenting in the pantry. Now, I love my family dearly and they lovingly tolerate what many would consider my strange hobbies. They don’t have the same enthusiasm for them that I do. I don’t generally ask them for help when I go out of town except in very limited circumstances.

So what happens when I go out of town? My husband and I have owned Legacy Travel since 1989 so we travel more than the average person. A couple of weeks from now we are on a cruise, later this year we are in Italy, another time this year we go to Africa for a safari. We are both elite travelers with our hometown airline. We travel ALOT.

So what happens with the bees, the chickens, the seedlings, the kombucha SCOBY and the garden when I travel?

You’ve heard the saying “It takes a village to raise a child”? Well, it also takes a village to keep my operation running. I have managed to knit together the help required to keep things humming while I’m out of town. Of course, I also try to plan when I plant and start seeds around when I’ll be home, but that isn’t always possible.

Here’s my team at the moment:

I have a friend who loves to take care of my chickens when I’m out of town. This requires driving out to the pasture twice per day every day as well as worrying about them when they manage to escape their fencing. If I’m gone for more than a few days, I have a young lady who is a local FFA officer who I pay to take care of them.

Then for my seedlings, If I’m just gone a night or two, my husband will water my seedlings. For longer trips, I have hired a middle school girl who lives right across the street from me. I gave her a garage door opener so she could get in and water the seedlings. I showed her what to do and put signs on each tray to remind her of the requirements of each one.

As the season continues, I suspect that I can show her how to harvest things, check to see if something needs additional watering, etc.

All of this to say, “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Perhaps you have a more willing interested family than I do. If you look around, I’m betting there are solutions. Like everything gardening related, if you take the attitude “I know there is a solution here…what is it?” the solution will eventually become known. Gardening is pretty much a series of solving one problem after another. This is just another one waiting for your ingenuity!

Filed Under: Garden Maintenance

Gardening In A Closed Loop

January 3, 2019 by Cathi Leave a Comment

Sometimes when people start gardening they have the foolhardy idea that they will save money on food. If they stick it out a couple of years they quickly realize the error of that idea.

Nonetheless, both for economy’s sake as well as that of sustainability, I do try to make use of things that are readily available at home as much as possible in the garden.

Here are some of the things available to me that I use in the garden.

Grass Clippings: I don’t use chemical fertilizers or weed killers in the back yard. I have my yard man save all of the grass clippings that come from my backyard. They build up in a pile in my garden. I use them for mulching, composting or at the very least they don’t end up in the landfill.

Leaves: I live in a new subdivision so we don’t have any large trees. My yard man brings me as many bags of leaves that I can use. This year I made wire cages so that I can fill them with leaves and make leaf mold. I also use the newly shredded leaves for mulch.

Egg Shells: I save and dry the shells from the eggs I eat. I crush them up and add them into the worm bin as well as the garden beds when I turn them over in between seasons.

Table Scraps: Non citrus uncooked fruit and vegetable scraps are added into my worm bin. If you haven’t looked into vermicomposting, you should. Worms work hard to make fantastic organic fertilizer.

Fire Pit Ash: Wood ash adds potassium to the garden soil.

Cardboard Boxes: Several layers of cardboard underneath a new garden bed will both keep grass from growing through and attract earthworms into the raised bed soil. (Finally, a justification for more Amazon orders!)

Shredded Paper: That shredder at the office can be a goldmine for you! If you have a worm bin, that shredded paper can be soaked in water and used along with those table scraps to make beautiful fertilizer.

Rainwater: If you don’t have a rain barrel or two, you’re missing out. Captured rainwater doesn’t have chloramine like your municipal water probably does. Chloramine isn’t friendly to microorganisms, so the more you can water with untreated water, the healthier your soil is likely to be.

Garden Waste: For instance, this was the first year I grew califlower. I pulled the plants after I harvested the califlower. I pulled the plant out of the ground and fed it to the chickens. (And, I’ve learned, after the chickens eat the leaves down to the stalk, if I bring it back to the house my dogs will enjoy the stalk!)

As much as possible I try to keep a closed loop between my house and my garden. Use what I already have to make my garden better and more productive.

Filed Under: Garden Maintenance

Garden Planning

December 30, 2018 by Cathi Leave a Comment

I have been feeling for a while that the next frontiers in gardening for me are record keeping and planning. I feel like better planning will allow me to make better use of the space I have to grow. Better record keeping will help me make better improvements year over year as I will more easily recognize wins and losses in the garden. What varieties worked well? How did things go when I plant earlier or later? Sure, over the years I remember as much as I can, but records will remind me of things that I would never remember.

