Day 4 – New Year’s Eve!

Today is the last day of the year.  2011 has actually been an ok year!  It started off rough with one of my best friends being in a near fatal car accident.  Today she is back to work and looking good!  PTL!  My other BFF finished up Chemo at the end of last year and this year she has stayed healthy and is going back to her pre-cancer awesomeness!  All in all, it has been good.  Not to mention, I get to start my garden today!!!

Composting and planting!  You know how I feel about composting, but this wasn’t too bad!  I had about 4 days of kitchen scraps to put in. YAY!  I also got to use last year’s compost pile for my new plants today!  Gotta love payback.  It is like harvesting, only dirt and worms.  YAY WORMS!

All those veggies I bought yesterday went into the ground today.  Most in the front yard since my back yard is still the doggie bathroom.  Lettuce, onions & herbs all look good enough for the front flowerbeds.  I actually had enough lettuce plants that I took a couple over to the new neighbors for their yard.  They were excited!   I told them about our back yard plans and they can’t wait to see it.  You know what?  Me either! J  Baby steps…

Day 3 – Chickens and Education - 12/30/2011

Today was nursery day!  I hit up our local nursery, you know the one, expensive but the people there actually KNOW something?  That’s the one.  It was dead, so I had the garden expert all to myself for a long time.  He told me that my best bet for the back yard it so rototill the whole thing.  How the heck am I going to do that???  I have an email into my nephew begging for help.  It’s worth a shot.  Maybe if I just dig up a little bit each day with a shovel, that will work.  Where there is a will, there is a way! 

I am scrapping the planter box idea.  It is WAY too expensive.  My plants will just have to fight with the Bermuda grass that I am sure will try to take over again.  It will be a battle, but with enough diligence, I am sure we can beat it!  My secret weapon may be the chickens! 

Chickens, chickens, chickens…I looked at a cool website for chickens. Www.mypetchicken.com  There are so many cool looking breeds!  Chickens eat bugs and snails too.  I got the kids oohing and ahhing over the different pictures and the thought of BLUE EGGS!  They started to get excited about the thought of chickens.  Bryan was listening and started to hear about all of the benefits of having chickens.  He is starting to come around and be interested too!  WHOOT!  Now, if only we can find a cheap chicken coop!  It sounds expensive to build one.  With the expense of putting in a garden, this may be too much.  This is just more to figure out.

Back to the nursery: I did buy some plants!  I bought a 6 pack salad mix – I am sure Bryan will call them weeds J, regular lettuce, onions, cilantro, parsley and carrot seeds for those awesome Kaleidoscope Carrot mix!  Brendan is excited to help me plant those!  The nursery didn’t have the blue potatoes.  I need to keep looking.  I really don’t want to spend $16 for 10 spuds.  I don’t have a place for 10 plants!  Tomorrow is planting day!  Bring it on!

Day 2 – Dreamin’ in Color 12/29/2011

Tonight I researched our growing region and got planting dates in my calendar for seeds.  After I got everything imputed, I realized that it the USDA isn't as reliable as Sunset, for our area. <sigh>  I looked up the Sunset's description of our area and we are in zone 14, however there is no info online about any zone over 10!  Ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I guess I am going with the USDA.  It should be fine.  I think that where we live, we can plant most anything any time and it will grow.  This will only be my second venture into seed growing.  I am excited to get started soon with this spring's seedlings.

I went onto Burpee's website and found all sorts of fun veggies in different colors!  Blue potatoes!  Purple carrots!  It is going to be fun to have different colors on our table this year.  Canning should be fun too!  I am really excited. 

I also showed Bryan pictures of cute little chicks.  I told him that my friend had chicks hatch in her classroom.  What a great thing to teach the kids!  We should do that! :)  He laughed and said “That's a great idea!  Then you would have your little chicks in your garden to lay eggs!  I see what you are doing.” lol  I will wear him down.  I can see the cracks forming.

Day 1 – Getting Started 12/28/2011

Today I cleared out the dead Basil in the front yard.  I also trimed up some of the other plants and cleaned out the garden area.  The peppers are still alive and have fruit on them so I didn't pick them.  They appear to still be ripening, so I guess they stay for now.  My bell pepper has lost most of its leaves, poor thing.  It is the tallest and so the sheet I put out at night when there is going to be a frost, hurts that plant the most.  Oh well.  It seems to be surviving so far. 

I also timed up the pomegranate tree in the back.  Then it was time to compost!  UGH!  I have a real love/hate relationship with composting.  I love the fact that I am feeding the earth and taking ok soil and making it great!  My plants grow alright, but I never see worms or any sign of life.  Now that I am using that area for composting, it is like digging for treasure!  I love seeing worms squirming out of my way as I dig.  Right now though it is hard.  You see, I just started composting in a new area in my garden.  It is quite big.  When I dug up this past summer's tomato plants, I just dug the garden up and put them back into the earth.  I originally hoped that it would be composted by spring, then I would plant there again.  I am thinking now though, that I will wait one year and really work that soil with compost.   Today though,  it all had to be dug up again for the new addition.  This is the part that I do not like!  I like digging for a little while, but I had to dig a lot and it gets to where it hurts.  The tomatoes that I buried a few weeks ago are still green and intact.  As I dug, the shovel would get snared on vines as I pulled, pushed and lifted.  I had to chop and dig and lift and haul...  I got a lot done and I think that it will probably all break down much faster now.  I look forward to seeing the results there that I see in last year's compost pile.  For now though, it is a lot of work. 

