Backyard Heaven

The sunny days and cool breezes with spring blossoms on the air have turned my mind to our backyard.

Roomy backyards are in short supply these days. It seems like most of the new home developments don’t have backyards - they have back hallways -just a narrow strip of grass between the house and a fence. We’re fortunate enough to have a decent size yard right now, but it isn’t being used to it’s fullest potential, so I’ve been thinking about how I’d like to put it to good use. I began looking online for landscaping ideas and became lost in a blissful backyard fantasy.

This is my DREAM yard...

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(Not this big, BUT) Play areas for the kids with playground, in-ground trampoline,sport court and a good stretch of lawn for playing soccer or kickball...

  

Square foot garden area, plus grape vines, raspberry bushes, and apple, peach, pear and cherry trees...

Patio with table, seating, shade,  flower pots &  jacuzzi... 

 

• A BBQ Kitchen with a fridge, sink and water fountain,
• A fire pit with built-in surround seating

   

• A Nice Hen Pen for the Chickens & Compost area that’s hidden away from the house
• Oh yah... and no weeds or pests of any kind. ;D

It was a LOVELY dream... happy sigh.

And then I wake up to the fact that this yard would have to be MASSIVE!!!

And cost a fortune.

And I have the black thumbs of death to all plant life. 

And I’m allergic to weeds, so 3 hours of gardening puts me on Benadryl for 3 days. 
And I am HORRIBLE at making time for yard work, because I never think about it until Saturday, which is our one day to spend time as a family with Matt, so to heck with yard work!

And yet, the dream still lingers sweetly in the back of my mind... happy sigh.

So if any of you gardening Do-It-Yourselfers would like a work-exchange program with me in which I color-coordinate, categorize and organize your closets, file drawers and storage rooms to perfection, scrub your toilets, mop your floors and prepare your dinner (not necessarily in that order,)  then please drop a me a line. ;D

Making Great Compost

Last year, our church did something called a "Garden Tour." They arranged a walking tour of the best gardens in the neighborhood and pointed out things that each gardener did well. One woman focused on great soil, and emphasized the use of compost. She said, "No garden is complete without a compost pile!" 

Matt and I have been putting all of our yard waste into the city's "Yard-Waste Recycling Program," which uses the waste to make and sell compost. We also find ourselves buying bags of gardening or potting soil each year. It occurred to us that we could stop spending a fair amount of money on both the recycling can & and the bags of soil if we put our yard waste to better use in our own compost bin.

Compost is a soil conditioner, mulch and fertilizer all wrapped into one. It feeds the soil microorganisms that help plants stay healthy, adds nutrients to the soil, and helps clay soil drain better and sandy soil retain water. Plus, composting reduces your contribution to the local landfill.

We found this large 80 gallon, rotating, composting bin at Costco for about $100. We picked up a composting agent at the IFA, and we also bought some worms to through in the composter too.

I'm new to this whole process, so I've been reading up on how composting is done. These are the tips I've found...

7 Steps to Great Compost
*Breaks down fast and never smells bad.

1. Buy or create your compost bin, and choose a site that's handy to your garden and kitchen, yet out of plain sight. *Because my garden and kitchen are at opposite ends of our property, we put the composter on the edge of the garden.

2. Add the right ingredients: The two basic elements that make up compost are green garden debris (grass clippings or old annuals) and brown garden derbis (dry leaves). Green ingredients are high in nitrogen and brown materials are high in carbon. Adding too many greens can make the pile smell bad. You can also add vegetable and fruit waste such as banana and orange peels, potato peels, scraps, etc. DO NOT add animal waste, meats, oils, dairy, diseased plants, weeds that have gone to seed, or plants treated with pesticides or herbicides to your compost.

3. Have the right balance of ingredients: Compost piles with a balance of one part green to two part brown materials break down fastest. Continue adding greens and browns until the pile is about 3 cubic feet (3 ft. x 3 ft. x 3 ft.). Piles of this size heat up quickly and break down faster. You can also speed up the process by breaking down materials before adding them to the pile. For example, if you run over that pile of dead leaves with lawn mower before composting, it will break down to compost more quickly.

