Bamboo Teepee Meets Fibonacci

At the end of last week, the gusty winds blew over our teepee. The Man decided that I needed the help of concrete (while he was installing fence posts), and we erected one lone bamboo pole to serve as a cornerstone of sorts for the boys' future teepee. My best friend, Bear, was over, and in her great design wisdom suggested we do a Fibonacci teepee. A whuh? I hadn't heard of that concept since high school math, or was it Latin class... It involved spirals. I remember there being a golden rectangle involved as well.

The new construction is a quarter-teepee or a "teebonacci" with the poles attached around the vertical in a spiral. The angle of the teebonacci is set so that the shading will be done from morning until the early afternoon, and the vines will benefit from the sun during those times as well. This leaves two open sides, one for the entrance and one so they can spy on the street from behind the fence once the pickets are installed.

I dug up the old pathway and laid the bricks out to give them a little patio to play on. Under the old pathway, fire ants had already staked out their territory, so next on my agenda is "treating fire ants in the vegetable garden." With the garden gongs relocated to the teebonacci and branches woven through the bamboo, this hut already has some play-appeal even without the greenery.

10 Weeks of Vegetable Gardening: Week 5

Each Friday I am posting a weekly guide for prepping your home vegetable garden. In Raleigh, the last killing frost date is April 11 (on average, give or take a week), so my first weekend for planting (summer crops) outdoors is April 9.

This week we remember our pollinators. I would write out a beautiful article for you on bees, but alas, that has been done here. Please check it out.

To summarize:
Don’t use pesticides
Use local native plants (avoid hybrids)
Chose several colors of flowers
Plant flowers in clumps
Include flowers of different shapes
Have a diversity of plants flowering all season
Plant where bees will visit

From Beegreen Gardens, here is a list of native bee plants for North Carolina:
Asclepias tuberosa - Butterfly Weed
Baptisia australis - False Indigo
Bignonia capreolata - Crossvine
Callirhoe involucrata - Poppy Mallow
Campsis radicans - Trumpet Vine
Chasmanthium latifolium - River Oats
Chrysoganum virginianum - Green and Gold
Echinaceae purpurea - Purple Coneflower
Iris cristata - Crested Iris
Lobelia cardinalis - Cardinal flower
Lobelia siphilitica - Great Blue Lobelia
Lonicera sempervirens - Coral Honeysuckle
Penstemon digitalis - Beardtongue
Physostegia virginiana - Obedient Plant
Rudbeckia fulgida - Black-eyed Susan
Salvia lyrata - Lyre-Leaved Sage
Solidago canadensis - Goldenrod
Tiarella cordifolia - Foamflower

This weekend I am planting a butterfly garden mix that I found at Costco, which only has one from the list above, but does meet the suggestions of various shapes, sizes and colors. I guess that gives me an excuse to hit up the plant nurseries!

Mini Herb Pail

I have a terrible habit of buying dollar pails in the entrance of Target. I always claim that I buy them so the Man-child can keep his toys in them, but now we have an assortment of little pails that we use to lazily stick random writing utensils, buttons, and screws that we find lying around the house. They have become clutter pails.

Anything with a flat surface, a hook, a knob, or a cavity serves as a clutter magnet in our house. In our kitchen bay window, we have a pub table from the flea market and a storage entry bench with hooks that we relocated from another room to make space for the Christmas tree. It now serves as extra seating for the table and the catch-all for coats and scarves. The pub table is covered with craft projects and plants.

This morning I met up with a friend at Logan's and purchased some Greek oregano. I grow it outdoors but cut it back in the fall, and it has yet to sprout for the spring. I desperately searched the house for something creative to put it in until spring planting, until I decided to dump out the contents of one of the many clutter pails. Now it is an herb pail! Because the pub table didn't need one more plant sitting on it, I moved the winter coats to the hall closet, and now the herb pail hangs out of reach of the Baby's hands but easily accessible to the cook (me) and the waterer (the Man-child).

