The Humble Beginnings of My Orchard

January is Fruit Tree Sale Month in this neck of the woods, so after doing a lot of research I have been hitting up the sales and area nurseries, obtaining plants. The varieties I chose are said to do well in my area (a hot and humid zone 8b). Here's what I have so far:

1. Two Meiwa (Sweet) Kumquat Trees - from Houston Garden Center. The grower is Saxon-Bechnel and the trees are grafted onto most likely Volkamer Lemon rootstock (I have learned from other citrus growers more experienced than myself that rootstock makes a huge difference for citrus trees - see this great blog article about different rootstocks in the Houston area). This particular rootstock is unfortunately not the best but I was having a ridiculous time finding kumquats (they were sold out everywhere) so I decided to try my luck. They are being placed in a raised bed in the front anyways, so hopefully their feet won't get too soggy.

2. One variegated pink lemon - from Harris County fruit Tree Sale. The grower is Brazos Valley Citrus, so it is on a decent rootstock, either Carrizo citrange or Trifoliate. This one seemed like an interesting one to try - it has beautiful variegated leaved and the lemons are green and yellow striped until they ripen to yellow like a regular lemon. But then, you cut it open and they are pink! The original pink lemonade! I'm looking forward to it!

3. One 'Browns Select' satsuma mandarin - from Wabash Feed Store in Houston. The grower is also Brazos Valley Citrus so the rootstock is again either Carrizo citrange or Trifoliate. These fruits are known for being rather prolific and very, very tasty!

4. One Celeste Fig - from Houston Garden Center (I love their half-price sale!) These are supposedly very good figs for this area. Hopefully I will have good luck with it (and get the fruit before the birds do!).

5. One 'Sunshine Blue' blueberry - this is a Southern Highbush dwarf variety that is said to be very prolific and grows well in containers. This one was so hard to find, but I found it at Wabash as a bare root plant. The thing was loaded with blossoms, so it pained me to pluck them all off (I have learned that it is a good idea to pull the blossoms off fruit plants the first few years so that it can put effort into growing good roots and leaves first. Then you will have a good strong plant to bear a great harvest!) This is a self-fruitful plant but it will produce a larger harvest if planted with other varieties of blueberries - I plan to get a few rabbiteye blueberry plants very soon.

To plant this one, I soaked some peat moss in water for a few hours (I filled a 5 gallon bucket halfway with peat moss then added water and realized that the peat moss expanded WAY more than I thought it would so I had to split it in half into another 5 gallon bucket. I only ended up using half of that - so for peat moss, a little goes a LONG way!). I added the soaked peat moss to the pot (a little more than a third the volume). I then added Ladybug Vortex Potting Soil (good quality organic stuff), Leaf Mold Compost from Nature's Way Resources (amazing stuff!!!), and some pine bark mulch to make up the remaining volume of the pot. I mixed it all together, planted the blueberry, and watered it. This was two days ago, and it hasn't died yet so hopefully it won't! It is in a smaller pot than I would have liked, but it was all I had, and it was better than letting the bare root plant just sit there. So I may replant it in the fall.

Plants I've had for a while:

6. One Mexican Lime Tree - I have had this tree for years and have abused it and yet it still provides me with some fruit. I am going to try to actually start taking care of it and see if it does better (watch it die on me). If you look in the picture below, spotting the Mexican Lime is like finding Waldo:

If you look at the top left hand corner, you can see a lime growing on one of it's gangly branches. I am also growing a prolific crop of weeds in the same pot as my lime. I actually thought it died last winter so I threw it in the compost pile at the old house. Lucky for the fact that I am a lazy gardener, I didn't chop it up and amazingly it came back from the graft a few months later so I repotted it and there it sits.

7. One Satsuma Mandarin of unknown variety - perhaps even more abused than the lime, it struggles along in a bed of weeds, no water, and no fertilizer. And it still gave me I think close to 15 of the most amazing tasting mandarins I have ever had. Which is why I am definitely going to start taking better care of this one! (can you see it back there behind all the mess?)

8. One Meyer Lemon - I got this a year ago in the Lowes clearance for $2. So who knows if it really is what it said it was. It has grown quite a bit since I replanted it a few months ago but it has suckers growing from below the graft and does not look entirely healthy, so if it starts being a pain I may just chuck it.

So there you have it! My "orchard" is off to a good start I think! Once I get the compost in, I will be ordering rabbiteye blueberries, 'Kiowa' blackberries for along the back side fence, and some 'Sweet Charlie' strawberries. I am excited, but no fruit this year. Patience . . .

"Homestead" Plans

I have been planning like crazy around here, trying to get something set up before the start of spring (which is here early I guess, with all this hot weather we've been having! Although I have a feeling we're in for it in February - it has been so warm everything has been blooming, including all the fruit trees, and a major freeze and drop in temperatures in February would be devastating.)

