Creative Crop Covers

We had a freeze warning this morning.  As I am writing this, it is probable freezing outside even (I'm scared to look).  Fortunately, I monitor the weather and new this ahead of time so I could cover my garden to give my plants protection.  I put stuff on the plants to cover them when it was still light enough out that the sun would heat up the air and ground under the covers and kind of create a mini-greenhouse effect, without the expense of a greenhouse.  Here's what I used:

Here, ordinary plastic shopping bags cover  2-gallon pots and window boxes

Plastic milk jugs or juice bottles with the bottoms cut out of them make perfect free cloches for these broccoli seedlings.

Clear plastic sheeting (a drop cloth, maybe?) makes a great garden protection (that's actually the same piece of plastic that covered the front garden box and kept its contents alive all winter)....

but any color will do, even black.  I just need to make sure to uncover this as soon as possible in the morning so the plants don't cook once the sun is hitting it directly again!

Tarps offer a little heavier duty protection, as do blankets of any sort, such as the fleece ones here.   I didn't bother covering my berry bushes since, being relatively native (?) to this habitat, I'm pretty confident they can handle it and I didn't cover the chives because I'm pretty sure chives are indestructible!

I've also used plastic wrap tacked into place to protect plants on some really cold nights, but a lot of my plants are already getting too big for that!

Oh, and I bit the proverbial bullet and checked the temperature outside:  it is currently 32 degrees out (as of 1am), with a lot of hours of night left to go.  It might get as low as the lower 20s this morning, so let's hope my "crop condoms" are enough!

Book Review (and GIVEAWAY): The Complete Idiot's Guide to Urban Homesteading

I don't often dedicate an entire post to just one book (in fact, have I ever?), but The Complete Idiot's Guide to Urban Homesteading deserves it.  It was one of the many books that I read and/or flipped through (have I ever mentioned that I have the attention span of a fruit fly on crack?) during my semi-involuntary partial exile from the internet (I still had my phone....) while my computer was being repaired during most of last month.  Usually, a non-fiction book without colorful pictures for me to pine about not having a "pin it" button won't appeal to me (fruit fly thing), but this one WOWed me.  In fact, I had to put it down several times to harass the author to tell her how great it was.  Fortunately for her, it was the middle of the night and she was sleeping, so she just woke up to my gushing on her Facebook page.

Have I mentioned how much I love this book?


The text is only 297 pages (with an additional 26 pages of ultra-awesome appendixes) but the information jam packed in there is un-freaking-believable!  Granted, it doesn't go into a great deal of depth about any subject (although Appendix C contains the most thorough and best garden planning chart I've ever seen in my life, so that there would justify the purchase!), but it is a fantastic introduction to a wide variety of topics, including (but not limited to): info about zoning regulations; keeping animals even if you don't have any land including chickens, goats, rabbits, and bees; making homesteading work for you; growing food without a yard; basically Gardening 101, aquaponics; food preservation; soap making; cheese making; composting (a really, really good section on composting, I might say!); energy conservation/alternative energy; and foraging!  Obviously, there isn't enough room in 297 to teach you everything you need to know about so many subjects, but there is enough information in each area to help you at least figure out if it would be feasible for your lifestyle to do it or not and Appendix B is a resources section with books and websites pertaining to each subject so you can learn as much as you want to by checking those out.

As a super busy person (with the attention span of a fruit fly on crack, as I mentioned), I also liked how the book was broken down into short segments.  It actually occurred to me that if one spouse in a household was wanting to start doing some of this stuff, but the other was nay-saying it, this would be the perfect book for the enthusiastic spouse to leave in the bathroom (with all other reading material removed and cell-phone ban in the bathroom, so they can't escape).  No, that is not the situation in my house (besides, a cell-phone ban would never stick here), but I've had a number of people comment before that they wish their spouse would get on board with their homesteading dreams.

