Progress with my seedlings

It has been so lovely the past few days, mid 60’s for a high so time in my greenhouse has been glorious.  I have so many seedlings out growing their community pots I must pot some up each day.  I am using 3.5 to 4 inch pots and my compost mix to plant them up in.  I use 4 parts compost, 1 part vermiculite, 1 part perlite and 1 part sand. I have run out of the vermiculite so I have substituted more perlite until I restock.  The greenhouse still gets a bit too cold at night as the roof panels still need to be put back into place from the last snow storm that had them buckling. The gaps in the roof allow the warm air to escape.

Our temps have been dropping into the 30’s some nights.  Most of the seedlings will do fine as they don’t mind some cold but not my tomatoes.  I have been moving them in and out morning and night which is rather a pain but I am hoping for some warmer nights soon and the snow is melting fast so we will be able to access the panels to fix them, which will keep the heat in more efficiently. 
Early Girl tomatoes. 

I rather over did the Brandywine, I have over 30 seedlings but I will have a plant sale towards planting time which is late May so no waste.  I also have the fabulous sauce tomato called Costuluto Genovese, it makes the richest marinara I have ever made. And I have the best oven roasted marinara recipe that is so easy.  This is one of 3 tubs of seedlings! 

Remember my Delphiniums, here are the seedlings I started a couple weeks ago, I have another batch going.  I will have A LOT of English Delphiniums started.  I will sell some off when they get bigger along with other specialty plants I grow from seed that you cannot get from the garden centers. 

Some of the tomatoes potted up, they are still in a bit of shock in this shot but I have gone out and checked on them again and they are already perking up. 

Between potting up chores I have been painting.  I had a special order come in and I painted it up for the customer. 
They wanted the lettering to be dark blue, though it looks black in the photo.

While I was painting I whipped up a couple vintage looking signs as well.

I need to do a bunch of seafood or beach signs, my stock is low on my website.


And I finally decided on what I wanted to put on that Flowers sign…I added some faded red flowers. 

This will go up on the website as well. 
Seems we are to be hit with another winter storm, only for one day but anymore snow right now is annoying.  It gets in my way.  I have some big furniture building and painting plans along with some studio revamping and I can’t really get to it until it stays nice and the snow is melted.  Sigh!
May your days be sunny and bright!

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Straw bale garden bed and poor mans raised beds.

I have read a few blogs lately showing their fancy raised beds made with lovely lumber.  Don’t get me wrong, I do love them.  But what about us folks who have to make do with what is on hand? 

What if you just want to test the layout before sinking your hard earned $$$ on the pricy version. I am always changing things around so I have a hard time financially committing to something right off the bat.

 I have done a few raised beds on the cheap. I have used stones, cement block and logs.  I even built a hot bed from straw bales…it worked great! And it cost me about $30.

This is what it looked like, wish I had taken more photos for you but you do get the drift.
As you can see it is made up of 6 bales of straw, at the time the cost per bale was $5 but now I just bought some and with the hike in all prices I paid $7.  In the back ground you can see my traditional raised bed made with scrap lumber we scrounged up to use, it was all free.  Much of it was planks from an old scaffold set up. 

The benefit of the straw bale bed is I could plant not only in the compost/soil filled center but also in the bales themselves.  You can see the bounty of lettuce, sugar snap peas, broccoli, and spinach in this bed.  It makes harvesting a bit easier too as you don’t have to stoop as far. 

I set mine up in the fall, used it as my compost bin adding all the debris from the clean up of the summer garden, I fill it heaping full.  As I toss in plant debris I mix in the debris from my chicken pen which gets it cooking. I will let it compost down a month or so and before the first snow flies I will top it with 6 inches or more of finished compost. 

I get mine by the truck load at a local yard that composts yard waste on a large scale.  Many municipalities have something similar so call around, it is much less expensive than buying bagged potting soil.

I arch some concrete mesh over the top to make a hoop house and cover with clear plastic.  The ends of the mesh can be pushed right down into the bales to hold it in place (sorry I cannot find the photos I had of this but I will do one this summer and photo it to share) and voila!  you have a hot bed. 

The bales of straw will start to compost once it starts raining on them along with the garden debris inside creating heat and when you are ready to plant your cool weather crops like lettuce, broccoli and spinach you have a nice warm soil while it is still cold outside.  I did not make one this past Fall, too much going on but last year I was picking lettuce and spinach in early April, even under the snow.  (in my climate that is early) 

Once I am done with the straw bales (a couple years using as a hot bed) I pull them apart, which is easy as they have half composted anyways, and use them for mulch around plants.  No waste. 

Other easy set ups are like this garden in potting soil bags for an instant garden..I have seen many like this but found this one at the link below.

The Vegetable Gardener

Or make your own self watering containers like this young man did, and he gardens on an apartment balcony…that is a determined gardener. He even has a video of how to make his self watering growing containers. 

Urban Organic Gardener
If you move you can just take your garden with you.

Then there is the layered approach, I have yet to try this one but I think I will this summer, maybe. Follow the link to get the step by step…

Layered no dig garden bed

Can you tell I am itching to get out to the garden?  I did try to work in my greenhouse today but it was too chilly.  Tomorrow it will be sunny and it will warm up nicely in there so I can toodle around in it in the afternoon.  I need to dig out my compost heap to make more potting soil with to pot up some seedlings, they are shooting up. 
Yes!
Happy Gardening!

Chicken Signs!

Last Friday we were inundated with snow and this week we had sunshine and 70 degrees.  I had a grand time in the valley, it was 87 there at 3:30pm as we headed back up the hill.  We found out that our A/C in the Suburban is on the fritz.  You would not believe the things that have gone wrong or broken down on us in the past year.   I am not normally paranoid but I beginning to wonder…
My hubby had a business meeting to go to so we dropped him off on one side of Stockton then my mom and I took off for JoAnn’s off I-5, I had some craft paint to pick up and some zippers for some tops I am making, we also checked out Ross and Target in that same shopping center. 
Satisfied with that little jaunt we zoomed over to Burlington Coat factory to look for a little suit for my toddler nephew.  We were successful and found him one and we both found a skirt we had to have.  By that time my hubby texted me and we had to drive on across town to pick him back up.  Lunchtime! 
We ate, ran thru Costco (phew, on a Friday and the 1st of the month) then I wanted to stock up on the sugar free chocolate at Wal-Mart, which I did.  I loved every warm moment of running, it felt good after being cooped up for a couple weeks.  Plus, the drive down is so lovely this time of year, green rolling hills, rivulets of wild flowers winding along and lots of cows.
Now that I have regaled you with my day I will actually post the photos I wanted to share with you…I paint, signs mostly but it may seem I do flowers and flowers and more flowers so I was going to share with you many of my chicken signs I have done over the years.  Some were done it 2 pieces..like this Red Rooster sign..

This one is very similar..

Some of these are from 2003, sometimes I find it hard to believe how long I have been painting. My style has evolved for sure.

This one is still a favorite of mine.  I need to make one for myself as this one sold long ago.

I even added some veggies..

I like the primitive style of these chickens..

This one was a special order, a gal sent me a piece of wallpaper from her kitchen to paint a sign to match.

These are just a sample of the chicken signs I have done.  Just a little evidence that I do paint things other than flowers. 
Enjoy your weekend.  I am not sure what grand thing I will get to work on. 
Ta ta..

PS: for more signs check out my website