Unconventional Gardening Pots

When it comes to gardening, I have a very orderly and structured side and a bit of a wilder more imaginative side. Call it my Garden-Superego and Id. In planning out our new permanent space, the Man and I went for an garden styled after the herb garden at the Historic Oak View County park, with rectangular boxes and walkways and a picket fence. While he would probably like me to keep things traditional (he is the most mellow type A person I have met), I've already sprung up the framework for a teepee and found some metal garden decorations at the flea market. I don't want the garden to be junky, but I want friends and family to enter the space and be able to set aside reality and catch themselves daydreaming. As I started searching for ideas for projects to do with the kids I was led down the path of reusing old things around the house for garden decor and containers. Here are some of the ones that captured my imagination.

This one from Apartment Therapy makes me wish I were a tea drinker. Just think of all the fun container gardens you could do with teapots, cups and these awesome Twinings tins.

from Apartment Therapy

Anyone have an old bed frame? This would be fun for growing vining vegetables on!

from Tennessee Home and Farm

I'm sure some of you wish you could have this bike for your own city transportation.

from CatCalls Flickr Photostream

These boots were made from growing, and that's just what they'll do!

from spacecadet's flickr photostream

Personally I LOVE the typewriter planter! Besserina has a tutorial too, just click on the pic.

from Besserina

I'm hoping that in the herb sections of the garden, where I don't have to rotate crops, I can do some artistic installations as whimsical as these. What have you seen? Do you have any great ideas of your own? Send me pictures!

This post is comprised entirely of images I found via Google. Click on the images for links to the sources.

Garden Gongs

A while back my friend Stacy posted about a "banging wall" that her kids had a blast playing with. The idea came from SouleMama, whose impressive wall looks like this:

My garden gongs were inspired by the "banging wall" and the awesome gong at Crazy Fire Mongolian Grill. What kid shouldn't have a gong to announce his arrival at his garden?

We had some old pvc pipe from last summer's attempt at building a support cage for the tomato plants. I drove two pipes into the ground and used connector pieces for a lateral which made a simple rectangular frame. I had old bamboo poles that I tied around the verticals to give the pipes a more naturalized feel, but I ran out of bamboo halfway around the pipes.

Earlier in the day I had swung by a thrift store and found two metal pans with holes (I'm not sure what the proper name for those types of pans are, because I am no kitchen queen), and I strung them up on the frame with twine.

Given a metal spade, the Man-child went to town on them. After hurling the metal spade just past my head, he was then given a plastic trowel to do his gonging, thus reinforcing my previous post about the advantages of kid-safe garden tools.

Here the Baby models the fancy new brick path through the kid garden. I think I need to tie up some gongs at his height. That's the beauty of this project - it can evolve over time!

10 Weeks of Vegetable Gardening: Week 4

Each Friday I am posting a weekly guide for prepping your home vegetable garden. In Raleigh, the last killing frost date is April 11 (on average, give or take a week), so my first weekend for planting outdoors is April 9.

Do you have a cold frame? Joe built me one last year so I could move my plants outside and our family could once again eat in our dining room. A cold frame isn’t essential, but it does have several advantages. Cold frames allow you to warmly store plants outdoors by letting in the sun and trapping the heat while it is still too cold to put them in the ground. If you have a larger garden and start most your plants from seeds, keeping all the sprouts indoors can be impractical. The cold frams can also help gently acclimate sprouts to the cooler outdoor temperatures, a process called “hardening off”. A cold frame can be as simple or as fancy as you like. We made ours out of reclaimed materials, which gave me the warm greenies.

If you already have a cold frame or don’t need one, take the time this weekend to catch up on getting your garden in shape. We still have a fence to build, soil to prep (rocks to remove) and onion sets to plant!

Tasks:

• Do a little internet search on “cold frames” and check out all the fun designs out there.
• Hit up the flea market or the Habitat ReStore to get materials for your box. Habitat typically carries lumber and windows.
• Get handy and build your box… or pull out that plastic card and take a gander to the Gardner Supply Store.
• Find a sunny spot for the location of your cold frame that is protected from the wind. This can be against your house or it can be placed directly inside a garden box.
• Once your sprouts have their first set or two of true leaves, relocated them to the box and make sure they have something to filter the light for the first several days as their leaves will be prone to burning.
• This week you can start the following indoors: Kale, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Collards, Lettuce, Watermelon.

our cold frame

Soda Bottle Garden

This is a great little recycling project I've seen variations of in many gardening blogs. I decided to keep it as simple as possible so I could involve the Man-child who just turned three. These teaches about reusing materials and caring for plants.

