Month: March 2011

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a weekend trip and sewing

I found out yesterday that my work has been accepted at a local, creative reuse store in Durham.  Exciting news, but I will have some busy days ahead of me as I make enough pieces to create an inventory for the store to sell on consignment.  My mom and I spent the weekend at the beach, and although it was rainy for much of the weekend, yesterday evening the sky finally cleared to yield a beautiful sunset.

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urban farming

Earlier this week we took a walk out to a local, urban farm that we’ve both noticed while driving past but have never taken the time to explore further.  Called the Interfaith Community Food Shuttle, this urban farm between Raleigh and Cary operates as a dual farm education site and community garden, with community members able to participate in their Plant a Row (PAR) program, volunteer time working the fields, and bring produce to local food distribution sites.  The founders currently rent land from a local farmer, and they have quite an expansive set of fields as well as some area for free-range chickens.  We hope to start volunteering there every Saturday and are excited about the prospects of learning more about farming, as well as getting to take a few crops home for ourselves.  For more information on the farm check out their site: Interfaith Community Food Shuttle.

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more balcony gardening

My big project this week has been to finish up the bulk of the planting and arranging on our balcony.  I have spent several hours each day working to lay out the plants, find appropriate containers, and plant our transplants.  We have held true to our commitment not to use any plastic containers for growing our food, and we’ve ended up with a combination of metal tubs, wooden wine barrels, and metal coconut liner planters.  Through companion planting and strategic use of some of the vertical space afforded by the high ceilings of the balcony, we’ve managed to fit in the following crops in our micro container garden:

lettuce, arugula, dill, basil, parsley, mint, fennel, sage, thyme, lavender, rosemary, chives, radishes, beets, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, raspberries, strawberries, broccoli, hot peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, peas, and beans

These crops fit into containers ranging in size from 1′ wide to 3.5′ wide, with depths ranging from 5″ to 2.5′.  The containers all fit into a 10’x7′ balcony, and we figured out that even a moderate yield will give us roughly 70lbs of produce! Pretty amazing considering what limited space we have and that we have to grow everything in containers because of gardening on a balcony.

a “before” picture of our balcony garden

an “after” picture of our balcony garden

The vertical container hanging over the door is a lined fabric shoe organizer.  We simple filled each pocket with dirt, chose some shade tolerant veggies to plant, and there you are—a nice shady home for lettuce, onions, parsley, and petunias (one of our natural pest deterrents).

Our tomato plants are hung from the ceiling so they grow upside down from coconut liner metal planters.  We recommend using smaller tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, as these are easiest to manage when growing upside down.  Hot pepper plants will join them in a few weeks once the transplants are big enough.

We found these cool colored metal tubs, some with stands, which we are using to grow our carrots, onions, radishes, zucchini, and squash.  Nasturtiums are growing with the squash as another natural pest deterrent.  The various pots near the railing hold herbs, the last of our transplants, and our cucumber pot.

We mounted two metal window box planters onto the balcony railing for our lettuce, arugula, and dill to grow in.  The tomatoes overhead provide a nice weather protection for some of the more delicate lettuces.

All that’s left now to plant are our hot peppers, broccoli, and beets, and these are all doing well, having started from seed weeks ago!

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at home

Since being on break the last week, I’ve loved having slow mornings.  I wake up with the sun, make coffee, have a shower, and then set about working on some projects I’ve put off while working full time.  And I’ve gotten to walk with Kevin each morning to the bus stop as he heads off to school.  Breaks are wonderful, and we would love to both be able to work from home some day.

little seed packages for the blog giveaway

(I made a small piece of artwork and a seed package for each person who commented on our blog)

lots of time for sewing

more work in the garden (more details to come!)

and long walks enjoying the changing colors of spring

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early morning

Since I’m off work for the next two weeks for our school’s intercession, today was the first morning I got to spend with Kevin without having to get up really early to have time together.  We went for a walk around the lake, made coffee and breakfast when we got home, and then I walked him to the bus stop.  I love these slow mornings together.

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cranes for japan

My friend Kristen, of newhouseproject, had a great idea to support the relief efforts in Japan.  She is making small embroidered cranes to sell in her Etsy shop and has invited other artists to do the same.  So, I am joining Kristen in this great cause and making some cranes of my own to sell in my Etsy shop.  The cranes will sell for $10 each, and 100% of the proceeds will go to support the relief efforts in Japan.

If you would like to join us in making embroidered cranes to support the relief efforts in Japan, please send an email to littlecitybiglove@gmail.com.  Add your cranes to your Etsy shop, and I will add a link to your shop and/or blog.  Please help spread the word!


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companion planting

We are really resistant to using chemicals in our garden, which is why we’ve worked so hard to choose non-plastic growing containers.  Since most of what we are growing will eventually go into our mouths, we don’t like the idea of anything unnatural leaking into our food stuffs.  But unfortunately, opting out of plastic and other chemicals means we have to do a lot of research and work to keep our garden healthy.  For the last two months, we’ve been doing extensive research on organic methods for maintaining healthy soils and plants, and for keeping plants pest free.  To that end, we’ve committed this year to companion planting, which is a strategic way of ordering plants and placing plants in containers so that the plants develop and support one another, both in terms of healthy growth, soil health, and pest avoidance.  We have quite a variety of plants and limited space, so it’s taken some work to figure it all out.

This is what our balcony looked like when we began a lot of planting this weekend.  We laid out all the supplies and began working on a large wine barrel and a smaller cedar container, and finished up transplanting the last of our seedlings into compostable pots.  At the end, our balcony looked much nicer.

In the first wine barrel we planted peas, bush beans, early potatoes, and strawberries, and used petunias as our “pest blocker.”  We placed this barrel in the shadiest spot on the balcony, as the peas and beans do better with some shade.  It was really important to make sure that we planted only early potatoes with strawberries, as late potatoes do not do as well when planted near strawberries.

In the small cedar container we planted raspberries and garlic.  We found the metal trellis at Lowe’s, which should help as the raspberry bush develops more branches to keep it organized.

And finally, we decided to keep all our herbs in small pots by themselves.  This way we can bring them into the house on the windowsill if we run out of room on the balcony.

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composting

We posted a little while ago about urban composting and thought we would update folks with a few pictures of our newest bin.  Because we are both finicky and don’t like turning the compost, we use a simple garden trowel that does the job nicely.  And on another note, in reference to the post about transplanting, buying plants in sustainable packaging is also cheaper—as the representative at Lowe’s told us: “The soccer moms don’t like buying plants that aren’t in plastic because they leak all over their SUVs.” Food for thought, as it were…