The basic thing that has kept me from keeping good records in the past has been time. I haven’t had a good quick system for keeping track of what I did and when and how it did. Same thing about planning. I have played with various apps and websites, but haven’t been really happy with any of them.

I know myself well enough to know that if anything is too time consuming, I won’t do it. If I have time to dedicate to my garden, I want to actually be working my garden, not doing bookwork.

All difficulties aside, planning and record keeping are clearly the next frontier in my gardening adventure. So, I have to figure it out. Toward that end, I started thinking about what information I need out of a record keeping/planning system. I think basically I need to be able to look up either a specific crop or a given period of time to see what has happened in the past so that I can make decisions about what to do in the future.

So, I started with the best thing I could think of. A spreadsheet. I am a big fan of Google Drive because I want to be able to access information from anywhere.

On the first tab of the spreadsheet I made a plant list. I listed every crop I’ve grown or that I would like to grow. Then, based on the frost dates in my area, I’ve indicated the dates to sow indoors, or outdoors, and the how long it takes from planting to harvest.

Then on another tab, I’ve made a column of each planting area I have available to me. Then across the top, the first row indicates a date range. I made two week chunks. Column 1 is Jan 1, column 2 is Jan 15 and so forth. Then, informed by the dates on the first tab, I made an initial plan for the garden for the year. This chart tells me what plants will “live” in which areas of the garden throughout the year.

One of the rows is called “Seed Starting”. This row will tell me when different seeds need to be started.

Here is a link to my garden planning spreadsheet.

I’m thinking as the year goes on I’ll start a third tab where I will list which crop, variety, when it went in, how it did and when I pulled the plant.

I would love to hear how you do your record keeping!

Filed Under: Garden Journal, Garden Maintenance, Updates on My Gardens

Seven Reasons to Love Gardening

October 12, 2018 by Cathi Leave a Comment

Gardens make you more mindful. When you’re outside pulling weeds you can only go so fast. You can’t text, or Facebook or send an email. You can listen to a podcast though, which is great. :-).

Being outside tending to your garden on a regular basis also makes you more mindful of the seasons. Something I hear a lot is about how certain locations don’t have four seasons, or that a particular season is very short. Here in Texas, for instance, people are constantly saying that it goes from too hot to too cold in just a couple of days. It simply isn’t true. Most people go from inside their homes, to their cars to the mall or to their offices. The weather just isn’t in the top of their minds. So, the one time they go outside they notice the weather and they’ve missed an entire season. When you’re outside more regularly you really notice the difference in weather and the seasons.

Gardens teach you to appreciate your food more. If you ever begrudge the cost of organic produce, just try growing it. All of the sudden getting a zucchini before being overcome by squash vine borers seems like a minor miracle. Not only that, but seeing a perfect tomato, or berry, or leaf of chard is something you truly take the time to recognize and appreciate it.

Gardens make you move your body. When you garden, you spend time bending over working in the beds, carrying heavy bags of soil, moving throughout your garden, pulling on weeds and on and on and on. In most diet and exercise apps, gardening is even listed as an exercise that you can log and get calorie credit for.

Gardens allow you to be generous. When one of your crops are in season, especially if the crop doesn’t lend itself to being canned, frozen or otherwise preserved…or if you simply don’t have the time to preserve it… you can give away the excess to friends and neighbors. Many food pantries will take produce as well. So much of the food in pantries is packaged food, so the people who rely on them don’t get much that is fresh. What a treat.

Gardens are beautiful. I love staring at my garden. Gardens in general catch my eye. I’ve been known to swerve out of my lane when I first encounter a community garden I haven’t seen before. Gardens are just lovely to look at and spend time in.

Gardens allow for lifelong learning. There is always something to learn or improve on. You don’t have to look very far to see something new to try. Just when you think you know how to grow a tomato, you’ll have a season where there is a new pest or a new weather condition that sends you back to the books to research how that leaf looks or why something isn’t happening. I guess lifelong learning is another way to say that gardening keeps a person humble.

I know these reasons just barely scratch the surface of the reasons to love gardening. Why do you love gardening? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Filed Under: Garden Maintenance, Lessons From The Garden, Updates on My Gardens

Top Ten Garden Tips For A Busy Life

August 15, 2018 by Cathi Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago I was at a family reunion and my very own uncle was surprised to hear that I still work full time and travel extensively for work. My husband and I own a retail travel agency and we each are elite travelers with American who traveled at least 75,000 miles in a calendar year. I am on the road a lot.

He thought I all do was play with my bees, my chicken and my garden.  I suppose that’s what my life looks like to him via social media.  I immediately set him straight.  Some of the other people at the reunion were asking how I work so much and still do what I do outside of work.