How to make a soda bottle garden:

You will need plastic bottles from your recycling bin, scissors, two rocks big enough to stop up the bottle opening, potting soil, plants, water, and four pipe cleaners or twine.

Kid task: remove the cap and rinse out the bottle.

Parent task: cut the bottle in half just below the label. The top of the bottle should be flipped upside down and nest in the bottom half. If you cut too far below the label, the top may be tippy.

Kid task: Place a stone in the bottle to block the opening and fill the bottle with potting soil leaving about two inches from the rim.

Parent task: Make a little divot in the soil and help the kid place the plant in, adding more soil around the base and gently pressing the soil.

Kid task: Water!

I found that the bottom of the deck railing was a great place to attach the bottles to with pipe cleaners because they gave him easy access for observation and watering. Notice that I bribed him with an Oreo to pose for this picture.

I brought them back inside because our nights are too cold for basil, and I discovered they were a little top heavy. A couple more rocks in the bottom did the trick!

This was a fun project for preschoolers, and although he was distracted by his life jacket buckles, he gave it his full attention once the plants became part of the fun. He told me his favorite part was the plants and the part he didn't like was when I told him he couldn't put his jade in one of these. Older kids could do more complex projects by involving various types of containers and building a frame to attach them too.

Set for Success

I've found that when if comes to having successful playtime with the boys (and the Man), it is important not to set them up for failure. In the realm of gardening, this means supplying them with the proper tools and gear. For instance, the picture on the left shows the Man-child with the Man's shovel. It is clearly too heavy, and he was whining. The picture on the right shows him with a more size-appropriate tool.



Purchasing kids' tools isn't necessary. Inevitably, whatever tool you are using is eventually going to be the one they demand. However, garden centers do make great plastic hand tools that are less likely to cause damage in the case they are used to bop another kid on the head or make their way indoors. When I can keep it all together, I store the shovel and rake in a bucket that can also be taken to the playground.



These are cute sets I found on Amazon by Midwest Quality Gloves. Similar styles are usually available at Lowes in the glove and tool section. I purchased a shovel and rake with matching bucket on wheels (sans cartoon characters) at Walmart several years back. Personally, I like having kid tools and adult tools because it helps teach responsibility and my own tools are less likely to go missing.

We also make sure that the Man-child's feet are well protected. There have been several encounters with fire ants, so now we have him wear close-toed shoes in the garden. It definitely puts a damper on running barefoot and free, but if you have a fun pair of work boots like his cheery yellow galoshes from Old Navy, you may not get too many protests.

Here We Go!

Well, here it is, and here they are. This is the spot of my future garden and these are my three boys, my loves. There is the Man, the Man-child, and the Baby.

Gardening is something we do as a family. It preoccupies our weekends and ravages our dining room during the winter and early spring. We all get dirty. The Man does the heavy lifting, I do the planting weeding, the Man-child runs around runs around making sure everything is in order, and the Baby peeks out over the pack-N-play wishing he could walk already. I've long dreamed of simple country living, but we live in a suburban-like neighborhood in the center of a growing city, so we are slicing out a piece of the country for ourselves.

10 Weeks of Vegetable Gardening: Week 3

Each Friday I am posting a weekly guide for prepping your home vegetable garden. In Raleigh, the last killing frost date is April 11 (on average, give or take a week), so my first weekend for planting outdoors is April 9.

I have a tendency to do before planning and end up with far more things to plant than there is space for. However, if you are willing to put in a little time and thought, there is no need to waste seed and materials. Go out and measure the size of your garden and use this sample chart to help you determine how many plants to include and the amount of space each will take.

Summer Crops (Plant after first frost)

The next step is to sketch out your garden and plan where things will go. I prefer to use a 1ft grid. I take into consideration the path the sun makes across the sky, the height of plants, shade, where I have planted things before (rotation is important with tomatoes in particular), which plants compete with each other or can serve as companions. I love using this article on Wikipedia as a guide.

This past weekend I worked on my plan. I like to get a little crazy each summer by trying something experimental. One summer I did a "Pillar of Peppers" which completely flopped, and last summer I tried a mini field of corn with pole beans growing up them. That flopped too. This summer I am trying a "Wampanoag Garden" which I came across while researching companion plants.

