Been Gardening

How we feed the birds inexpensively during the winter months - DIY suet cake recipe using bird seed, oats, peanut butter, and beef grease.

We made a compost sifter out of scrap wood and hardware cloth. It screens out large debris, leaving us with a nice, fine organic mix for our garden plants.

This is a 9-month progression showing our Meyer Lemon tree from flower buds to mature fruit. We purchased the tree about 3 years ago from Home Depot. The first year, we had only one lemon, the second year, we had lots of buds, but no lemons, and this year we had 23 large lemons! I fertilize it twice/year with an organic food, and I pruned it slightly in its second year. It grows on our south-facing deck here in GA (Zone 7B - 8). We also had a 2nd- year Satsuma orange tree that produced its first orange this year.

If you need a nature break for a few minutes, here is a view of our summer garden, bordered by several marigold varieties planted from saved seeds. Monarchs, Viceroys, Swallowtails, and Gulf Fritillary butterflies were frequent visitors through the summer and fall.

As an experiment, I collected backyard worm castings to add to our wood chip garden when planting this year. We had healthy plants with an abundance of delicious cucumbers! Next time I will do a comparison study of growing plants with and without foraged worm castings. For now, I am pleased with the results! An organic fertilizer was also used when transplanting seedlings.

How we made self-watering containers from 18-gallon storage bins

Germinate seeds using moist paper towels and plastic food containers

Week 5: Vegetables are growing well in bins! This was videotaped on a rainy day to avoid shadows, on our older deck (to be rebuilt after the growing season), but hopefully, you'll be able to get an idea of how the bins are working. Instructions on how we created these self-watering bins are on my Youtube video, "Bin Gardening". Please visit my blog at http://beengardening2.blogspot.com/ Thank you for watching!

Here is a slideshow of how we created a wood chip garden requiring almost no weeding and minimal watering. This garden replaced a patch of unused ground that was covered in weeds and wild blackberries. Now it is a productive growing site!

Self-watering garden containers held up for 7+ years! Update and pictures of bins, plus update on Hugelkultur /straw bale bed and wood chip gardens.

Creating a Hugelkultur garden bed using straw bales as a border, and creating 2 straw bale garden beds with leftover bales.

We built this greenhouse in 1999 using mostly recycled parts. We were able to grow vegetables, herbs, and flowers in our first season. Just now found this video footage from 2+ decades ago!

This is part two of some found footage of our greenhouse in 1999. It was built from all recycled materials except the polyethylene covering. Our first greenhouse tour video was recorded in February 1999; this was taken 7 weeks later in April to show the progress of the seedlings to plants.