Raised Bed #1 Growth Comparison

I just wanted to compare the growth of one of my boxes. This is an 18 day difference.

April 5, 2012

April 23, 2012

How To Catch Rainwater - for FREE!!

I know there are many things out there that are designed to collect rainwater, but for me I just dont want to pay for them. Especially when I can collect the water for free. Or near free. I have been looking for years at this spot from my front porch where the roof meets in a V formation and it causes the rain water to gush in torrents into a bush right in front of my porch. Lately I have wanted some rainwater for my garden to use when it doesnt rain because plants love rain water over the chlorinated crap that comes out of the spigot. So today as I watched it rain and I saw all that rain pouring down in front of my porch in torrents I remembered I had an empty container that I originally bought for worm composting that went bust ( thats another story) that would be perfect to catch that water. So I plopped it right down in the middle of the bush and let it fill up. 

This is the bush that the container was sitting in.
 I had to pull it down once it got somewhat full.

While that was filling up I looked at the gutter on the other side of the porch that was shooting down water and I decided to use a bowl to collect that too.

This whole production took about 30 minutes for my container to get full. The plan is to hold my gallon jugs into the water and fill those, then water my plants in the garden. It took a little bit of work, but I think it was worth it in the end. I plan to do this when I can whenever it rains.

I got more water than this. I just took a pic when it was at this point.

How to build a raised bed - the SIMPLE way

I have 4 of these boxes that I am using for the square foot gardening method. Heres how I build them.

I normally use 1x8x8 untreated boards but for this box I got 2x8x8. Dont ask me why cuz I dont know. Anyway get 2 of these boards and get the people at Lowes or Home Depot to cut them in half so they will be 4 feet long. Then simply hammer in nails on each corner. I didnt take a pic of that sorry.

Then I laid down some weed paper so that the grass and weeds will not grow up thru your box. You can also use layers of newspaper or cardboard. If you use cardboard layers, wet them really well.

After this I filled the box with the soil. For this box I used (6) .75 cubic feet bags of Scotts top soil and (2) 1 cubic foot bags of mushroom compost and 1 bag of Scotts humus and manure soil amendment. This came in a brick and it looks like clay. Heres what it looked like after I broke it us with my shovel for a bit.

I ket breaking up the humus and manure and mixing it in well with the other soil. Now its time to make the grids. Most people use wood beams to make thier grid lines but Im cheap so I use twine. I take a ruler and measure 1 foot and make a mark where the nails will go all around the box. There will be 3 nails on each side. I only drive the nails in half way and then wrap the twine around the nail and tie a knot like this.

Once this is done all you have to do to secure it is finish hammering the nail all the way in so it will secure the knot in the twine.

Repeat this with the nail on the opposite nail on the opposite board until you have made a grid of 16 squares in the raised bed. It should look like this once you finish. The twine is purple so it may be hard to see but over time it will lighten up.

It took about an hour or so to build this. Its easy! You can do it!

Stuffed Apple Pie

I saw this on FB and I KNEW I had to make it!!! I was feening for it so bad that I even went back and revisited the page a few times just to imagine how good it would taste. Well they tasted BETTER than I imagined!!!

Ok so I bought 7 apples and cored them all with a knife and a spoon taking care not to poke a hole in the apple skin.









After I cored all the apples I cut the apples up into small pieces and put them in a pan. I added over a half a stick of butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and over a half a bag of light brown sugar. I only wanted to melt the butter and mix all the spices together, not cook the apples. I added the ingredients to my sweet tooths taste. Afterward I just filled all the apples with the apple dices and spices.



I make all my crusts from scratch. I used 1 1/2 Cups unbleached flour, 3/4 cups of butter soft, so I can mash it into the flour, 3 packed tablespoons of light brown sugar, and 1/2 cup of ice cold water. This is what it looked like after I mixed all that and rolled them it out and started slicing the strips and top coat for the apple tops.

This was the complicated part. Making those lattices. That was tedious. But once I finished it was purdy! The apple itself was similar to an actual pie crust because it was kind of crunchy and the crust...OMG the crust was so SWEET! All the juices from the spices, mixed with the crisp apple "crust" and the crust I prepared myself all made for a very tasty treat.

How to Harvest Onion Seeds

If you saw my post on seeds you saw me post a pic of onion seeds and how teeny tiny they are. I thought it would be a BEAST trying to get those things from the seed pod but once I figured it out, its really quite simple.

The seeds will come from this flower looking thing that I will call a seed pod because I wont pretend to know the right term. It will just shoot out from among the greens of your onions. I have some now and they will look like this. They arent all the way in bloom yet in this pic.












These are what the seed pods look like when they are bloomed and dried a bit. I got these seed pods from a local black farmer in my area ( YAY we have at least ONE!!!) and I asked him if I could have them and he cut them off the tops of some onions he was selling and he bagged them up for me. I could see the seeds in the little flower thingies and I tried to take some out by hand but it was cumbersome and time consuming. So, I just left them out to dry to see what happened. Well this pic right here is what happened. The flower petal dried up and reveled the seed inside. All I have to do now is just shake it and the seeds just fall right out.

I just gave the seeds a little shake and out they fell. I had to go inside to do it because the wind was blowing the seeds right out of my hand. Lo and behold today I noticed what looked like an onion growing right beside my back door right against the house!! I looked closer and sho nuff, the little bulb was right on top of the ground. Can you see it?