After trimming everything up and composting it all, I took stock of what I have.  I measured out my back yard, got out the graph paper and started laying it all out.  I have enough space to build four 5' x 8' planter boxes.   That will fit a lot of plants!  The downside, as I looked stuff up online, is that all of those boxes have to be filled with soil.  That get's expensive.  I may be planting directly in the earth this year.  That means tearing up the grass that is already there.  The grass will probably be a constant problem in the garden.  I will have to really look at stuff and figure out the best way to do this.  We will see....

The Beginning

            I have never been much of a gardener.  How is that for an opening about my farm? Lol  I seriously haven't been.  I grew up in a small town full of orchards and fields.  We live in California and when I was a kid, our area produced the best produce in the world.  Sunkist dried their prunes at a factory two buildings down from my house!  The produce in the stores was picked that morning.  We would stop at fruit stands by the orchards and fields for fresh fruit.  Nothing tasted better.  At our own house, we had peach trees, which usually got sick.  We did get a few peaches from them (which were amazing) but it was never a bumper crop.  My parents were city folks.  Not farmers.

            My best friend growing up lived in the country.  I was in town and she lived in a more rural area on two acres of land.  I would go out there and play for hours on end.  There were cows to feed, trees to climb and fields of weeds to be crawled through.  If we were really lucky, we would play with someone who had a horse and go ride!  My friend's mom had a garden.  I remember weeding it and not enjoying that at all.  I did like the fresh fruit though.  I much preferred doing stuff with the animals over gardening.  I will never forget the day that their cow was slaughtered.  I was over for a play date and the butchers came out to do their thing.  We were inside for the killing, but went straight out for the rest.  That night we had steak for dinner.  Surprisingly, I was fascinated by the whole experience!  I am a big time animal lover, but I was ok with this. Humm...

            Fast forward 30 years and I am a mom living in the big city now.  My husband is a self-proclaimed computer geek.  He works as a project manager for a large internet company.  You have a problem with your computer and he is the one you would call.  If there is yard work to be done or a fence to be fixed he could probably find the number of a great contractor for you! Lol  It just isn't his thing. 

            Eight years back we bought the house we are in now.  It is a little 4 bedroom 2 bath 1400sqare foot home on a small lot in a neighborhood.  When we moved in, the previous owner had a garden in the back yard with the white picket fence with a climbing rose draping over it.  It was so cute!  There were tomato plants in the garden which were in peak season!  YUM!  It was so nice.  I remember thinking “well that was nice.  It won't happen again, but that was nice.”  The next year I think I actually put some tomato plants in the ground where the others had been, just to see what would happen.  We got tomatoes!  Who knew it could be so easy!  I started to get hooked.

            Today that little garden works hard.  It has tomatoes in it every year!  I gave it a year off about 5 years ago.  We were doing a remodel anyway, and I knew that the ground probably needed a break.  Other than that, it has been faithfully producing for us and I love it!  We have tried several different plants from corn to pumpkins and artichokes.  They all do amazing in my little tiny garden.

            Now though, I want more.  Isn't that always how it is?  In looking for ways to save money and eat healthier, I want to make more of my own food and I want to grow more of my own vegetables!  This past year I expanded into my front yard flower beds a bit.  I figure that I am paying top dollar for this land, it had better be working for me!  Gradually, all of my flowers are getting dug up and replaced by something edible.  It is nice in the summer and fall, but really, it isn't enough to carry us through the year. 

     Recently, I started tossing the idea around, of moving up to the local mountains on a couple of acres of land.  We can have a large garden, an orchard, a milk cow, chickens, goats.... Now imagine, my poor computer geek hubby at the end of a long day in the office coming home to a wife talking about moving and buying a cow!  You can guess how well that went over. Lol  He likes the idea of saving money.  He LOVES my home cooked from scratch meals.  HOWEVER, the idea of increasing his commute, buying property that he is sure we can't afford and or building on said property, and throwing chickens into the mix is just not something that he can wrap his brain around.  Now you know, I don't give up easy.  If it is something that I really want, and I stick with really wanting it for a LONG time...he might just come around.  I gotta give him time to see that this could be awesome. 

   In the meantime, here I am, in the big city on my little lot in my little house.  What am I to do?  Well, I can wish and dream and pine for my mountain farm, or I can make it happen right here right now.  Why not?  I have land.  It isn't much, but it is mine.  I can use what I have!  My back yard, minus the garden is 30x15.  The kids don't play in it, I don't use it.  It has become the domain for the dogs.  Not that they play in it, mind you.  No.  Really it is just their bathroom.  Seriously, I wish I had a bathroom that big!  It is being taken away this year!  I am putting a nice white picket fence around all but a 10x3 strip.  My garden is expanding!  I am going to plant enough food to last us all year!  I will can and freeze what we don't use right away.  And who says I can't have a couple of hens back there? (ok, besides my husband who is going to be hen pecked until he gives in! Lol)  I am know there is a law about roosters and I am pretty sure a cow and goat would not go over too well with the neighbors, but hens are quiet and will take care of pests in the garden!  They also produce great fertilizer and lay eggs!  Yep, I think a couple of hens might be just the thing this summer. 

            So that is me and this is my dream.  I still hope to build my house in the mountain top and have a cow so that I can make my own cheese and butter etc.  I still want my orchard so that I can have fresh fruit 12 months a year.  I want an olive tree so that I can make my own olive oil.  All of those things are still on the list.  For now though, I get to practice with my small area.  For now, I get to prove that I can do it and stick with it.  I can prove it not only to my amazing hubby, but to myself.  I can also see about getting the kids out and away from their computers long enough to help me build and work the land a bit.  This is my experiment.  Let's get started!