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Self-Reliant Yuppies
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This blog moved to join No Ordinary Homestead. We're setting a challenge for ourselves: Provide enough produce in our own back yard to supply the majority of our fruit and veggie needs. If we can't grow it, we want to buy it within 10 km of our home.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'garden'
Another hour in the garden...
Just spent another bit of time pulling weeds, trimming trees and just trying to get a grip on things in the garden. Overwhelming is certainly one way of describing it! I took some more photos but I ba...
A bit of progress in the garden
Well, we finally did something about the garden. I feel guilty for not going back there the last two days but Monday I was still recovering from working back there 3 hours on Sunday...and today it was...
I almost can't bear to look...
All right...the time has finally come. I am posting pictures of the garden regardless of how painful or embarrassing it might be. Who knows...maybe it will motivate me to get something going back ther...
Our seedlings are indeed seedlings!
As usual I'm a bit overdue to write about what is happening with our little seedlings - but what can you do? I did take some photos of them on March 18th which was about a month after they'd been plan...
What we got from Burpee
So I've mentioned that we got seeds from Burpee a few times now...and you may be wondering what we ordered...so here goes - it's a LONG list, I know. But the seeds there cost a fraction of the price h...
Cayenne harvesting
We got quite a few nice peppers from our cayenne plants despite not really giving much love or attention to them. We decided to harvest a few of the peppers before we went away last week and hung them...
An excess of tomatoes leads to...
...me in the kitchen making pasta sauce from fresh crushed tomatoes, a task which sounds more daunting than it is.When I was at the grocery story last week, I picked up some ground beef to make spaghe...
Eggplants, chilies and tomatoes - oh my!
Once again it's been a while since our last garden update so here goes...I mentioned once or twice that we are giving our lettuce a try in window boxes along our courtyard and at the front of the hous...
Housewarming plants
Last weekend we had a rather large housewarming party at our house with about 50 guests and 15 kids...it was definitely a pretty big deal and we were completely blessed to have gorgeous weather which ...
Outdoor fires are so hot right now
I saw this extremely cool tutorial on how to build your own outdoor fire pit and I'm wondering where we could set one of these up without needing to move it...which of course would be impossible the w...
Tomatoes galore
So far, everything is still thriving in the greenhouse and our tomatoes are now showing some massive signs of life. Here's a general view when you glance in the direction of the tomatoes....As you ca...
Our new fig tree and how to grow figs
I can't believe I didn't write about this sooner but I guess I've had other things on my mind...When Stefan's family was here two weeks ago, his aunt brought us a lovely little fig tree. It has severa...
Our venture into gooseberry wine
I figure it's about time for an update about the gooseberry wine we are attempting to create. In case you missed our first post, you can read it here.Did I mention we won't be able to drink it for a y...
Let there be a lettuce fest!!
After the first 12 lettuce plants we had were promptly eaten by slugs as soon as they hit the ground, we have decided that we are not yet ready to give up. I mentioned before that we found some lettuc...
Photos from the harvest and our new freezer trunk
Somehow I completely forgot about adding photos to my post yesterday so I will post them now. Must have had a blond moment :)Here's a photo of our red current harvest. As I said, it came out to about ...
Eating our first harvest of veggies
Tonight at dinner we ate our first zucchinis and cucumbers from our greenhouse. The zucchinis were still rather small but Stefan prepared them with lots of fresh black pepper and salt, diced onions, g...
A garden update
As promised in my previous post, I just went out into the garden to take a few pictures to share of the plants. Normally I would wait a while but since the photos in the last post are 9 days old anywa...
No searches this week
Normally I would have posted my weekly searches blog yesterday but there really weren't any new searches leading to this blog this week. Well, there were plenty about Rob Rainford and more of the same...
Gooseberry harvest & our first chili
Today we harvested gooseberries from the bush in our garden. It's amazing how much fruit was packed on this one bush. It's actually about 4 kilos (9 pounds) of berries so now we're trying to figure ou...
Irrigation system nearly complete
Well we seem to be having a bit of a problem with the timer but we haven't been out there yet when the sprinklers are supposed to be on so things may indeed be running perfectly. We will be going out ...
Water in the hizzaus
We've just completed the water portion of today's entertainment schedule. We have successfully hooked up the watering system and have resolved the water leak just inside the barn door where the flex h...
A watering system weekend...and more
This weekend we will be finishing the setup of the watering system in the greenhouse and into the raised beds. We will be going out of town on Thursday and not return until Sunday so we absolutely hav...
Greenhouse update
I think I promised another update quite a while ago and although you did see a lot of the plants in the recent video, I think photos are able to show the progress much better. We moved the plants into...
The current state of our garden
Although we have made some progress in the garden over the past month or so, we still have a whole lot of work to do. We thought we would post a quick video update just to let you see what we have don...
Create your own beverage garden
We have lots of space for herbs in our garden and several herbs are already thriving there. Our lavender bushes have come back nicely and even the small one I moved is starting to show some signs of l...
The seedling update is long overdue
My last post about the seeds was April 11th. Not good, I know. We've made a MASSIVE amount of progress since then, I am very happy to report. We did have a few casualties from Hurricane Ayla and I th...
No more 40 kilo bags of concrete
The foundation is finished. The 35 - 25 kilo bags of concrete were not even remotely close to what we needed. Perhaps he meant to sell us 40 kilo bags instead...but we still would have needed more. Af...
New seeds & a bigger mini-greenhouse
When we were at Hagebau, the local home improvement store today, we picked up new soil starter pods and a bigger greenhouse that can hold 40 plants and has a much higher roof. So the cucumbers, both c...
Our ideal garden - Chilies
It's official. We've started the first cayenne plants. We planted 5 sets of seeds today so we'll be monitoring them closely. We have a few other favorites to start growing in mind as well.Jalepenos - ...
Building the first of the raised beds
Around 1.30pm this afternoon we finally were finished with our trip to the home improvement store and various other errands. It was time to get started on building the raised beds.We decided to start ...