Cold Frames

Mason Jar Cloques'...not so good.

Sampson being Solar Kitty.

   









     Spring is nipping at our heels, but Winter seems to be  hanging on with the occasional frost.  I'm really itching to get things in the ground and start the garden, but the potential for frost makes me weary.  I've read about cold frames and French Cloques', but never tried them.  After I potted up several of my tomato seedlings, I had a few that we didn't have pots for, so I figured I'd plant them in the garden, and throw an overturned mason jar over them.  Instant Cloque', right, wrong.  They quickly overheated and wilted.  I suppose that's why the french had an army of laborers to go out and prop open the cloques' to allow air, and they were much bigger than my mason jars.  Oh well, live and learn.

Probably won't last the season.  It
has 8 inch "stake" legs, so it really
bites the ground when you push it down

The sides open to allow air and
work/weeding.

  So while mom was here, I was piddling out in the yard, that's what I call it when I want to be outside, but don't really have anything, or know what to do.  I had this old painters drop cloth, the clear plastic kind, and a bunch of furring strips in shed.  So out came the hand saw, and screwdriver. About 2 hours later, I had a quasi green house/cold frame/waste of time maybe.  It's about 4 feet square and maybe 2 feet high.  It's ugly, I already know what I'd do differently if I made another, but it really warms the soil up.  I've got some soy beans and purple runners in there right now, still waiting to sprout, but hopefully it will let them get going, with no danger from frost, and be established when the warmer weather comes.  As I was standing around in the garden waiting for something to do to speak at me, I remembered I had a ton, literally a ton, of cinderblocks behind the shed, from when the landlord build the house foundation.  So I lugged about 10 into the garden and made a big old square with them, then laid a window I found on the side of the road across the top.  I didn't dig up the grass, or even put dirt in it, I'm thinking of using it when it's time to harden off the seedlings before they go in the ground.  I don't know, it stays plenty warm in there, maybe we'll put dirt in it anyway and keep lettuce there in the winter.

Look how good that dirt looks...

Adds about a 10-15 degree advantage over
the outside air temp.

I tell you though, this warm weather is not only confusing the mosquitoes and other bugs, we've had a baby fly explosion around the yard, but it's got me confused too.  I just want to start growing things.  Everyday the weather is nice, I let the girls out and we sit in the garden, which is still just dirt, and pick weeds, turn the soil, they eat worms, I get the weeds out.  There isn't much more to do, until that Last Frost Date has come.  Oh I am fermenting some wheat and chicken feed to attract some Black Soldier Flies.  That's another project, kind of gross, but their larva are super composters, like a colony that will fit in a 5 gallon bucket will handle up to about 3 pounds of kitchen waste a day.  That's some composting.  Plus the larvae will "self harvest" and we can feed them to the girls, like chicken crack.  But that's another project, another day, another blog post.

Till next time.........

Substitute Teacher

Frog Eggs Day 1

Frog eggs Day 1

So my mother came up on Wednesday to celebrate her early birthday and to watch the kids Thursday and Friday.  Erin was headed up to Baltimore, I think, for a home school convention with our friend Heather.  We didn't want me to have to take anymore leave so Mom came up.  It had been a while since we all saw each other anyway.  Thursday, it was a great day so Mom took the kids across the street to the sandpit/marsh for a nature walk.  I don't know how long they spent over there but they brought back the following.  A small pimento jar full of tadpole eggs, or I guess frog eggs that will turn into tadpoles, an unidentified animal bone the size of a human hip bone and an old bottle.  I've already watched the eggs go from little clear blobs with a black dot to clear blobs with a larger oval looking shapes in the middle.  Pretty cool.  Now as I sit here and type this on a beautiful sunny Saturday, my boys are in the front yard playing baseball with the neighbor boy, Nate, only 3 kids, but they're making it work.  I love it when the kids are out doing the things kids should be doing.  Getting dirty, skinning knees, and battling imaginary monsters.

Day 3

Day 3

Rainy and Mushy Day 2

Who can't resist a splash in a puddle?

Well it's day 2 into our rainy mushy weekend.  What do you always see on the sidewalk when it rains a lot?  Worms...lots and lots of worms squirming for high ground.  So this morning we went on a worm hunt.  Armed with buckets and raincoats, OK one of us used an umbrella, we headed down the rural road with acres of farm land around us.  Prime spot for herds or flocks, or whatever worms are called when the group up, to come up on the road.  Now many may be wondering why we want worms, it's too chilly to go fishing, well our girls, the chickens, have also been penned up in the rain so they haven't been able to get into the garden and dig them up themselves.  Let me tell you, they go crazy for worms, like crack I suppose.

Piper and her "cup-o-worms"

The hunt didn't start off too promising, many were already squished, and even though they'll still eat a freshly dead worm, a squished one is just too hard to pick out the pavement.  But as we walked we did see some, then some more, after we got to the end of the road, we had collected about a full cup full, now that may not seem like much but those little buggers really get small when you touch them.  I figure we probably had close to 50 or so, and to a chicken where one worm is like a dessert, 10 a piece would be like the all you can eat buffet at the "House of just Filet Mignon" for us.  Ok maybe not all you can eat for them, when we were turning over the garden this year they were right under foot the whole time eating any and all bugs, worms, grubs, pepples that came up.  The can really stuff that crop full, looking all lopsided in the front.