My Pothos is Out of Control!

Pothos is a common household plant that is as pretty as it is hardy. It will even grow for people with brown thumbs. You have to basically put this plant in a closet for 6 months and never give it water to even broach killing this one. I bought 2 Pothos hanging baskets from Publix a year and a half ago or so because they were so pretty and I couldnt resist. I hung them in the corners of my kitchen and let em go. They grew and grew and grew. They grew so much they touched the floor 3 times after I cut them back. They grew so much that I was able to fill this pot with the vines that grew from it. As it is a few of them are touching the floor and Im going to have to cut these back too. I really hate to throw any vines away after I cut them, but I have no one to give them to.

The Pothos in my kitchen touched the floor again and when my aunt came over one day she suggested I run them across the wall since I was running out of space for the cuttings. I was like, sure. Why not. So I grabbed some clear thumb tacks and used them to prop the vines up on the wall. Now it looks like Im about to run out of wall space for the Pothos vines. I couldnt even get all of the vines in the picture. These things are growing out of control!  Its a good problem to have though. 

Seeds like you never imagined...

carrot seeds

I have never ever even considered vegetable seeds before now. I barely even noticed them when I ate veggies where the seeds are in them like peppers and cucumbers but now that I have started this years garden off with seeds it really made me more aware of the seeds that later develop in to plants that bear fruit. A lot of the seeds are so TINY!!! I mean like, just trying to get a pinch will get you 10 seeds on your fingertips. Take these carrot seeds for instance. You can barely even see them. Imagine trying to plant one of these in a hole. Now I understand why the instructions say to surface sow and barely cover. LOL!!  These lettuce seeds are tiny but they still need to be sort of surface sewn too and they are easier to work with. I have a few more examples of seeds to show you. Notice that the onion seed looks like bits of tar or something. I never would have thought that and the Marigold flower seed is by far the most bizarre I have ever seen. I dont know what that looks like. Maybe mini brooms or something???

lettuce seeds

onion seeds

marigold seeds

cabbage seeds

broccoli seeds

Perennials and Bulbs - More Bang for the Buck

I never buy any type of flower that will not come back for me in the spring. I barely any want to take peoples flowers that I know wont come back because once it takes its winters nap, I want it to wake up again, not lay down in perpetual sleep. Thats why you should always buy perennial flowers, not annuals. Annuals only live one season and die, never to return. However perennials and bulbs just keep coming back every year even bigger and better. Take my elephant ears in this pot. I dug up a few bulbs out of my grandmothers back yard last summer and put them in 4 different places in my yard. When fall hit, they died but look at them now. They have made a come back and they will keep coming back and multiplying so you can spread some  love by giving some to someone else or put more bulbs in different locations. Those hydrangea bushes turn to sticks in fall and winter, but its early April and all the leaves are already back. These bushes look good on their own but good LAWD they are GORGEOUS when the flowers bloom!! I have no idea what those orange flowers are. I just bought them a few years back because they were perennials and there were no more at Lowes that caught my eye that day and like I said, I just CANNOT buy annuals.

These pretty purple plants around my mailbox are called Wandering Dew. You have to actually try to kill these for them to die, and even still they may stick around. They just keep growing and growing. These plants seemed to be non-existent a couple weeks ago and now look. They already look good to only have been back a couple weeks. Im sure in another week or two they will flower. They have the cutest little purple flowers on them and to replant these all you have to do is just pull and replant and they will multiply for even more that will keep coming back year after year.

Big Chop? Oh yeah. This one was Gargantuan!!

I had been growing my hair out for a long while now. I went from nappy, to texlaxed, to full laxed, from teeny weeny afro to hair down to my waist. You know there was a lot of twists and turns on that road. The latest stop is quite shocking for most people I know. Here is my hair after I had been slowly secretly cutting it back some before I cut it all off.

I really grew my hair out that long to see if it could actually GET that long, you know? Once I knew that I could actually grow it that long, I no longer wanted it anymore. I know that may sound crazy, but its true. I cut it for a few reasons besides that. I have 3 daughters and doing their 3 heads plus trying to manage all that on my head was just too overwhelming for me. SOMEBODY hair was getting cut and I cant cut theirs so.....Then I just wanted something different. My favorite style of mine that I think looks the best on me is a short short cut so the more I thought about it I figured I would just do it.

First I didnt get a relaxer for 6 months and I went into my bathroom and cut all my hair off down to the new growth. Then I went to the barber shop and wore it like this for 6 months or so.

I wore it either a little shorter or sometimes a little longer than this. I just wet it and put mousse on it and rolled out. Of course I got bored with this too so I decided to let it grow out a little bit and be natural with about 5 inches of hair. about midway in I changed my mind and relaxed it and went with this haircut. 

People often ask me if I miss my hair or will I ever grow it back and the answer is no I do not miss all that hair. I am rather enjoying my stress free unwrap in the morning and go hairstyle. I think it suits me better than longer hair. Long hair seems to swallow me up and I need to be set free. Shorter hair makes me look younger too, in my opinion and it suits my personality. Will I ever grow it back? Ahhh, I dont know. I cant ever say what I will or wont do to my hair. My hair is just one big experiment and I cant commit to any concrete style or texture. I do what I feel and right now Im feeling this cut!

Creativity Abounds

Here are a couple things my children did on MS Paint.
My 7 year old daughter did this one.

Heres one that my son did.