But things are finally starting to take shape. About a week ago, I was laying in bed, unable to sleep, and I came up with the whole plan for the backyard area (if only I could know what to do with the front!). Will it work? Who knows. The lighting of the lot is the main issue. The bed design will be on the side that gets the most sun, but it changes from season to season how many hours. But it's worth a try!

Here is the current overall plan:

To give you an idea, here's what the backyard looks like right now:

So basically the right hand side will contain the beds, and the fencing, with the arbor that will lead to the possible chicken coop behind the garage, will be back by all those trees. Why am I going to put up fencing, you ask? Well, a few reasons. . .

1. We have snakes. Not that putting up a fence will keep snakes out (I'm not that dumb). But behind our current fence is a wet weather creek. A few weeks ago my father in law killed a water moccasin snake right outside the door in the fence back there. Nasty venomous snake + curious 2 year old toddler = not good combination. By putting fencing, I can contain where said two-year-old goes, so that she does not go back there digging for snakes in the bushes. The plan is to put a bunch of crushed gravel on the ground back there (yea for no grass to water!) I have heard that snakes don't like that stuff because there's nowhere for them to hide, plus I imagine it sucks to crawl on it. We will be eventually putting it around the vegetable beds in the toddler-approved part of the yard as well. So anyways, I guess it's partly for my peace of mind.

2. It will block the sight of nosy, rule-following neighbors. They say "good fences make good neighbors" and that is probably very true when you are wanting to house chickens in a not so chicken-friendly area. I actually did look into the restrictions for my area, and the wording was recently changed from a more restrictive and specific rule, to a vague and debatable one (yea for me!) It states: "Homeowners may only keep customary household pets on the lot". What the hell does that mean? Well, I say that chickens are a customary pet to keep - it's not like I am keeping a zebra or something! Chickens have been domesticated for thousands of years, right? That sounds like a pretty customary human companion, does it not? I rest my case.  However, my neighbors may not interpret that rule the way I do. So, fencing to block out sight and noise for as long as possible, and then when they find out, as someone will eventually, taking a peek back there will reveal a beautiful Williams-Sonoma-esque chicken coop (as mentioned in this post) and perhaps they will be ok with it since I don't have stinky chickens pecking around a rusted out car up on cinder blocks 

That's the plan, anyways. . . This is what the real area where we may put chickens actually looks like right now:

As you can see it is a rather large area that is currently a scary snake pit (in my mind anyways). Be it chicken coop or something else, it is wasted space right now, so anything other than what it is would be great!

For the vegetable beds in the back, I came up with this plan:

Total sq. ft. (minus the little squares at the top which will contain citrus trees or blueberries) is 228 sq. ft. Not too shabby. I could hopefully get at least a few veggies and some herbs to grow back there (I hope!). I have broke this up into two stages - Stage 1 is the green, Stage 2 the pink.  I figure I will complete Stage 1 first, then see how that fares (and I will have to opportunity to remind myself what random places the sun shows up in the summer) and if all is good, I will complete Stage 2 later in the year (fall, perhaps). I would do it all at once, however with the sun coverage being as iffy as it is, and materials being expensive (I have decided to use cedar wood for the beds which is more pricey, but they look nice, rot slower, and offer some insect resistance) I figured it would be better to do this in pieces. If the Stage 1 area ends up getting not good sun during other parts of the year, I still have a pretty garden layout that I can plant other things in, like herbs, so it wouldn't be a total wash.

So anyways, stay tuned! Things are going to start happening very soon!

Community Garden Harvest 1/31/13

Trying to keep updated with my harvesting (maybe I will finally buy a scale and start weighing stuff!). I harvested some more carrots (there are maybe only 6 or 7 left in the ground) and a grocery bag full of lettuce and spinach. It has been so warm here (almost 90 F in January. Seriously.) I was worried about it bolting so I harvested it all, but I cut it an inch from the soil to see if I may get another round (if it doesn't stay this ridiculously warm!)

Here are my carrots:

I had two more "legged" carrots and a small round spaceship carrot

And here's my leafy greens:

Now it's time to make a salad!

Recent Book Reviews

I have been reading like a crazy person lately! Thank goodness for interlibrary loans! I see cool book on Amazon, order from library, and get to read it before shelling out money. Works for me!

