Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Summer gardening nerd

At the moment we're spending a lot of time reading to our babies and enjoying the abundant plant growth of summer. I feel like we've gained two extra rooms- one tiny area in the front that has been transformed into a forest- and one large room in the back which I'll share pictures of another time.

5 tomatoes long
I am doing nerdy things like calculating the weight of tomatoes we need to have tomato pasta sauce for the year (about 110kg) and how many tomato plants I might need to fully provide our tomato needs (a lot). I'm planning how much spinach we can grow when the tomatoes are pulled out next year, and I found a 25L bucket in the river to scale up worm tea production. The worm tea is really remarkable. Two doses of worm tea and my strawberries are completely aphid free, after being pretty severely infested.
I get to sort worm castings with Noah. He loves picking out the worms and we talk about things like "can the worm hear? See? Feel?" and Noah laughs and says that they can feel what he's saying through his fingers.


Our car is quite small, so today was my Christmas when my mom said she'd help me pick up some dumped car tires with hers. We got 5, though we did feel like criminals because that's a lot of tires. I know there's some debate over whether tires are really good to use as planters, and I mainly focus on the fact that they're extraordinarily durable, and that strong, healthy, organic, local happy plants grown in something otherwise polluting is surely better than eating food I'm not sure about grown in China (yes, our garlic is from China??!).

We moved two chairs to be in amongst all the plants, and tonight the three of us sat there. Eli trying to eat poisonous leaves, and Noah.... I'm not sure what Noah was doing.
Thinking?
I am preparing to adopt two Hannepoort grape vines- one to grow into a shelter over our back table, and the other to provide us with grapes aplenty.  I am also thinking about asking if it's ok to remove the barbed/razor wire separating us from our taxi-cab neighbors- I'm not sure if it's to protect us from them or them from us, but it makes me feel uncomfortable.

I loved this slide show A House of the Clouds for a vision of a house that is totally impractical and beautiful.

Check out this website about the construction of a load-bearing straw bale house. I loved the pictures and just poking around to be inspired. 

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