Recycling in the Suburban Homestead Garden

I haven't been posting much because of all the spring preparations.  It's been nothing but seedling and seed-starting "carnage" around here.  There are a lot of ways to recycle common household items that would normally get thrown away to use in seed-starting.  Here are some things I do:

I reuse disposable aluminum cooking containers.  Whether I do bulk cooking or acquire them through friends after an event, I have plenty to use for my seedlings.  The aluminum helps reflect the sun's warmth and light.  I start my heat-loving plants, like squashes, this way.  In the middle tray are my sunflowers.  I've never started sunflowers early before.  However, this year, I really want some bohemoths that grow 16 feet tall so I'm going to see if this works.  What do I do with the sunflowers now?  It's still a bit early for them and we've had tons of rain so I gave them each their own cozy little greenhouse.

That's right--more recycling!  These are two liter soda bottles that I've been collecting and cut up to house my seedlings right in the ground.  If it gets too warm, I can unscrew the lid or take the whole thing off.  This will keep the soil around them warm until they can get established and the air temperature finally warms up around here!  It's supposed to be near 75-80 this weekend so I'll be sure to pop these off so they don't get fried.  (You can do this with virtually any large plastic container you have:  milk jugs, juice containers, etc.)

When you're out shopping and checking out clearance items, look at things that you can use more than once.  I was out a couple of weeks ago and they had Easter candy on clearance.  Look at this container:

These were filled with delicious gummie candies for $0.20 each.  I was not interested in the candy (although we all loved them); it was the container I wanted!  It's perfect for soaking seeds--you can use both the lid and bottom for this.

Here are some Morning Glories ready to go out.  (Remember to nick their hard seed coat before you soak.)  These were the perfect size so I soaked all my morning glories and sweet peas this way!  Perfect containers--plus, I can save seeds in these later in the summer.  Here's another scenario:  you're shopping and you get the family a rotisserie chicken for dinner.  Cook up that carcass for stock, and don't throw out the plastic container the chicken came in.  It is perfect for housing those little peat pots and comes with it's own lid!

Back to two-liter soda bottles:  here's a pumpkin I started early.  I cut the two-liter bottle two-thirds of the way up, and then I use the top by inverting it to keep the greenhouse effect.  Once it's warm enough, you won't need the lid and you can transplant.  

Again, you can use pretty much any plastic container you have around.  I also use yogurt cups for seedlings, and in some of the pictures I have plastic cups that I fill with seed starting medium.  I put most things under lights in my basement, but I have quickly run out of room and one of my lights has blown out (argh!).  So, I am trying to get things rotated through as fast as I can to get them out in the garden.  The weather is still a bit shaky around here, but I am trying to keep up the best I can.  My whole point of this post is to show that there are so many things we can recycle to suit our purposes.  I hope this inspires you to get planting or get creative.  

I'd love to hear some of the innovative ways you start your seeds.  Until next time, happy gardening!

Blessings to you!

The Backyard Chicken Coop

Much has been going on here and there's just not enough time!!!!  As I said in an earlier post, my Mother's Day and birthday gifts this year would be a nice chicken coop.  I have been scouring Craig's list and everywhere looking for free lumber so we could build it for CHEAP!  No such luck.  So that changed things a little.  I wanted a free-standing coop in the back of the yard, but with no free lumber, the budget wasn't going to allow for it.  Plan B was to convert the bottom of our kids' fort-style playground.  My youngest is 9 so she's really the only one who plays under there.  It is 4' x 8' under there and would have made a fine coop...I just didn't like it being so close to the neighbors.  So my husband and I head off to Home Depot.  I turn my head and show him the new townhomes being built by us, and ta da, there are three ginormous trash dumpsters full of scrap lumber! Oh, how the Lord provides!!!

My husband and I started filling up the car.  Someone from the complex turned us in so the property manager came to see what we were doing.  The fine man told us the dumpsters were all fair game so we continued on. I walked home because the car was full (we literally were about 3 blocks from our house) and then my hubby went a second time with my son for more.  My son even found a box of nails in the dumpster.  It was amazing what we got for free!  Here's a couple of pics of the amazing wood we found.