***************************

I love this book so much, I wish I could keep a stack of them with me at all times to give to anyone that showed even the slightest interest in becoming an urban homesteader, but since I'm poor, that's obviously not an option.  What I will do however, is give away one copy to a lucky reader of this blog!  Yay!  Cue confetti!  All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post saying what urban homesteading activities you would like to pursue, but haven't, and what is stopping you from trying.  On Friday, April 27, late in the evening (maybe I'll do a whole party thing on Facebook or something), I will randomly select one winner and post their name as shown on the comments (so don't post anonymously or I can't give it to you.  Sorry) on Facebook and Twitter.  That person has 24 hours to email me at adventuresofathriftymama at hotmail dot com (translated into an actual email address), or I will move on to select someone else.  Then that person would have 24 hours to contact me, etc, etc (because I'm doing this with the paycheck Amazon is kind enough to give me almost every month and it tends to burn a hole in my pocket if I wait too long to spend it).  Good luck and may the fermentation (or something) be with you! (Fine print: there is no way I can spring for international shipping, so I'm going to have to limit this contest to US mailing addresses only.  Sorry!)   Sorry, contest is now closed!  Congratulations, Elizabeth Walker!

-------------

Thanks to everyone that came over from Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways #22!

A Quick Guide to Creating an Edible Landscape

Last year's "jungle" of a garden was quite popular with the neighborhood kids.  It was perfect for the younger ones to play hide and seek or tag, but the older kids also enjoyed it immensely for their battles with Nerf guns!

Lawns are evil and must be destroyed.  Yes, it is true.  They sap resources and usually serve no purpose whatsoever.  I've long thought that gardens were a much prettier use of a limited yard space, ever since I first saw such a thing in Germany when I was 13 years old (it was actually West Germany at the time, but whatever).  As I grew up (and grew poorer), I realized that edible landscapes combine a lot of the aesthetic principles that make a garden more visually appealing than a boring green monoculture of grass (which is most likely an invasive species to boot), but also provide free or at least extremely cheap food!

Here is my quick guide to getting started in edible landscaping:

1)  Figure out what plants your family eats.  Make a complete list of every fruit, vegetable, and, if you think you might have the space, grains you ever buy and eat.  Don't worry about whether it is possible to grow them in your climate at this stage.  You are basically brainstorming at this point.

2)  Go through your list and figure out what can conceivably be grown in your area.  This can be more difficult that in seems, if you want it to be anyway.  Sometimes there are varieties of plants that will survive in your climate, if you just take the time to look for them.  For example, I'm currently trying to grow bananas in Michigan and my mom discovered a cold hardy variety of pecans that she's going to be growing.  I've also seen cold hardy kiwis, as another example.  If you want to stick with the "normal" plants for your area, that's fine too, of course, but it just limits what you can produce in your yard.  If there is a plant you really want that isn't hardy for your area (like pineapples in my case), you may want to consider adding a small greenhouse to your landscaping plans or growing it in containers and overwintering it in your house.

The curve on the left matches the driveway and the
tomatoes on the right are climbing the lamppost

3)  Plan your garden around your available space.  In the front section of my yard, there is an irregular shaped space caused by a weird curve in the driveway.  A linear garden wouldn't work well there, but the curved, freestyle rock-lined garden I put there works great.  I further incorporated existing elements of the yard into that garden by putting the corner of it around the lamppost that was there and using that as a vertical support for tomatoes last year (I'm thinking cucumbers will grow up it this year).  If you have limited space, you may also want to consider focusing on high yield plants for the space, like tomatoes or cucumbers, or things that grow in different seasons so you can cram two or three plantings in the space.  In one season, I might use the same space for lettuce, then tomatoes, then spinach.  Another small space trick is to use a lot of vertical gardening spaces, whether it be a shelf like I'm using in the above garden this year (see yesterday's post), attaching planting space to walls, hanging baskets, traditional trellises, or a PVC frame like I have on my square foot gardening boxes.

