Well friends! Spring has come and it was time to get gardens, pots and composts ready for the new year.
I cut the grass, composted the clippings then edged the front gardens and kept the pieces of grass and dirt for new pots. After I raked all the soil and turned it with a shovel then became inspired to plant sunflowers in my front yard! My inspiration took me seed shopping where I purchased a variety of seeds.
Once home, I mixed in compost, manure and soil into the permanent gardens. I watered the layers to 
allow for the soil to set. Once that was complete, I added in my seeds with my parrotlet beside me in her travel cage (it was a rare, sunny day we both desperately needed to enjoy). I covered all the front gardens with both small and giant varieties of sunflowers!!! I’m very excited to see what will happen during the year and how the house will transform. We have not had such large flowers before. I also planted a lot so our gardens will soon be very dense!
In addition, I also planted some herbs in the front garden, such as dill, for a change. No one tends to put herbs in their front yard so I decided to go a bit against the norm. Something to enjoy and eat as well!
So the pics below are my front gardens. These are the before shots. You can see where the darker soil is- that’s where seeds are planted. As things grow I’ll post updated pics!
The picture with the house and the window is where the giant sunflowers were planted. They’re all in the front yard mostly because it is where we get the most sunlight. I grow pumpkins in the front yard for this reason as well- we have many dead zones in our back yard due to a lack of light.
Next I potted a few planters with a mixture of soil and compost from our compost in the backyard! I added in the one some dill and the other, which is actually a handing basket, rosemary and oregano We will have and edible hanging basket this year.
After, I began on my pumpkin patch. It is not very big and I usually only keep 2-3 vines to allow enough room for my pumpkins, which tend to grown across the front yard. I dug out a hole and pushed the old soil to the side and added in fertilizer and mixed. After I remade the hole then added in a wheel barrel full of our compost and mixed the soil again. In the third mix, I added in manure to allow for very rich soil. I will have to feel these guys many times with compost and fertilizer through the year as they are very greedy plants! I watered the soil to allow the nutrients to soak in. However, the seed are not in yet, they are newly planted in peat pots in the house. Oh, and I have both regular sized and giant atlantic sized pumpkins. Oh yeah.
Compost and fertilizer mixed in.
Manure mixed in as a final step in the pumpkin patch.
Next, I read about using 5 or 10 galleon pails as pots for pumpkins! So I made a trip to Home Depot and got 4, 5 galleon pails which I drilled holes in the bottom. This is a much cheaper option than buying planters if you don’t mind the orange! $3.00 compared to $15.00 at least! I also prepared 3 smaller planters that I found in the shed. I will use 2 of the large orange pails for a pumpkins, one for cucumber, and one for white scallop squash. The small planters will be: 1 for basil, 1 for lettuce, and 1 for cilantro. Parsley grows at random in our house now because we’ve used our compost and moved dirt so many times. It pops up every year in weird places…
DIY PLANTERS: Great for limited space or balconies!
First step, get compost!
Second, get your 5 galleon buckets from a hard ware store or old pots. Make sure to drill holes in the bottom of the buckets…. Now begin putting in some of the middle grade compost into the pails (all the heavily decomposed material went into my pumpkin patch…). If you have good compost you could definitely use it instead.
Third… Remember I edged my grass? Well I took a lot of dirt with it! It is garden dirt so decent soil, and grass can decay so I put all my edge clippings into my pails and made sure to put the grass upside down so it doesn’t grow up and out!
Last, I added another small layer of compost, then soil and manure. I mixed the soil and manure layers to create a rich combination, then slid the 4 orange buckets away under the house until my peat pots are ready to plant (started early indoors to get huge crop this year, especially with the giant pumpkins…).
The small pots joined the hanging basket out front in the sun. There I planted the basil, lettuce and cilantro into them. I think they will look very pretty out there! Having lots of different herbs on hand will reduce us having to buy them from the store and will help keep most of our food within 100 miles. We use a lot of herbs in our cooking, especially parsley, oregano, and cilantro.
As I did this, I also got inspired to make a mini compost to go outside our back door. I mostly did this because a lot of worms left with the soil when I took out the bottom compost… My dad wasn’t too happy about that as he uses the worms for fishing. So I decided to make him a worm box! I found an old container with lid and drilled holes in both the bottom of the container and the lid to allow for leakage and air to come in.
First I added a layer of soil, then some rich compost, then some new compost which included moss and grass clippings. As I found worms, I added them into the container.
Next I added more broken down compost and added in a lot of worms that I found in colonies… or dirt balls, whichever you want to call them. I don’t have a technical term for their mass groupings.
After my mom made dinner, I took her cauliflower and sweet potato skins and extras and added them into the box for new food for the worms. Our new compost system is that we add our smaller fruit and veggie extras into the worm box outside the back door, and larger things, such as jack-o-lanterns and grass clippings, will go to the big compost in the back yard. Or it will all go to the back yard when the worm box fills.
Oh! And if you haven’t seen them before, these are the peat pots. They are hosting my seeds until they’re big enough to go outside 🙂
Going Sustainable 