Now it is your turn!

Tasks:

• Make your own chart with the veggies you want to include.
• Determine how many of each you want to plant. For guidelines on how many plants are required to feed a person per year, check out “Home Vegetable Gardening” by NCCES.
• Determine if your plans exceed your capacity. If so, cut back on the plants, make plans to expand, or consider growing vertically and other intensive growing methods. Viney plants such as cantaloupe, pumpkin and watermelon can be allowed to sprawl outside a raised bed, so they won’t necessarily take up all that space in the garden if you train them properly.
• Sketch your beds and color in potential locations for the plants.
• The following seeds may be started indoors: dill, eggplant, sage, spinach, swiss chard, and tomatoes.

10 Weeks of Vegetable Gardening: Week 2

Each Friday I will be posting a weekly guide for prepping your home vegetable garden. In Raleigh, the last killing frost date is April 11 (on average, give or take a week), so my first weekend for planting outdoors is April 9.

It has been a fickle weather week in Raleigh and we are supposed to have rain today and Saturday morning, so I debated switching weeks on you. However, Joe and I will be out in the dirt since we just picked up a band new tiller, so dirt is what I give to you!

This week is about soil preparation. If you didn’t kill off the weeds or add compost back in the fall, or if like us, you are digging up an entirely new garden, you have your work cut out for you. There are tons of methods to preparing the soil, and some of those resources are listed below along with places you can find supplies locally. I prefer to use Black Kow and Black Chicken Compost and apply them early enough to give the chicken compost time to cool. I also add plenty of peat moss to my raised beds. This link lays out exactly what and how much I use in my garden (I am not paid to endorse any brands, I'm just a gal with preferences): "Preparing Soil in Raised Beds".

Most store bought fertilizers add only three nutrients: N,P,K or nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. In reality, your plants need much more than these three and need different amounts at different times during the growing cycle. The following are just several nutrients your plants need. I've included some organic and natural sources of these.

• Nitrogen - fish meal, blood meal, composted manure (only use composted manure, never fresh),shellfish fertilizer, coffee grounds (be careful about acidity)
• Phosphorus - bone meal, shellfish fertilizer
• Potassium - green sand, shellfish fertilizer, wood ash, kelp meal
• Calcium - egg shells, shellfish fertilizer, lime (not the fruit)
• Magnesium - green sand, epsom salt
• Iron - green sand
• Zinc - zinc sulfate
• Copper - copper sulfate

Of course, any plant nursery will be more than happy to direct you to the fertilizers that meet your needs if you let them know what you are growing and what your soil is deficient in. Check this Organic Fertilizer Guide for more information.

If your beds are ready the following can be planted in the ground now: asparagus, cabbage, onion sets or plants, peas, radishes, rutabagas and turnips. Personally, I am quitting peas (anyone want my seed?) and will be waiting another week or two before planting outdoors to give my soil time to rest. Besides, the weather forecast shows snow next week!

Tasks:

• Till or turn. As long as the soil is dry enough and the ground is not still frozen, turn over the soil about eight inches while raking out what weeds you are able to.
• Condition. Now is the time to add lime, peat and compost (if you didn’t in the fall) and take a soil sample to your nearest extension office to determine what other nutrients your soil is lacking. Confession: I have never taken in a sample, but I’ve heard it’s the thing to do. Start rinsing out and saving your eggshells as a great source of calcium.
• Supplement. The soil level in your beds has likely dropped since last year. Add your favorite soil mix to top off the beds.
• Mix and smooth. Once the soil has been turned, conditioned and supplemented, mix it up well and smooth over the top.
• Cover. Black tarp or plastic bags spread over the beds will help kill off the weeds and the larva of pests that may have overwintered in your garden.

Materials:

• Shovel or tiller for larger gardens, spade, rake.
• Garden gloves. Do your hands a favor!
• Vegetable planting mix, compost, peat, lime, other fertilizers and conditioners.
• Black tarp or plastic and stakes.

Links and places of interest:

Capital Mulch Company (for Raleigh and locals)
Creating the Right Soil Mix for Square Foot Gardening
Logan’s Trading Company (local resource for soil and ammendments)
Resources for Compost and Mulch by NCCES