Our pile of free plywood!

Can you believe this was all free???

We feel so blessed!  My husband proceeded to start some of the framing and got the base done.  It was scorching hot outside (which makes me so happy), so the fellows were drained.  Here's what they got done so far:

Those square bases that elevate the coop were also free.  They are made of wood and I imagine they are used for columns or some sort of support.  They came in three feet lengths and are really strong.

More will get done this week, I'm sure, and I will keep you posted.  We kept the coop dimensions the same...4 x 8.  

On another note for Mother's Day, I hope you all had a beautiful day.  Here's what my children made for me: garden signs!  Pretty simple and practical and a whimsical little touch for the garden.

Aren't they cute?  My two others busy working...

And here's the final product:

We may end up adding a bit of color to the background because the white is really white, but we'll see.  The kiddos did a good job and it will be a lovely addition to the garden.  I hope you are all doing well and having a lovely spring!!!  Blessings!

Garden beseiged with...snow!

Here we are at the end of April and last night it snowed again.  It's not an unexpected thing around here in Colorado.  It just puts a "damper" on your gardening.

I put out my pea seeds...for some reason I plant so late.  The snow always puts me off.  In Colorado, it seems we go from the end of winter to summer.  Spring is filled with snowstorms and hail storms and all that fun stuff and then BAM, it's summer.  It's a bit annoying, but we're making due.  My lettuce and spinach haven't sprouted yet (I probably wouldn't sprout either with this kind of weather).  Anyways, like I said with Easter, all of this will be gone by this afternoon.  We're due for some nice weather and the temps are going to warm up nicely for the latter part of this week.  My husband has been working so diligently on this backyard and rearranging our boxes and building some new ones.  I am excited for when August arrives because that's when the garden looks its best!

I will update with more photos once the backyard is semi-dry.  My husband is almost done!  I've also sown some mustard and collard greens (yummy) and am still sprouting things indoors under lights.  I need to start all my pumpkin and zucchini and squashes inside.

On the chick front, the little ladies are doing well!  They are growing like crazy!  My daughter's teacher actually bought chicks (since the incubator eggs did not hatch).  So my daughter brought home one more Buff Orpington.  That brings us up to nine chicks...like I said, I think a few of the girls aren't actually girls, but we'll wait and see.

I hope your weather is nicer than mine.  I've been cruising the web and am living vicariously through your warm locations and wonderful gardens.  I wish you happy gardening!  Blessings!

Backyard Chickens

We now have our own little flock!
It is so exciting!  I have wanted chickens for years and here we have them.  We were going to get them from my daughter's enrichment program that she goes to one day a week.  They have been studying the life cycle of a chicken and had eggs in an incubator.  Unfortunately, there was a substitute one day and the incubator was left without electricity for a few hours.  Those poor babies aren't going to hatch.  We were so excited and couldn't take any more anticipation so on Good Friday I went and got eight little beauties.  (I love the little water dispenser...you use a mason jar that screws into the metal base...our little chick feeder is the same way.)

We can't get over how fast they are growing.  We have two Buff Orpingtons, two Barred Rocks, two black sex-linked crosses, and two reds (not Rhode Island, I just can't remember).  I have a keen sense that at least two of these fluffies are going to be roosters, so our flock will shrink, but we are so thrilled.

Everyday the children have been taking turns cleaning out their brooder and giving them fresh water twice a day.  My birthday is next month so I think my gift is going to be a lovely coop (I know I'm weird, but that's how I do things...I'd rather get something we can use!).

Look at the perfect wings already forming on the red to the right (that is Nugget, by the way).  Some names the kids picked out are Lazy, Daisy, Yolko, Sunshine, Mr. Feisty, Nugget, Friday, and Lily.  As a gardener, I'm excited about only one thing:  compost.  All that chicken poop is going to do wonders for my garden.  It's been my missing link because I've always had to buy fertilizer on top of the small amount of compost we make.  Not anymore!  These babies are just what we needed for this homestead!

