Chapter 134....Gardening for 2012

Hello everyone.  I am caught up on old stories.  Now I will start new ones each week.  I will write a new story on Monday and on Thursdays I will write a "Tasty Thursday" story which will be something about food.  If Mike and I get really busy I will add more stories:) Please subscribe to our blog so you don't miss any updates:)


Now for today's story which is a recap of my square foot garden for last year.  This year I have big plans for my garden and I will also be planting fruit trees and blueberry bushes.  I am very excited about producing more food:)

I originally chose to do a square foot garden for the ease of it.  With our ever changing life and projects I thought this would be a good idea. It is very easy for a beginner gardener, your soil quality doesn't matter because you mix your own, and it doesn't require much weeding.

April 14

Geting ready to add more compost.  I really need to start my own compost pile.

My new raised bed for the strawberry plants I ordered from the 4-H.

April 23
My new plants:).  Since my house is off grid and I have so few windows I can't start my own tomatoes and peppers.  Their seeds can't be planted directly into the ground so I need those plants.  Each year my stepdaughter and I go to the local High School where they sell plants for a very good price.  This year we were so excited to go to the High School but when we got there they changed the way they have been doing things for years.  They were only selling larger plants at twice the price.  Since we have more than a month before we can plant them in the garden this would not work.  We were very disappointed but we did go to the local Garden store and found our plants there:)

This is the first year I planted lettuce and spinach.  It is an early crop so I was happy not to have to wait.

May 6
My little spinach coming up.

I also planted some peas and used tomato cages to help them stay supported.

My strawberry plants.

May 18
The weather has been warm so I added my tomato plants and also added string for my green(pole) beans to grow on.

Some extra plants.  Once again I bought to many.  I just can't seem to resist,  Mike says I would turn the whole back yard onto a garden if I could.  So...what's wrong with that, lol.

The peas are blooming.

May 26

I think I have every available square filled:)

And then some.  It seems I ran out of room so I went into our building to look for some scrap lumber.  I found some boards, grabbed the drill and screws and added on to my garden, lol.  Mike says I'm nuts.

Look at that beautiful lettuce:)

June 26

My pole beans are doing well.  I am training them to climb up the string.  I am never happy with my pole bean trellises.  Some day I have to come up with the perfect solution.  Any ideas????

The yellow squash, zucchini and peas are doing well.

June 28

This is the first time I tried to train my cucumbers to grow vertically.  They are pretty heavy so you have to make sure they are tied to the string until they are long enough to wrap around themselves.  This worked well.

Uh oh....I hate when the cows are behind my garden.

Oh and you can see the Japanese Beetle bag in the above picture.  Here is where you can find them, Link.  They really do help on the amount of Japanese Beetles that used to eat my pole bean leaves.  I will have another one this year although they are pretty gross to empty.



July 5

My cucumbers are doing great:):)

The squash is really coming along.

At some point right after these pictures the cows reached over the back fence and pulled out all of my pole beans.  I was not happy with the cows that day to say the least.


Even so I had a lot of food from my garden.  I made a lot of zucchini bread and even canned yellow squash relish and zucchini relish for the first time.  My friends loved the zucchini relish.  I really liked the yellow squash relish especially on hot dogs:)  This year I plan to have more food and get more food canned up.




Yesterday was actually the first day for 2013 that I got to play in my garden.  I turned it all up and got it ready for new plants and seeds.  I will be planting some lettuce and spinach this week.

Mike and I have also started working around the property during the good weather breaks.  Soon we will be working full force and we can't wait:):)


Have a wonderful week and I will write again on Thursday and next Monday.