So here are a few book reviews (With OOOOO the best and O not the best. Why am I using O's instead of stars? Because I don't feel like figuring out how to make stars.):

1. Free Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard by Jessi Bloom

    Rating: OOOOO

Not only was this book fun to look at, but it was packed full of great, easy to read information too. It is kind of like a backyard chicken raising for dummies, but with a less humiliating cover. All the basics you need to know about keeping chickens, and keeping them in a lush urban or suburban backyard, is here. Many would scoff at the fancy-schmancy ideas for aesthetically pleasing chicken coops and chicken-friendly landscaping, but let's face it : when you live in suburbia (or a regular urban neighborhood) and not a farm, looks matter (especially when chickens may not exactly be legal or allowed but you're going to try to get away with it anyways. . .ahem. . .) I imagine I will have more of a problem if I set up a nasty looking coop than a Williams-Sonoma version such as the one below that was featured in the Wall Street Journal:

For the incredibly low price of $1299.99, 

you too can have this beautiful chicken coop 

which can only house 1 chicken comfortably.

This book gives you some ideas on how to build your own (that does not cost $1299.99). Aside from the information, it is a fun book to look through. If you are like me and think chickens are hilarious then you will love the random pictures of chickens wandering about in the landscape:

So to sum up, great information, and great pictures. I will be buying this one when I decide to make the leap towards illegal chicken ownership.

2. The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen

     Rating: OOOO

This book was a good read - it is more of an urban homesteading idea book. It had some very interesting ideas and discusses the basics of just about anything relating to the urban homestead, from planting and growing food in small spaces, to making your own bread and butter, to making safe and natural cleaning supplies, to harvesting rainwater and solar energy. It also discusses urban foraging and dumpster diving, such as how to find edible weeds in your neighborhood to how to use old food found in dumpsters. I personally found this last idea disgusting, but I guess it is good to have that knowledge just in case?  The most valuable part of this book for me was their section on how to make cleaning products for just about every purpose. I like that it is all there, no more google searches to find a product for this and a product for that. Once my current cleaning products are done, I plan on trying them. If nothing else, this book gave me hope that I can make do with the yard (homestead) that I've got, and I can make it a productive and enjoyable place - no 40 acres necessary (though I can still dream. . .)!

3. Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces by Gayla Trail

    Rating: OOOOO

I thought this was a fantastic book. Great ideas for growing lots of food in small spaces, from balconies to a few plots in you backyard. It has info of types of containers you can salvage for planting, numerous little projects, such as trash can potatoes (which I would like to try), and in the back it contains specific plant information. Very well written book and if you haven't checked out her blog, it is great - it's called You Grow Girl and it has a ton of useful information and wonderful inspiration for growing things in tight spaces and working with what you've got.

4. Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen

    Rating OOO

Written by the same folks as the Urban Homesteading book, this one is a book of various projects.  It was interesting to read, but it was a little too crunchy for me at this point. And I just simply have other projects (such as getting my homestead - well, the garden part) started that take priority over making my own soap and menstrual pads. I would have probably enjoyed the book more if I was bored and looking to make some changes in my life, but I feel I already have enough to handle at the moment. So maybe I will pick it up again one day, but for now, it is not for me.

5. The Vegetable Gardener's Container Bible: How to Grow a Bounty of Food in Pots, Tubs, and Other Containers by Edward C. Smith

Rating: OOOOO

I already owned his other book The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, and it is one of my two go to resources (the other being Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham which I reviewed here). So I was not surprised to find this book equally useful. This book contains everything you need to know about growing large amounts of food in containers, from the types of containers, to the type of soil, to the best plants for container growing. After reading this book from the library, I immediately bought it (found it for $4 used!). I only had one complaint about this book - basically all the containers he used to grow stuff for the book were these very expensive self-watering containers that were given for him to trial. Yes, he does give instructions on how to build a couple different self-watering containers of your own, but they aren't so pretty to look at. So the book in a way is an advertisement for these expensive planters. Nevertheless, it contains very useful information.

Ok I think 5 book reviews is enough for now - see I told you I have been reading a lot lately. My friendly neighborhood librarians are probably wondering what I am up to, this crazy lady that lives in a master-planned community checking out chicken and farm books. Oh well! :)

Makin' Do

I haven't posted here for quite a long time. Since the last time I posted, we have moved to a new house, and beautiful though it is, it is still in the 'burbs. To be honest, I was really upset about it for a very long time. But though I still get a very strong call to land, I have decided that it is better for me to make do than be all depressed about it.

Don't get me wrong - I still have bad days every once and a while where I scour the for sale listings. But now is not the time for that move. In the meantime, it can't hurt for me to sharpen my homesteading skills, so that's what I am going to be doing.

This past fall, I joined a community garden. It is a pain in the butt to drive there, and it is for a local food pantry so a certain percentage of the crop is donated (in lieu of having to pay a steep rental fee - it is only $30 for the year!) but I am still getting a small amount of homegrown produce for my family and I am learning a lot by doing!