Here are some tips to consider if you want to dabble in the various aspects of urban homesteading and maintain a very busy life.

Irrigation

Regular watering is time consuming and really must be done regularly to avoid stressing plants and impacting your crops. This is also a fairly easy thing to automate which frees you up for other activities or to be gone altogether. You can use drip hoses and timers, or you can install a fancy drip irrigation system. Either way, free yourself up from daily watering.

Mulch Mulch Mulch

Mulch is your friend that helps you three ways. To start with, mulch helps supress weeds. This saves time weeding. Also, it preserves moisture which saves time watering. (Or, if you have automated your watering, it at least saves water.) Finally, as it breaks down on top of the soil it provides nutrition to the soil. One of my favorite mulches is grass clippings. Grass clippings are a fantastic mulch and, best of all, FREE!

Mulching With Grass Clippings: Can I Use Grass Clippings As Mulch In My Garden

Let your standards go (a little).

I always want my garden beds to be weed and grass free. I want my chicken coop not to smell. I want to be on top of everything. The fact is, though, during seasons when I am out of town a lot something has to give. For instance, I was out of town starting August 3rd till the 12th. I cleaned the coop the day before I left and today is August 14th and I haven’t been able to clean it since I got home because it’s been raining. It is messier than usual, but I think most chickens live in much less clean environments. I’m not suggesting neglecting them on a long term basis, but missing one cleaning probably won’t hurt anything.

The same thing translates to other parts of your urban homestead. Your bees will probably survive if you don’t open up the hive every single week (although you may think YOU will die not checking on them!). Your garden will live (as long as your irrigation system is watering it) if you don’t pull the grass and weeds out for a week or so.

So, allow yourself to relax and live other parts of your life when you need to.

Large feeders.

My spoiled hens really prefer when I bring them freshly chopped herbs and flower petals from my yard to mix with their dried mealworms and chicken feed. However, the fact is that they are chickens and can certainly eat plain chicken feed. To that end, I do have a large poultry feeder underneath the coop in the run (protected from rain). If they have to, the girls have several days of feed available to them. Also, I have a five gallon waterer and now that the weather is cooling off that is an option also.

Likewise, I have several different sizes of syrup feeders for the bees. I’m not needing to use them at the moment since my bees got honeybound from me feeding them too much! 

Help

You probably have friends and/or neighbors who want to garden / homestead like you do. Let them try it temporarily while you’re gone! I have a dear sweet friend who has been lovingly taking care of my hens when I’ve been gone. I have also established the daughter of a friend who is in FFA (Future Farmers of America) who is experienced with livestock available to take care of the girls in the event my friend isn’t available. You may have a family member who can be trusted to do basic tasks that can’t wait for your return. Look for help.

Timing / Planning 

In a perfect world, I would have planted things like broccoli and brussels sprouts a couple of weeks ago. But, I was about to be gone for most of that two weeks, so I made the decision not to put in new plants or start seeds when I was about to be gone. Yes I sacrificed two weeks of growing time, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to take care of them like they would need.

It’s all about planning and knowing what you can do. (And what you can’t)

Accept that you won’t produce as much as if you were home all the time.

To everything there is a season. If you are in a phase of life when you are working a lot, or traveling a lot, it’s just a fact that your endeavors won’t be like they would be if you could devote all of your time to them. Your garden may not look like the photos in Mother Earth News and that’s just going to have to be okay. You do what you can, when you can.

Remember the goal

I assume you are gardening, or keeping chickens or bees, or whatever, because you enjoy it. It’s supposed to be fun. You probably live near a grocery store and you won’t starve if you don’t grow enough food. Remember, gardening is fun.

Don’t over plant

Northaven Gardens is my favorite local garden store. Usually when I go there, I’m there for something specific. It isn’t very close to my house, so I’m there for a specific purpose. But, I can’t help wandering around and seeing everything. To guard against overbuying, I always start out not getting a cart. So far, every time I have ended up getting a cart. Do as I say here though, and not as I do. If all you have time and space for are 6 broccoli plants, don’t buy 20. Remember you’re going to have to find time not only to get those plants in the ground, but also water, fertilize and harvest.

Go with nature.

There are things that grow well in your area. There are things that don’t. With lots of time and intervention, you may be able to coax other things into producing but if you are short on time, go with the sure things.

Basically, you have finite resources. Just like in all other areas of life, success with gardening within a busy life is a matter of planning and intentionality. You can do it!

Filed Under: Garden Maintenance

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Meet Cathi

I have what most people would consider strange hobbies. Even though I live in a suburb in an HOA, I have a large garden. I also have 18 chickens and an apiary with 10 bee hives.

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