Projects are those activities I track over time. It can be planting lists, growing cycles, design and construction projects, even food if it needs to age or ferment. I do it all here because its easier than sorting through paper notes.
My first big backyard project of 2021 is creating a garden under a canopy of live oaks using only California and San Diego native plant species. This is day 1.
Garden Hack: Make a simple DIY drip watering system for potted plants & seedlings with just a water bottle. Instructions and video included in the article.
Mid-winter is rough on vegetables, even the ones in the keyhole garden. The secret to keeping the bed productive is a happy compost bin in the middle. Today we checked on how the compost was doing.
My old live stream camera, Chickencam finally died, so I built a new one with a Raspberry Pi . Now I've got a HD live feed from the poultry yard and it cost just $53. Check it out for all the details.
In keeping with a long tradition of saving post-Christmas plants from the trash bin, this year's rescue is a 93 cent bargain. It's 4-inch tall poinsettia in a silver 2-inch pot that's definitely seen better days. It has one green leaf and a few red bracts still hanging on, probably because they've been sprayed with glitter glue. The glue has also attracted what looks like cat hair (or worse). My record's pretty good when it comes to nursing abused poinsettias [keep reading...]
Gardener’s Log : Keyhole Garden day 610. Weird weather--hot days, near freezing nights--has put a squeeze on the keyhole garden's output.
The best green bean casserole calls for fresh picked green beans, so we're picking the last of the pole beans. It's not easy to keep them growing this late in the year, but I've found that these Forex beans will produce right up to Thanksgiving
Short of the turkey, everything for our family's Thanksgiving feast is grown here at The Acre. It takes a few days to harvest everything and bring it all together, so we always start with the stuff we need to dig up. This morning is was sweet potatoes, red and white varieties. This is way more than the four of us will eat, so we'll store the small ones to plant is spring, and share the extra big ones with our [keep reading...]
It's been a little more than six weeks since we began the fermentation on Batch 20 of my hot sauce. Today I'm popping open the fermenter to see how it's going and give the peppers a stir to keep thing moving.
Gardener’s Log : Keyhole Garden day 585. Well, if you want to hammer a keyhole garden into submission, making it rain followed by high winds and near 80° heat, followed by overnight lows that dip into the 30s, followed by more near 80° temperatures again, is certainly one way of doing it. 40 degree plus temperature swing in 24 hours The poor pumpkin, which was thriving a couple weeks ago, is done in, as is most of the [keep reading...]
