A Most Marvelous Monday Morning | Babes, Berries, & Bare Feet

Have I mentioned I love being a stay at home mama? I never dread Mondays. Mondays are...dare I say it?...marvelous.

This morning was a particularly lovely one. We woke when we were ready and wandered out to the garden to play a bit. I needed to tie up some tomatoes in the new towers we built (for $0!) and pick some raspberries. This morning's attire was a bare face, bare feet, black slip, and wide-brimmed sun hat. I love having a privacy fence :)

After picking our garden's bounty, we went inside and washed a grassy, juicy Milo in the sink. Then Alice requested some french toast to accompany her raspberries, so we made a berry reduction and readied our batter for the bread. Once it was on the table, we slathered everything with liberal amounts of Nutella and raspberries and tucked in to a decadent brunch.

I washed dishes and did a load of laundry. Milo napped. Alice enjoyed an episode of Kipper on Netflix. *Sigh* A luxurious Monday morning indeed...

new neighbor

accompanists

Look who stands wherever he wants!

tomato towers

My last few years of using tomato cages were problematic - the tomatoes would get so heavy and tall that they would just topple over. This year, I resolved to make something better. My uncle works at the lumber mill in town and brought me some scrap wood they were going to discard. JD salvaged screws from our old fence and cut the wood with our miter saw so we could build 5 towers for zero dollars! They're not perfectly straight in the ground, but they work and my tomatoes are tied and training upwards and off the ground.

baby eggplant

 

french toast, fresh raspberry reduction, and cold brew

mmmmmm

blue eyes getting a bath

Cheers to babes, berries, and bare feet :D

Gardening Year 3 | the Good Earth

"...a garden it was, where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and rustled."

Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

That's the kind of garden I want to make. Where sunshine lingers and bees hum and even the wind gets lured into playing here.

It's our third year of growing things at Casa de Hall. It's come a long way, we have learned a great deal, and now we're ready to give Alice her very own plot of earth. And a good plot, too! We compost and mulch our beds so hers has a good foundation of happy soil. A garden is nothing without good earth.

(p.s. Back to Eden has changed our entire perspective on growing things. Check it out!)

The only thing we haven't planted for her that she requested? Blueberries. We'll have to figure that one out soon.

playing with worms

JD has raised her to be fearless of these little wrigglers and so she loves to tickle them when she discovers them in the dirt. Gives me the heebie jeebies but I'm glad she's not grossed out. I keep a pretty straight face for her benefit.

watering

Last Easter we had bought Alice a little rake, shovel, and water pail from Target and now she can use them to tend her garden.

Alice's plot of earth

Mary, Mary, quite contrary / How does your garden grow?

Well, Alice has salsa queen tomatoes, radishes, lavender, eggplants, and peppers. No silver bells and cockle shells, but considerably more useful and tasty :)

Alice loves to pick "flowers" and leave them scattered around for us to find.

chives

Good thing we have a lot! I love these purple flowers and their onion stems. Did you know you can use the flowers in salads? Or anything really. Just pull the petals out and add them to whatever you want a light onion flavor. As soon as their flowers fade, chop them all down, and they'll re-grow multiple times this summer.

compost

post here

the garden

& new fence!

bed 1: kale, cilantro, sage, peppers, tomatoes

bed 2: cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, onions, basil, radishes, carrots, chives

Two years ago, this is what a strip looked like...

The dirt was horrid and hard, weeds and grass always creeping in on the plants. Now that the beds are lined and mulched and fed compost every spring and fall, the soil is so much better. Oh, how far you've come, little garden!

raspberries circa 2013 v 2015

Two full years ago we transplanted 16 raspberry plants from my dad's farm, 4 of which died. We now have at least a hundred. They will take over.

sage

Sage has such great texture and fragrance! I love planting perennials. JD grows quite a bit from seed indoors, but I love it when you plant it once and don't have to bother with it again. Saves time and money.

volunteer cilantro

While cilantro is an annual, JD had let it go to see last year and look what we have now - fresh cilantro whenever we want! This is only a quarter of it. The rest is growing in the rocks where it shouldn't be. Anyone want some?

cauliflower

carrots | asparagus

Thank you, Papa Milo, for coming to plant some of your volunteer asparagus in our garden! I'm sure we will enjoy it in a few years once they're established. You gotta start sometime.