Do you think she's happy???  My daughter and "Daisy."

Much is going on around here.  I hope you all are enjoying the tumultuous weather of spring. I hope we get some sun soon...I have lots of gardening to do!  Have a happy Monday, friends.  Blessings to you!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, Colorado Style!

This snow all started last night.  With a little sunshine, it will be gone, but only in Colorado can you have snow from Halloween to Easter (sometimes to Mother's Day).  I will be thankful for the moisture!

I hope you all have a blessed and precious Easter!!!  

Fantastic Food Friday

Giant Family Cookie Covered in Strawberries

So I usually do frugal food Friday, but this recipe is slightly more expensive unless you can get the berries for a really good price or grow them yourself.  Then it would be a great deal, plus it looks like a million bucks.  I learned to make this through Pampered Chef years ago and have made many adaptations to it since then.  The first thing you need to do is mix up a batch of your favorite chocolate chip cookies.  We all have our own recipe so I'm foregoing that step here.  Instead of making individual cookies, make one massive cookie.  If your cookie tray is rectangular, make it that shape.  Sometimes I use my stones and make a circle cookie.  Just remember that the cookie dough expands in the oven and you don't want any going off the sides of your tray into the hot oven so adjust the amount of dough.

Once baked and cooled, you can start with all your other ingredients and prep everything for assembly.  You will need:
1.  one package of cream cheese, softened
2.  one large bottle of marshmallow fluff
3.  one pound of strawberries, sliced
4.  half a package of chocolate chips, melted

Mix the cream cheese and marshmallow fluff.  This is your first layer.  Cover your cookie with it and spread generously.  Now arrange your strawberries over the whole thing.  Once finished with that, drizzle your melted chocolate over the whole thing making a pleasant pattern.  You can get creative and add all kinds of other things:  nuts of any variety, any type of chopped up chocolate bar, m&ms, etc.  The combinations are endless!

Hope you have fun with this!  It will feed a big crowd and would be a wonderful treat for Easter!  With that said, I hope you have a blessed Easter!

The Suburban Backyard Garden

Hello, friends.  We just got our computer back last night and I'm sooooo thrilled.  Now I can get back to my blogging.  Our backyard is undergoing a huge transformation.  We have raised beds, but after seeing a picture in a magazine I have gone mad and want to do something similar.  So my dear husband had to take some boxes apart and rearrange them and dig through some hard compounded ground, but progress is being made!

What you see going down the middle is going to be mirrored on the left side of it.  There will be an "alleyway" going down the center.  Out of the boxes we will have two long wooden poles of some sort (at least 8 feet long) that will all meet down the middle forming a very simple archway.  I'll be growing beans or anything else that vines.  Sun will still get through because it won't be solid.  They'll just grow up the poles.  We still have lots to do.  I will get all my greens seeded today.  As progress continues to be made I'll post more pics. 

To the right of the arbor is where we will be putting the chicken coop and run.  We are so excited to have chickens!  My daughter was getting them from her classroom.  We were hoping to have them by now but we've learned that the substitute teacher had the incubator off for two hours...sad, sad, sad.  We're not sure if we'll be getting chicks from them now.  We had our brooder all set up for them, too.  Thankfully, we literally live down the street from a feed store and I'm going to get some surprise chicks for Easter! 

Just to the right of the picture (not shown) we will be putting in a fire pit.  My husband has always wanted one so we're going to do it!  That's going to make for some fun evenings!

To the left of this picture is our swingset and the place I hang my laundry.

Because of my limited space, I hang everything on hangers.  I can put up twice the amount of laundry on these lines by doing so (at least two loads).  There are two things we have on this little suburban homestead that we can always count on:  sun and wind!  It makes for very speedy line drying!  Speaking of which, I have some loads of laundry to do. 

Many blessings to you and I look forward to seeing how your plots are shaping up!!!  Happy spring planting!