Posts Tagged ‘photos’
Testosterone-laden beings descended upon our simple farm to play war games on enormous computer screens. The horde wore red Hawaiian shirt uniforms.
It was just like D-Day, if the Marines had landed in Honolulu.
Me Skeerdy.
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Container Gardening for City Slickers: Beware the Homeowners Association
by Colleen Doran on April 19th, 2011Once upon a time, Colleen lived in a city and hated it a whole lot. Cities are full of bland, overpriced housing, like this characterless unit I used to call home.

But on closer inspection, you’ll see I managed to turn my little plot of distant soil into a garden paradise.
A flock of happy ducks became part of my home.
Kristen and several other readers want to know if the nifty raised garden beds I rave about in the last post will be of use in their apartments. I tend to think they’ll be too large for you. And if you’re not on the bottom floor, with 500 lbs of dirt added, they will be too heavy for your porch.
Also, some homeowner’s associations can be very restrictive about what you can put where. After my garden grew, nosy neighbors became a pain.
Visitations from dangerous birds, like the ducks you see here, inspired the terrified villagers to pass a rule prohibiting bird feeding.
Here my beloved kitty Sawyer the Wonder Tom takes a stroll. He was very happy in my garden, and would sit outside all day, getting dive bombed by a bluejay.
The evil birds were so hated by my neighbors, that one of the few neighbors I had who wasn’t a psycho – a handsome, hero firefighter – got reported to his boss for felonious bird feeding, among other transgressions.
Yes, you read that right. They actually tried to get a hero firefighter, well, fired. For bird feeding.
My next door neighbors did the dastardly deed. When it came time to sell my condo, and an interested party stopped by to have a look, the lady next door (who wasn’t as much of a lady as she hoped to be thought of) asked, “Were they black?”
And I said, “I didn’t notice.”
The creeps next door were from Brooklyn, and seemed to have some sort of perverse allergy to nature. While being nice to my face, they reported me for felonious bird feeding, too.
Once, when I put my trash next to the door so a relative could pick it up and discard for me since I was too sick to walk it to the dumpster, they reported the crime. The fine for being unable to walk was $185.
When neighbor dude was sick with cancer, I baked the guy cookies. When I was so sick I had to come home from New York in a wheelchair, they made no inquiries – except to report errant trash bags next to my door.
In addition, my neighbors routinely stole the lovely flowers. I’d come out in the morning and find the treasures plundered.
Clueless landscapers would also grab lavender and other delights from the roots and toss them in the trash. “I don’t know nothing about these exotic plants!” grumbled one after I came running after him to retrieve my treasures.
I had no problem with the potted plants on or in my porch, but all plants surrounding my unit, the small plot which I had bought with the condo, were fair game for anyone with sticky fingers or eaten up with stupid.
Container gardening of this kind is probably best for the amateur urban gardener. It takes time to get used to how often which plant wants water, and in summer, some may require watering twice a day. You must read instructions, and keep a record of how your plants respond.
Also, terra cotta pots crack in cold weather, and must be brought indoors. Plastic pots, made to look like stone, are your best bet. You can leave your perennials outside all winter.
Important safety tip: anything you intend to bring indoors, keep on pot feet at all times. Bugs crawl in the drainage holes in your pots, and you bring them indoors with you. You get fewer bugs if your pots sit on feet.
I love hanging pots, and pots that hang off the railing. Grow tomatoes in a hanging pot.
My garden’s success was its doom, Harrison Bergeron in action. As you can see here, I had so many luscious plants, and my New Dawn rose was such a healthy resident, that the homeowner’s association passed new rules limiting the size and scope of the gardens we could have. I was ordered to get rid of the rose bush. My neighbors thought it was too big, and attracted birds.
I kid you not.
I really hated my neighbors, who all seemed to be from places with lots of pavement. They were pathologically suspicious of anything that wasn’t coated in plastic. After getting rid of the ducks (they even had some shot one night,) they installed plastic ducks on the lawn.
I could not wait to get away from these people.
Here’s my mom for a visit, enjoying the rose the neighbors hated.
My homeowner’s association presented me with a bill for $50 per day the rose remained in place. I appealed, and was given an extension to remove it when the plant went dormant. One frosty January, we hacked it back and dug it up, and transported it to my parent’s house, where it grew over 13 feet and flourished for years. When they sold the house, the new owner cut it down.
I wish city people would stay in cities and leave nature alone.
Please keep your Wal Mart, and your pavement, and your astroturf to yourselves.
The lesson here is the biggest problem you may have with your apartment garden is psychotic apartment residents. Find out what the homeowner’s association rules are before you plant anything. If your garden goes too well, you may find the rules changed on you.
Thus, I was driven back the the country where I belong.
And my former neighbors remain in their characterless condo. They choke daily on carbon monoxide, hear the honking of horns, and spy on their fellows, eyes peeled for transgressions like errant rose bushes, and dastardly bunches of lavender.
Thank God I’m a country girl.
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Out here in the country, almost everyone has a garden. With the rising cost of food and gas, it’s a necessity for some. When I went to the post the other day to ship some orders, all anyone could talk about was their garden.
Here’s my veggie garden in progress. It took almost four years to set this up the way I wanted it. It’s about 80 feet long and 20 feet wide.
Almost everything in this garden has been set in raised beds.
I tried in-ground gardening the first year or so, but the losses to vermin were terrible, and the maintenance even worse. Adding raised beds, barrels, and pots greatly increased productivity and ease of care.