We learned the hard way and now plant rows of carrots in between rows of radishes. Radishes grow so fast and carrots are slow. We can do multiple rounds of radish by the time the carrots are ready. If you plant all your radish together in rows, they will begin to compete for light and put all their energy into growing tall leaves instead of their vegetable.

For example, this is how we planted them 2 years ago...

One solid block of radishes - all leaves, no radishes.

radishes

harvest time

I love that Alice gets to see where her food comes from. And the turn around time for a radish is so fast! It's probably as close to instant gratification as you can get in a garden. We get a few fresh ones every few days - just enough to slice on the mandolin and fry up in butter (see this post). 

We've also got sugar snap peas and strawberry transplants from my dad that are doing great.

Due to space (and the fact that my dad and grandpa produce huge quantities) we no longer grow squash or other melons. They require so much ground space and we would rather use that for other things. But it's all about what you eat. If you eat those things and have the space it makes sense to plant them.

What's in your garden?

More to come as the summer progresses.

Happy digging and growing!

Composting | "Black Gold"

Good earth is the heart and soul of a garden, so we do everything we can to make ours as healthy as possible. Composting is a huge part of that. After doing this for a couple of years, we're learning that it's so much more than making good dirt - it's a lifestyle. It's being committed to living sustainably and respecting the space and resources around you. It's preventing your waste from adding to the landfill. It's harnessing the decomposition process - and your scraps - to play a part in the larger picture of what will feed you in the future. 

Even when we lived in an apartment we were able to find a small container to "recycle" the cast offs that could be saved (we used this one). When it got full, we added it to my parent's compost, and eventually our landlord allowed us to create a compost pile in their backyard. It's a movement, and it's a choice. You can do it, too!

Here's how we compost, from start to finish...

This bowl is always perched next to the kitchen sink, ready to receive our scraps - egg shells, banana peels, coffee grounds, avocado skins and pits - anything that is green and came from the ground. Not only are you able to use your scraps, but you are preventing them from going to the landfill. Bonus!

When it gets full (or smelly) which is every few days, I take it here...

A bucket with a lid (old laundry detergent container) just next to the door in the garage. Close to the kitchen but out of the house. Once this is full, JD takes it out to one of the compost tumblers... 

+ sign = add your scraps!

clock sign = let it cook for a while

+ side

A couple of Christmases ago my mom gave JD a compost tumbler and the storm last June gave us a new one. We simply patched the old and now use both!

Once everything has broken down inside the tumbler, it can get sifted through JD's makeshift screen (made with spare wood and chicken coop wire) to go into the garden...

Whatever doesn't make it through the screen goes into the big compost until it breaks down.

After our new fence was installed, JD relocated our compost pile into two chambers he constructed out of old palettes and fence posts. 

(This man of mine is one of the most resourceful people I've ever met.)

A double chambered compost is great so you can turn it each season, exposing soil, leaves, and produce to oxygen to speed up the decomposition process. 

JD's design is clever because you can take out - or add - one slat at a time as your compost gets lower or higher. Having it inside the pallets allows air flow while keeping it away from the wood of the fence - and hence rotting it.

Ideally, your compost should be a mixture of things. At the bottom are leaves (you can use other brown organic materials, too, like sawdust or hay), then green organic matter like grass clippings and table scraps. We only fertilize our grass with organic materials - like corn gluten meal - so we feel pretty safe about adding our clippings to the pile. Compost piles like moisture and heat. You can research ratios of materials to find the best one for you to cook your pile. (Never compost: bones, meat, oil, dairy products, dog/cat/pig feces, weeds that have gone to seed, etc.)

Once your compost breaks down and can fall through a sifting screen, you have black gold. Nectar of the garden. We spread it on our garden beds every spring and fall - before planting and after harvest - and then add a layer of fine mulch. Happy soil = happy plants.

p.s. For some inspiration on getting the whole community on board, check out Pashon's story.

p.p.s. I would encourage EVERYONE to start composting. Even if you live in an apartment, get a homeowner friend on board and start one together. Don't need compost for a garden? Give it or sell it to someone who does. (Although, I'd tell you to start a garden too ;D) There are so many possibilities for making this happen. Any excuse not to is just that - an excuse.

Now go start a pile!