Monday, June 23, 2014

Home and Garden Projects update 6-22

I recently fenced in my garden area to keep the neighborhood cats out. I ran out of straw, but luckily a local tree removal device is going to drop off 2 cubic yards of wood chips this week for free. I have some Stropharia (aka Wine Cap, aka Garden Giant, aka Portabello) mushroom spawn to mix into the wood chips. I'm also getting 2 bales of straw next weekend for a couple straw bale gardens I want to play with.







Hey, put me down, I'm not done eating!

Exploding with life!


So far I've harvested:
Swiss Chard, Lettuce, Lamb's Quarter, Radishes, and Beets




Some yard mushrooms.

Burdock in the yard.

Orange spots on the backyard apple tree. My landlord hasn't taken good care of it, so I'm hoping to do some trimming and try to bring it back to health. Branches crossing, it's a mess. Already, there are lots of apples forming, though!


Here's a short video showing the IBC Tote Aquaponic System that I'm contructing at my parent's house in Delaware.  It's finally just about ready for fish and plants.





While at work, I realized that the trees outside the cafeteria are Juneberries! They we're ripe and delicious.



I got about 3.5 cups of Juneberries (aka Service berry, aka Shadbush, aka Shadberry.

My girlfriend baked them into a Juneberry crisp dessert for my family reunion.



Saturday, June 21, 2014

Herb Spiral Thriving

This Spring I built an herb spiral at my parent's house in Delaware.

This is just after planting the herbs:




This is a few weeks later:




I got some Parrot's Feather, Water Hyacynth, and water-cultured Peppermint for the pond.



And here it is today, looking great!




I followed the plans here:

Soon I plan to build a smaller version with smaller bricks.  I also want to see how cheaply I can build this in a community garden in Philly with discarded cinder blocks.