Wednesday, April 28, 2010

My Finished Greenhouse and more gardening

We eat a lot of pistachios in our house. They are a healthy snack and if you buy them unshelled it takes a while to eat your snack so you can't just scarf them down. This helps stretch out your snack and help you with portion control. Afterward you can compost your shells or you can use them for pathways in your garden or do what we are doing and use them for flooring for our greenhouse. We will just put them in as we have them and cover up the dirt and grass.

Our garden getting layered with 3 cubic yards of compost. (A combination of manures, plant material and clay) We had it delivered from a little local nursery. It was much cheaper by the truck load then by bags. You might be wondering about the clay in the compost but we are very pleased with it. Our soil is essentially sand with a bit of dirt thrown in for color. The clay will help the garden area retain water rather than it just draining straight through the sand.

The start of our no dirt potato garden. The cardboard is down and we have the straw to put the potatoes into. I had already purchased some seed potatos and the DH picked up some more but with the increased size of our garden we need to pick up even more. I'm a firm believer that you can never have too many potatoes. We are big potato eaters and if stored properly they will last a very long time.


Our garden is in the backyard and there wasn't a way to get the delivery truck any closer to it then the front driveway. So here we are filling our little Red Flyer wagon (from when I was a child) with compost. One child would fill, one would travel the wagon back and forth and another would rake the compost out on the garden. I weeded while all this was going on, occasionally helping a tired child and the DH started a heck of a lot of seeds in the greenhouse.
Our neighbors helped us out by loaning us their "Big Blue" wheelbarrow after they came home from work. They had a good laugh watching us travel back and forth with the wagon. A wheelbarrow is on our list of things to obtain but we haven't got there yet. I'm hoping to find a good one at a yard sale.

This is what three cubic yard of compost looks like. Doesn't look like much until you start hauling it. I took my oldest with me to my youngest's well check just as the compost was being delivered. She was dismayed to find the pile still there when we returned, even though everyone had been working on it for the hour we were gone.

Here is a video of our finished greenhouse and the seeds and plants we have started!

2 comments:

Jenny said...

Loved the video! Adding pistachios to my grocery list right now. I love a nibble o'sumpin', this sounds like it'll work! Nice to hear your voice!

Cyndi Lewis said...

Thanks Jenny! I must admit to not liking the sound of my voice but it is what God gave me. Enjoy the pistachios!