 Anyway even though it was raining, they came running to the fence when we called them, then once they realized it was worms we were giving away, they went batty. Did you know a chicken has a vertical leap greater than Michael Jordan, proportionately of course.  They'll leap at least 1.5 feet straight up with no running or flapping., not bad for a foot tall chicken.  So now Erin's gears are turning in that noggin and she wants to build a worm bin to raise worms.  If you get the right kind they do a great job of composting too, double duty...everything on a good homestead should serve at least 2 functions, just like Alton Brown says for his kitchen tools.

Rainy Mushy Day

     It was very rainy and mushy all day today.  Nice temperature, but couldn't go outside.  Erin and I decided to do a few indoor things.  Our friend Heather mentioned a book to us called Make the Bread, buy the butter, it's basically a book about a lady who specs out the cost of homemade grocery items vs store bought, even including your time.  Erin has been using a crazy amount of yogurt lately with various recipes and such, plus Piper would eat it at every meal if we let her, so we decided to make our own.  It takes a half gallon of milk, organic of course, and a quarter cup of store bought yogurt.  You almost boil the milk, cool it, add the yogurt (starter) and let it sit on the counter overnight.  Yeah gross huh.....but low and behold, this morning, we had a half gallon of yogurt ready for the fridge.  It's runny, like the organic stuff in the store, not that fake yoplait or dannon stuff.  We did take some and let it "strain" through cheese cloth to get a more "Greek" style.  In the end we had over a quart of runny baking/eating /runny yogurt, and almost a quart or Greek style, plus at least 2 cups of yogurt whey, which will be used in my next bread recipe.  Half a gallon of organic milk is 10 cents more expensive than a quart of organic yogurt.  We win..  I'd post pics, but it really wasn't all that interesting, and even thought the whey has a cool greenish tint to it, the color doesn't translate in the pictures.  So here's a picture of me twisting our Rooster's neck, well not really, but sometimes we wish I would.

He's OK...honestly....

Our Growlight shelves.

Soil cubes...those in the middle are cucumbers

We started our seeds about a week and a half ago.  Planted lots of tomato plants, pepper plants, a few soy beans, some sunflowers, carrots (yes even though they generally are a direct sow), some cucumbers, broccoli, and cauliflower.  Probably some other things but can't remember off the top my head.  I started the tomatoes and peppers in little solo cups so they'd have plenty of room to grow and "pot up" around the stems to encourage more roots.  Everything else got started in things that were available, from empty sugar containers, egg cartons to water bottles.  I even used the container the grow lights came in.  I also made this nifty little soil cube maker.  It's really an old paperclip holder, you know the ones with the magnet hole on top.  I drilled a hole in the bottom and used an old sign piece that fit into it.  Now you pack it with damp starter soil and press it like a cookie press.  It pushes this neat little cube of soil out that you use to put your seed in..  Somehow plants will "self prune" their roots when they sense there is no dirt, so instead of circling the pot bottom and getting root bound, they focus more on the plant.  They work ok, but you have to be careful watering.  The cubes go straight into the ground when it's warm enough.  Going back to my friend Emilio's advice, I've really started trying to reuse/repurpose things.  Obviously the soil cubes don't cost anything but the starter soil.  This year I also used old lettuce containers, sugar containers and like I said earlier, the boxes the grow lights came in.  They were all clear plastic that was sturdy enough to hold the dirt and make like a mini greenhouse around the seedling.

Broccoli started in salad/lettuce containers

These were the grow light boxes, soybeans and sunflowers
they fit perfect in a window sill.

These are old sugar containers with corn seedling in it.  Corn
normally is direct sow, but it's still too cold, so I figured I'd give
seedling a shot, when we plant these in a few weeks, we'll direct
sow the next batch, so the harvest will extend

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

If you cut a water bottle in half, it makes a dandy green house,
once the plant doesn't need the top, remove it.

This is inside our grow light shelf.  It's just a couple tube lights above the plants.  I lined the inside of the shelves with white paper and plastic to keep the light in and moisture.  If you look in the back on the bottom left shelf, you'll see our carrot seedlings in the toilet paper tubes.  Generally, carrots are direct sow, they really hate being disturbed by transplanting.  But I figured if they started in the tubes, then when I moved them and planted the tubes, they wouldn't "feel" the transplant shock to the roots, since the roots wouldn't be disturbed, plus it would give at least 6 inches of perfect growing soil to be in with no chance of weeds or rocks to interfere.  So when we plant these guys in the ground, we'll start another batch, direct sow, to extend the harvest.  I'm also tinkering with using some PVC and plastic sheeting to make a hoop house over one of our garden beds, this would let me transplant this stuff into the ground sooner and leave the fall  vegetables in longer before the winter comes.  We'll see.  More to follow.....