Pumpkin, tomatoes, and cucumbers growing on a vertical frame last year.  That's a lot of plants for four square feet of garden space!  This also created a feeling of privacy on the patio by creating a visual separation between the patio and the street.

That's basically it.  I sometimes oversimplify things in my mind, so if I missed something, feel free to add comments with your own tips or questions.  Or, if you want to get started and just want more ideas and inspiration, the following books are great.  Some of them have more "how-to" and others are more purely for the pictures, but either way will get your brain rolling!

-------------------------

This post and lots of other great ideas can be found on Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways

How Does My Garden Grow--a Trailer Park Homestead update

With my disappearance for nearly a month, the number one question in people's minds on my resurfacing seems to be what's growing on in the garden?  Well, the zombie garden isn't doing that great.  The celery seems to be mad about me sticking it outside for a while when we had some warm weather a couple years ago, the sweet potatoes and avocado haven't sprouted yet, and the pineapple looks like it is thinking about not rising from the dead after all, but I'm still trying!  The banana seeds haven't sprouted yet either, but apparently they can take several months to germinate (according to my mother, a Master Gardener), so I'm not too worried about them either.

My "normal" garden is going great though!  I have onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snap peas, carrots, lettuce, and spinach all above ground, planted outside.  There are also beets in the ground out there, but they haven't come up yet.  In the house, I have five varieties of tomatoes going, ranging from early to late, indeterminate and determinate varieties, so I should have tomatoes no later than the end of May or beginning of June and should keep having tomatoes all summer long!  Yay!  I miss tacos.  *sigh*  Tomatoes are one of those things that just don't seem right to buy off season (I've heard there are a ton of good reasons to not buy tomatoes in the book Tomatoland, but I haven't read it yet, so I'm not sure what all they are) and tacos just aren't the same without them! 

Here's what is currently growing on at the Trailer Park Homestead:

Much of the front garden area is growing on its own.  This rock lined area is primarily for herbs this year and has a great start with the perennials in there now: various mints, violets, and I think I even have seen some calendula coming up on its own.  I added a shelf to put more herbs or other small plants in to increase the vertical growing area.  All my berry bushes seem to have survived my neglect during the mild winter.

These are the carrots and spinach I planted last fall that didn't sprout in time for a fall harvest.  I covered this bed with plastic and they overwintered just fine!  Now there are additional onions and cauliflower growing in this bed too.  The back square foot gardening bed contains broccoli (some of which has been eaten up by a mysterious critter and needs to be replanted!) and the as-yet-unsprouted beet seeds.

Last year, this was my "St. Patrick's Day bed" but this year, I got the entire spring garden planted before St. Patrick's Day.

As much as I have growing outside, it still is very early in the growing season here in Michigan, so more tender plants like the five varieties of tomatoes and three varieties of peppers I have started all must stay indoors under fluorescent lights for now.

It is with great sadness...

I must announce my leaving the blogosphere.  It is just too much for me to handle to take care of my kids and husband, tend the garden, homeschooling, working out, and everything else, so something has to give. 

 APRIL FOOLS!

Okay, I have been overwhelmed a lot lately, but that isn't why I haven't posted in nearly a month.  My computer was having some fairly minor issues, but we wanted to make sure they were taken care of before the warranty ran out, so we took it in a few weeks ago for repair, but it required sending off to somewhere else so it took a long time to get it back.  I finally have it back and (mostly) set back up the way it was supposed to be (they either reset it back to factory settings or it isn't actually the same computer) so I should be back to blogging regularly in the next day or two, probably starting with what I've been up to for the past few weeks with no computer!

Oh, and a little confession: something has given lately.  I haven't been cooking homecooked meals every night.  Since my classes I've been taking at the gym are right about when I "should" be in the kitchen and the extreme-ish couponing (30-50% off my grocery total on average!) I've been doing lately makes it about as cheap to eat more storebought stuff, I've been cheating a couple/few nights a week and not cooking "real" food.  *hangs my head in shame*