The big barrels are from local wineries. They cost a fortune in the city, but ours came cheap. However, they are very difficult to cut, so if you don’t have the tools, forget it. Of course, you must rotate the crop every three years, so while a few of mine have harbored potatoes, this year they will have flowers instead.
At first, my dad made my raised beds for me, because the commercial raised bed kits were so expensive. But last year, Sam’s Club began carrying sturdy plastic beds which clip together in minutes. They cost almost half what making them from scratch costs, and they last longer.
Even expensive, treated wood can’t compete with plastic. With wood, there is also the danger the seller will try to pass off safe wood for treated wood containing arsenic. So, the plastic beds are safer and better in every way.
Here’s a direct link to the Sam’s Club order page. I bought mine in the spring for $38 each, but a quantity went on sale in the fall for only $26 each. I’ve seen similar units for sale in catalogues for $70 or more, not including shipping.
This is also a great deal for the urban gardener, since you can create an instant garden space without tilling. You can also buy two units, clip one on top of the other, and grow root veggies like potatoes and carrots with ease.
For added protection, I usually add a wire cage beneath the beds to prevent moles and voles from burrowing into them. As you see, the entire area is covered with kill mulch. This helps cut down on weeds, especially the pesky ones which like to grow in the cracks and crevices around the raised beds.
A wire cage bent over the unit also allows me to place row covers neatly over the beds. This green plastic cover is especially created for cool weather vegetables like lettuces and cabbage. This small unit is a secondary garden near the kitchen. The main vegetable garden is down the lane near the stream where I can hand carry water when the well is low.
Warm weather causes some veggies to grow bitter and to bolt: that is, to go to flower. Clip off the little flower bud heads and eat them, which will extend the growing season of many cool weather veggies. The flower buds of kale and collards taste of sweet cabbage.
One raised bed with the garden soil you will need to buy to fill it, will cost less than $100. Depending on what you choose to grow, you may harvest $500 worth of fresh produce per bed. I routinely harvest 30lbs or more of fresh heirloom tomatoes per plant. At over $3 per pound, that’s almost $720 worth of fresh tomatoes out of one 4′x8′ box. Even if you can’t can your own veggies, those tomatoes will make pound after pound of delicious sauce, which you can freeze.
BTW: unless you know what you are doing, do not buy top soil for your beds. Buy potting soil. It’s more expensive, but I’ve had terrible luck with poor quality top soil.
Grow basil right there in the same box as your tomatoes. It naturally repels white fly and others pests, and you’ll have all the basil you need for your pasta recipes instead of dropping $3 per bunch for fresh basil at the grocery. The basil also blooms beautifully. Harvest the seeds for next year, and you’ll never need to buy another packet of the stuff.
After the first year, the maintenance on each bed will only run about $20 per annum, even less if you do your own composting. One bag of humus, and one bag of well rotted manure will give a 4′x4′ box all the nutrients you need for planting another year, and they cost about $4 each.
Don’t be afraid to use manure in your garden beds. I know you’ve all heard horror stories about e coli from commercial nurseries. The short of it is many of these nurseries utilize poorly trained labor, some of whom do not exercise proper personal hygiene. The e coli is not necessarily coming from the fertilizer manure. If you know what I mean.
A commercial nursery without proper oversight may also use fresh manure, which is dangerous, and a major source of e coli.
Quality commercial manure is well rotted, sometimes for a couple of years. This process breaks down the bacteria, and creates a nutrient-rich, natural source of food for your plants. I’ve used manure in my garden for years, all aged for two years or more, and it’s more valuable than gold to the gardener!
This year, I’ve also decided to try Weedguard, a compostable paper mulch. It fits almost perfectly in the raised beds. I plant my seeds in the little holes, as you see here.
Even the most carefully monitored garden will get weeds. I’ll try anything to avoid spending my summer months plucking ground ivy from around my beans. I’ve never used this product before, and I’ll post a success report later. You can achieve similar results with newspaper, but this was much easier to handle, so I like it already.
BTW, never use color newspaper pages in your garden. Color ink can be toxic.
Sometimes it’s fine to let your food plants go to seed. On the whole I don’t recommend it, because your beds may be more productive if you rotate your crops. If you can get $100 worth of produce with a second crop, it’s foolish to wait for plants to go to seed which you can buy for $1.
That said, I let my celery go to seed last year, because it was so pretty, and the butterflies loved it. As you can see, the result is, a lot of celery volunteers! The little plants are delicious and peppery. Clip them and throw them into salads to allow the healthiest plants to grow into stalks.
You should always have some flowers in your vegetable garden. As you can see in these photos, I have tulips, daffodils and roses, as well as many herbs. You need to feed the bees and birds, or your veggies won’t produce. We encourage the native bee population with mason bee nests, which are inexpensive and easy to set up. You can buy them here.
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Christmas in our little town. It started to snow just as the parade began.
This church is actually a law office. But the kind gentleman who owns it had an open house and everyone was welcome to come in and enjoy hot chocolate, cider, cookies and candy, and to watch the parade in the big warm hall.
First snowball of the season!
Handsome gentleman. Candles are sold to support local charities, and people line the streets holding the lights as the parade rolls by.
Beautiful ladies with beautiful smiles.
A family friend let us enjoy the parade from her front porch. I love their charming work cottage. I hope to have a studio in a little place like this someday.
Made of cute.
A frosty nativity float.
There are a number of antique car enthusiasts in the area. Most of the parades consist of people showing off their cars. Santa gets a loaner which lets him arrive in style!
Merry Christmas to all!
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