Author: AuSable

Garden – 05/24/2010

Posted on by AuSable

Once again I got myself into another little side project with the garden. This time it has to do with setting up a makeshift irrigation system as cheaply as possible for the garden.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking about how to run a water line over to the garden area as easily as possible. Since dragging around a 100′ hose in the yard is just too cumbersome. And trenching the yard to put the irrigation line underground is just overkill.

Once again, Menards was having a sale on plumbing/irrigation parts, and while I was looking at the sales flyer the idea hit for running the irrigation piping on the top rail of the fence going around the yard, and just securing it to the fence rail with zip ties. So with a plan in place, it was time to pick up all the parts for this project.

It turns out that this whole project only ran me about $50, and that included the crimping tool which was $9.99. Yeah I could have done this even more cheaply and gone with plastic quick connect fittings which would have been ~$6 total instead of $22 total for all the brass fitting. But for me, the extra $16 was worth the splurge.

I guess we’ll see over time how this set-up hold up to the weather.

Garden is planted – 05/18/2010

Posted on by AuSable

Over this past weekend, I finally transplanted all the seedlings that I grew. Unfortunately I ran into a bit of an issue, since almost all the seedlings developed a bad case of sunburn on their leaves. Guess I shouldn’t have given the seedlings full sun right off the bat, since I put them out for the full day on Friday the 14th.

Last year my issue was “damping off” (see here & here), and now this year sunburns. Man if it isn’t one thing its another.

Salad Table – 05/18/2010

Posted on by AuSable

Amazing what another three days can do, since the Spicy Greens Mix and the Bordeaux really added some height. While the Outredgeous in the front seems a little bit slow to the party, but I think its only because the Outredgeous is more of a head style of romaine lettuce.

For cell #2 I thought that I would mix it up and I filled up half the cell with Burpee French Blush radishes, and divide the other half for Burpee Mesclun Spicy Mix and Burpee Mesclun Salad Mix. I got each packet at Menard’s for about $0.62, so I thought what the heck, why not try to grow radishes in the salad table.

Salad Table – 05/15/2010

Posted on by AuSable

You can really start to see all the different greens starting to fill in that first section of the salad table. Another couple of weeks and I should be ready for my first harvest of greens. I’ve also got all the transplants chilling out in the salad table, waiting to be planted in the ground.

Salad Table – First Planting – 05/13/2010

Posted on by AuSable

It’s been eight days since I sowed all the seeds for this frame, and for the previous four days its been raining heavily, and I think all that rain was what the salad table needed since I’m just starting to see some germination activity, more so from the Spicy Greens Mix and the Bordeaux, than from the Outredgeous. I guess we’ll see what happens in a couple more days.

Seed Starting – 05/10/2010

Posted on by AuSable

Look at that sweet corn grow! And check out all the rest of the random stuff that I’ve gotten from my farmer neighbor (leeks, fingerling seed potatoes), as well as from the local nursery (white and red onion sets, sage, basil, cilantro, rosemary.)

You can also see in photo #5 the free seeds (see here) that I got from my neighbor starting to germinate.

Smoking Homemade Bacon – 05/01/2010

Posted on by AuSable

This was one of those projects that should have been completed at least a couple of weeks back. But each free weekend that I had in March & April, would somehow get booked.

So a little bit of back story on this project. Around mid-March I ended up being part of a syndicate that was going to purchase a whole pig from The Slagel Family Farm down in central Illinois. Well something went sideways in the order, and instead of a whole pig (~200lbs, dressed) being delivered to Mado they delivered half a pig (~100lbs, dressed) instead. It was kind of a bummer to get half a pig, since we were splitting this pig four ways. But in the end, half a pig worked out better, since we were struggling just to refrigerate half a pig. So I don’t even know where we would have stored another 100lbs of pork meat and bones. Continue reading →

Salad Table – First Planting – 05/05/2010

Posted on by AuSable

Now that I ended up picking up a very large bag of potting mix at Costco. I thought that I would plant up one of the cells of the salad table to get some greens growing.

So in one of the sections, I filling it up to the top with potting soil, then divided it into three smaller sections. I ended up using the follow seeds from Johnny’s in this first section:

In the back cell: Spicy Greens Mix
Center cell: Bordeaux
Front cell: Outredgeous

Now the true experiment begins!