Chapter 111...Inside Remodeling & My Garden Fence

Off Grid...Chapter 111 5-19 Today we are going to finish painting the inside of the house....woo hoo. It will be nice to put the paint brushes away, at least for a little while We start off by moving all of the furniture out of the way. Poor Niki girl has been moved numerous times since the painting began. I told Mike she will be fine as long as her bed(plastic box) stays "inside" the house. For now her and her bed are in the middle of the mess where she can watch her crazy human parents, lol. Last night I painted the back wall a light color. We are going to try something new The front wall and the back wall, where the doorways are, are going to be a lighter color and the living room and kitchen will both be a darker matching color. Hey we thought it might be interesting Time to work Mike starts out by sanding any rough spots on the living room wall. And the color is going on. I do my usually cut in work while Mike rolls on the paint...what a team Once we get the living room done we are finished with the darker paint. Time to clean up and let it dry before we can paint the front wall. While we wait for the paint to dry, we decide to move the propane refrigerator up top to the building Yup...just the two of us as usual. Mike really makes me nervous with this stuff but you gotta do what you gotta do We get it back onto the hand truck sideways so we protect the pipes in the back. Whoops...it tilts to the side from all of the weight. Good thing we weren't on the driveway yet Wow...this thing is awkward and heavy. I hope Mike is OK pulling it while I am in front pushing it without tipping it. Come to think of it, I must really trust Mike to be the run at the bottom of this thing pushing it up the hill We get it onto the drive and sure enough it starts to tilt and it;s just to heavy. Mike does the smartest thing and just lays the hand truck down. Whew!!! time to readjust and try again. Finally we get it up the hill and into the building. Woo hoo...we can do anything, lol. Sorry....no pics...I was a little busy Back in the house. We move more stuff outside on the patio to make room for us to paint the front wall. Uh oh...Niki's bed got moved outside and she is not a happy camper. Here I am cutting in part of the front wall. And Mike painting it. Yay..we are almost done. Check out the mess As with most projects it has to get worse before it can get better. And now for the final pictures...the house is back together The living room. and The back wall that I did last night. And the kitchen. Ahh!! the house is back to Mike and Lisa neat and Niki is back inside We finally have a little color on our walls. I know...don't get too excited but it's a big improvement over our usual white colors, lol. We aren't adventurous when it comes to colors 5-20 Time for some outside work I checked the forecast I think we are finally done with any possible frost. Yay...this is my favorite time of year. Time to get my garden planted. I planted all of my plants...zucchini, squash, peppers, tomatoes, green beans, onions, cucumbers, peas..I think that's all I know..it doesn't look like much now but just wait My tomato cages are up. Mike hates these but I told him to stay away from my garden unless he is helping me And he's helping me now by cutting my poles down. What a guy After that I took out some old paint to paint my poles but it solidified. It must have froze over the winter. I'll have to add paint to our never ending list Then I mowed and I am so thankful we have such a small area to mow Sometimes the cows are a good thing, lol. 5-21 Today we went to town to go to the Home Show and then to do some shopping, as usual. Really I think Lowe's should send us "something" for contributing to their bottom line for so many years Mike really enjoyed the home show. He got to talk with lots of solar people and they couldn't believe we were able to run a regular refrigerator. Woo hoo for us. I did my usual and scoped out any freebies Back home I opened up my new paint and got busy. I painted my garden posts. We are going to use some of the leftover deer netting that we have to make my fence. Mike has an idea of using tobacco poles, from our barn, to use to tack the netting to the poles. First we are going to attach the netting and I will pull it tight while Mike screws in the screws though the painted tobacco poles to hold the netting in place. Mike pre drills the holes so we don't split the wood and to make it easier. We started putting up my fence. We ended up not having enough netting to finish the fence Looks like another trip to town will be in our future. This is when it is tough living this far from town. The next few days we take off and try to relax. Mike and have decided to replace our metal roof with shingles. This is going to be a really tough job for the two of us and Mike is worried about us getting it done because of possible rain and the horrendous heat lately. We are replacing the roof for two reasons. 1. Mike is very worried about the metal leaking. I know we have had trouble with one side of our front wall inside the house...we will see what the roof looks like when we take it off. 2. Mike hates how loud it is when it rains even after we rolled on the rubber coating last year..or was that the year before Right now we are trying to find a shingle color we like. We will be doing architectural or Dimensional shingles but we want to find a light green to compliment the color of our house. Should be easy...right? And my garden with my new fence and my garden bed is painted and Niki The gate that Mike helped me with 5-27 Today we ordered our shingles...sight unseen because they didn't have a sample It's called Shasta White and it is rated energy star.....I hope it looks good. They should be in in a couple of weeks Wow...the next few days have been crazy hot. I hate the heat...that;s why we are in the mountains. What the heck??? Mike has an idea for our solar system. Right now our inverter is on the floor next to the battery box. He wants to mount it on the wall so he can set the fan up on an automatic heat censored switch to keep all of our equipment cool. He is in the planning stages of how he is going to do this. Uh oh, lol. Mike had got it and today is the day to make the switch. He is going to use our back up inverter and mount that to the wall then I will help him while he disconnects all the wires form our current inverter and switches everything over. After a few hours the switch is complete and our back up inverter is on the wall BTW, our awning is doing an awesome job keeping the sun off the front of our house and the heat out As long as close the doors as soon as it starts to get warm out, the house stays comfortable all day So...later that night while Mike and I are watching TV we have a power outage Well this is new. We grab the flashlight and head p to the building. Sure enough the inverter that Mike used is smoking Not good. Thankfully we have our old one. I help Mike make the switch and we are we have our power back on after 20 minutes. Mike is so good with this stuff Now we don't have a back up which is kind of scary. That is first on the list tomorrow. 5-31 The last day of the month. The time is flying here. Mike called about the inverter and they told him it was under warranty..woo hoo. They are sending him replacement circuit boards if he thinks he can take it all apart and put the new boards in. Mike says sure he can. The parts are on the way. meanwhile Mike watched a you tube video from that company on how to do it. Gotta love the internet. With that info, he went up and took the old circuit boards out of the bad inverter. We also got our driveway alert today and Mike hooked it up...except the birds are making it go off I did a little yard work and played in my garden Lisa