This was my plot right after planting my broccoli plants, some garlic chives, and all of the carrot and leafy vegetable seeds:

A 'Packman' broccoli transplant:

I am so mad at myself for not taking pictures as the garden grew!!! And now all that's left in there are the carrots. Next time I will take pictures throughout the process!

This winter I have harvested a few bagfuls of mesclun mixed salad greens, lettuce, and spinach, as well as quite a few broccoli heads and sideshoots, and now some delicious carrots.

Here are a few pictures of the produce!

These were my first harvest of carrots:

And these were the second harvest (cleaned, of course):

I had a really funky looking carrot that looked like someone crossing their legs:

And last but not least some beautiful brocs (these were some of the sideshoots I harvested):

The broccoli was the best tasting broccoli I have ever had - none of the cruciferous vegetable bitterness you find in store brocs, but they were actually sweet!

I will soon be planting more leafy greens for a quick harvest before the major spring planting coming up soon.

In other news, our yard is going to start to be transformed. It is a good size, but it faces a weird direction (southeast-ish) and our neighbors' yards are filled with very tall trees so we don't get a whole lot of sunlight. But I am going to be attempting to make do!  The front bed (that receives some of the most sun of the whole yard) was ripped out this past weekend. No more small shade tree and Dr. Seuss shaped yaupons and freeze-burned annuals (well, there are a few still there, but they will come out shortly - my husband and my visiting father-in-law ran out of time).

Of course I don't have a "before" picture because I forgot to take one, so I had to use pictures from when we bought the house last summer 2012. I don't have a picture of the whole thing so you will have to put the two pictures together in your imagination:

And this is where we are at now:

Yep, I get that it looked nice in the summer and now it looks like crap. My neighbors have been most likely horrified by our seemingly wanton destruction of perfectly good landscaping. But I hope that in the end it will not look like crap and it will produce food. That is the plan anyways. . .

I am going to make an attempt at planting some fruit - mostly citrus, to be exact. Citrus can grow and produce in partial shade, so I figure some homegrown fruit is better than none at all! And I will fill in the spaces with some herbs and such. Basically, I want to turn a boring front yard that is non-productive to a productive and interesting space that does not set off red flags for the homeowner's association. We shall see.

For the backyard, there are plans for a small raised vegetable bed in the sunniest part of the yard near the back patio and possibly another citrus tree back there, some blackberries along the back fence, and maybe if I can fit them, some blueberries. This all seems like a LOT of work, but the sooner I get it in, the sooner I can pick stuff. And now is the time to plant!

So this is the suburban "homestead" so far. It is a work in progress, but it will hopefully be a good learning experience! Stay tuned!

Living Room with Fireplace Converted to Dining Room

So, I took a really long posting break, and I have a lot to catch up on. But I figured I would start out with something easy.

The dining room has been done (well, mostly done) for a really long time, but I haven't posted about it. When we bought the house it was originally the living room, with what was the formal living and dining on the other side of the house and the kitchen in the middle.  But the layout really didn't work well - it would have been awkward to put sofas in there because the room is so narrow and there was definitely no good place to put the tv for maximum viewing enjoyment. So the formal living and dining became the family room and office/playroom and the living room became the dining room.

It was actually a very simple change - all it involved was changing out the existing ceiling fan with a chandelier, which we got done a few weeks before Christmas.

I looked all over the web for inspiration pictures of dining rooms with fireplaces, but I eventually just did what I did and didn't worry that I will probably never use the fireplace. So here are some before pics - these were before we moved in and so contain the previous owners things:

And here's what it looks like now (well, with a few minimalist Christmas decorations in the mix. . .)

Bam! Instant dining room! I love that the only major thing I had to do was have an electrician install a chandelier. Here's a few more pics:

My husband was doing yard work the day I put up Christmas decorations and so I snagged some branches from the throwaway pile. I was proud of my wintery, Better-Homes-and-Gardeny display.

Because I hate it when I see something in a picture and I have no idea where it came from, I will not put my few readers through this same torture. Here's a quick breakdown:

Chandelier - Home Depot
Rug - Joss and Main
Chair Covers - World Market (and by the way, you may have noticed they don't fit perfectly, which is because they are regular old wooden back chairs but I wanted to break up all the wood in there with some color)
Mirror and white pitcher on fireplace - Homegoods (as did the awesome table and lamp that you totally can not see in any pictures - I'll have to post some some day)
Curtains and candle stands on fireplace - IKEA
Cat - from Hell (she can actually be very sweet, and she is kind of cute, but she does belong to the Dark Side)

Stay tuned! I am *still* working on the kitchen (winter/spring planting is going to put me behind on that one) and I did a quick redo of the upstairs bathroom, so I will post that soon!