4. Add in a shovelful of finished compost or garden soil to help kick start the microbial activity in your pile. *This is where we also added the worms and the composting agent.

5. Add the right amount of moisture: Compost also needs the correct amount of moisture to breakdown. Compost with the right moisture level should feel like a damp, wrung-out sponge. Too much moisture can cause temperatures to fall within the pile (and make it smell). Too little moisture slows down the decomposition rate and keeps the pile from heating up. Check your compost pile's moisture level once a week and adjust it if necessary by adding water to increase moisture or more browns to help dry the pile out.

6. Turn the pile once a week to move material from the outside of the pile in. Turning also keeps the pile from compacting, which reduces airflow and slows down decomposition.

7. Use it when ready! You should have finished compost in about two months (60-70 days.) You'll know your compost is finished when it no longer heats up, and you can't identify any of the original materials. The compost should be dark brown, moist and earthy smelling. Compost at the bottom and middle of the pile typically "finishes" first. Dig finished compost into your garden's soil. You can use partially composted material as mulch.


*Final Note: Right now, our composter is largely filled with dead leaves (brown waste) and very little green material because the weather isn't suited to mowing the lawn. I added water, worms and composting agent today, but I'm hopeful that spring will get under way so we can add grass clippings soon. However, in the future I'm anticipating a shortage of brown waste. Maybe we can become the "nicest" neighbors by offering to rake up the neighborhood leaves and take them off everyone's hands. ;D

Going Agrarian!

The Chicken Coop is HERE!

The ramp leading to the roost.

Roosting area & nesting box.

Jare-bear has already figured out how to get into the nesting box. Heaven help us when the eggs start coming!

The coop took extra time to build because we had the nesting boxes built into the side of the roosting area. I've been waiting for Matt to be available to help me prep that yard and move the coop to its permanent location.

In fact, we did a lot to further our new farming lifestyle on Saturday ;D 

We tilled the earth...

bought a composter... 

bought raised garden beds (for our square foot gardening plans,)...

installed the chicken coop...

Oh yah, and we bought a barn!

We've needed a new shed since the roof blew off our old one last fall. That's why masses of yard supplies and equipment have been crammed together in my carport all winter. But Matt insisted that we shouldn't simply re-roof or replace the small shed because we need more storage space - A LOT MORE.

He's right of course. If we're going to convert my craft room (I use that term loosely) into a bedroom for the older boys to accommodate bambino #6 upstairs, then the masses of stuff in the craft room need a new home.

Matt started scouting out sheds and then showed me what he had in mind.

This 10 x 16 monstrosity was bright red and bordered with white.

"That's not a shed," I said, "That's a barn!"
"It's not a barn!" he cried.
"Well, we've got the chickens," I said, "we may as well get the barn to go with 'em!"

He was a little affronted that I called it a barn, but after more shopping and price comparing, we went to purchase a shed and guess what the shed manufacturers call it...
A TALL BARN!!!
Haha!

Matt's come to terms with it, and now HE'S calling it "the barn" too. ;D
It will be installed on March 25th.
The configuration will be slightly different from what's pictured here, and I raided the manufacturer's supply of color swatches to figure out how we want it painted.
YES, it is a barn, but  NO, it will NOT be fire engine red.

So my list of home-making projects this week includes assembling the composter, staining the garden beds (and maybe the playground,) assembling the garden beds, and scouting out paving stones to go around the garden beds and create a pathway to the shed door. It's an ambitious list, considering the fact that Lauren's School Play is this week, and I've got an old friend in town for a visit.

Ah well, it's good to have goals, because we farmers have to work from sun-up to sun-down. ;D
By the way, what time DOES the sun come up?
Oh ya, I have the chickens to tell me that - hahahahahahah!!!