When life gives you cucumbers ... Make Pickles!

Between work, hubby, boys, and the garden ... well, things have been a bit crazy lately.  Currently I am over run with squash, zucchini and cucumbers!  So ... I am making the best of the cucumber situation and making pickles!

I'll have to do something with squash and zucchini later ... right now I need to go to the store and buy more jars, lids, onions ... and other assorted stuff for canning ... better hurry because there is more in the garden growing before my eyes!

I'll get back to business soon!

Progress in the Shop and Progress in the Garden!

We've been working hard here at the MooreMagnets house! 

Hubby spent a lot of time on the tractor this past weekend moving dirt around in the garden and then running the disk harrow over it to loosen it up.  I have to give him props because he sure has gotten better on the tractor! 

When we moved here and got the tractor neither one of us had much experience with a big garden or a tractor.  So after 3 or 4 years the dirt had been moved all over the place creating a lot of mountains (ok hills) and valleys! 

Now it is nice and smooth, and almost ready for planting.  All of that wood needs to be cut and moved to form raised beds.  I'm starting with two for now for some cold weather veggies.  The pallet eyesore is my new compost and there will be a second one on the other corner.  Maybe I'll plant some beans or gourds around them to make the pallets look prettier!

I've been out working in the shop today though.  I have quite a nice stack of work to do there! 

You will be pleased to know that I enjoyed that glass of ice tea before I came in to write this post though!

Sweet Potatoes are Sprouting!

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I grabbed an apple and noticed that some sweet potatoes were sprouting!  Originally I had bought a bunch of sweet potatoes thinking that I would cook them all and freeze the extras.  Apparently that was too many since these 3 wouldn't fit into the pot, and well, you know the rest of the story because here they sat uncooked.

So, instead of tossing them in the compost or garbage I am going to try to grow sprouts for the garden!

So, here they sit, about half in water and held up by toothpicks on my window sill.  At least it gives me something to look at when I am doing the dishes!

I'll update you on sweet potatoes as they grow ... for now I need more sprouts!

Homemade weed killers ... a tutorial and results

I really dispise spraying chemicals all over the place ... seems that you need a gagillion chemicals around your house for cleaning, pest control, weed control, and all sorts of other things. I have seen a lot of neat ideas for storing all of these bottles of stuff on Pinterest lately, but what I would really like to do is take a different approach.

First, I would like to reduce the number of chemicals in my house significantly! Second, I would like to take a more natural approach for tackling these things. Lastly, I would really like to have more space for things I actually want in my house and not so much space dedicated to stuff I dislike having in my house.

Therefore I have been really researching homemade remedies for things. Now, it would be wonderful to say that I could eliminate my need for weed killer 100% by mulching and pulling weeds. However, since we live on almost 7 acres and I love to garden veggies and flowers ... I am fairly realistic that I don't have what it takes to maintain all of that without a little weed killing intervention.

So ... I have seen several recipes for weed killers that are a mixture of distilled white vinegar and diswashing soap. Which is absolutely fantastic since it is the same two things that I am mixing together for tub, shower, sink, and general bathroom cleaner. You can find a post about that here: http://mooremagnets.blogspot.com/2012/01/skeptical-about-homemade-cleaning.html

So, I am trying out the recipe for 1 quart white vinegar with 1 tablespoon of Dawn dishwashing liquid.  I have to note that the mixture that I am using today has more Dawn dishwashing liquid because I am using my partially empty bottle of the shower cleaner mixture which is 2 parts white vinegar to 1 part Dawn dishwashing liquid.  However, at the moment I don't have another spray bottle empty.

Here is the weed ... I gave it a good spray

 

And this is 24 hours later - Please note that we have not had any rain and our temperatures just barely reached freezing, so no frost was involved.

 

I am actually pretty pleased with the results on this particular weed.  However, there were several others that I sprayed and the results were not nearly as significant.  So, this morning I poured more vinegar in my mixture to make it closer to the 1 quart to 2 tablespoons recipe.  I will update you again in a few days! 

My Garden doesn't know it is January!

Do you see that?  Those little sprouts coming up!!  That's some of my crocus bulbs ... Apparently this cold/warm/cold/warm has messed with my bulbs and my crocus are going to bloom way too early!

You might wonder why I have a strawberry pot turned over there too.  Well, the bottom of the pot fell off, and I thought it would make the perfect little toad house!  So send the memo ... Toads, I have the perfect little house waiting for you!  There will be plenty of little bugs for you to eat in the spring!

Yay! The Patio is Finished!

As some of you may know we did pour the patio concrete on December 23rd ... Oh I know, RIGHT before Christmas ... cause you know, I didn't have anything else to do! I have my husband to thank for that timing.


However, even though it was stressful, it was really nice to have it done before Christmas - a nice way to wrap up the year with a project checked off the to do list!




Thanks to some really nice weather after Christmas I have had coffee sitting in my chairs at the little table. I can't wait until spring to put some plants in all those pots and get the garden areas on each side done! And, thanks to my wonderful mother, I have a nice gift certificate to a nursery to buy plants in the spring! Isn't it awesome how mom's just know the perfect gift sometimes! Although my Dad gave me an equally awesome gift ... a gift certificate that can be spend anywhere since it was cash!



So earlier this week I checked out this book from the library, but decided that I needed my own copy to dog ear pages! I have a feeling that the gardens are going to overflow again this year!

Gourds ... The gift that keeps on giving ...

Here is our string of gourds


We planted gourds in our garden last year - I thought it would be fun to grow some bird house gourds. This may be a decision that I regret! I think we might have too many! I am trying to bring them to cub scouts one night so that all of the cub scouts can make a bird house and take it home. Hopefully that can happen in the fall.

For now, we are enjoying listening to them rattle together in the wind ... and wondering how many will pop up in the garden ... the gourds are going to take over ... they are planning a gourd revolution ... watch out beans, corn, tomatoes ... the gourds are coming ...