Big Universe, Small World... ©2013-2020

I had a plant holder that I have not used in a long while. I actually have two of them. I had placed them in the recycling long ago. The recycle men kept taking it out of the recycling and leaving it on top of the mailbox. After three times of this, I brought them back to the garage and porch and there they have sat for well over a year.  Today, I had an idea. This project happened in between the pallet wall project .   This is one of the baskets.   I suspended with two nails from a board on one of the pallets of the wall. It is actually between the red tip and buttercrunch lettuces.  I cut a coconut fiber thing to fit the basket.   Romaine lettuce was transplanted within the basket.   :)

We made a garden wall from reclaimed pallets about two seasons ago. All winter, I have been looking at these pallets and thinking about things to do with them...So, here is what some of the wall space has become...  This is where I started. I did not use this specific pallet for the first set of planting. Although, it is the same idea.   Weed control fabric was doubled and tacked in the space to hold the plants and still allow for proper drainage. The excess was trimmed back some.   Buttercrunch was transplanted into the space and dirt was placed around to fill the space.   This is another shot of the buttercrunch area.   This is a second space of red tipped lettuce. 

I made clove oil last week. We have used it this week for topical pain application. It was effective and it worked well. I wish I had known of the uses of oils AGES ago!! Some of the pictures are sideways, but you will get the general gist of what to do. :)  Crush fresh cloves.  Use a coffee strainer and a string.  Place crushed cloves in the coffee strainer.  Tie up with string.  I did trim the excess of mine off.  Use EVOO - does no have to be this brand. :)  Place oil in jar and submerge clove sachet. It does want to float. I used a wooden spoon handle to push it in a bit. This is a jelly jar.  Place a small square of tin foil over the top of the jar.  Shape the foil concave to the jar lip.  I firmed it up to the lip for better sealing and trimmed excess foil away. This will allow any oil steam to not escape, but to stay in the jar. It keeps all the goodies where you want them.  Set up a double boiler situ...

I had a friend at produce co-op ask me the other day how we recycle onions for regrow, so I decided to post this. In another note, I also reuse the skins and onion waste to keep with things like potato skins and the like when I make bone broth. Back to recycling/reusing onions... When cutting up onion, save the bottom inch or so. Place in a shallow dish with water and wait for the roots to grow.  These have been in water for a few weeks now and have started to sprout, so it was definitely time to plant them.  You plant the onion start like you would any other plant start and leave the new leaves exposed.  This is one planted previously by the garden wall.  There is one onion in the foreground here and three more in the background. One of them is very small.  And, three more planted before along the garden wall.

I am prepping for Spring. One of the pallet boxes that my husband brought home for me to use in the garden was turned upside down to make a garden table in the garden. I plan to make it a raised bed, only I will not have to bend down to work the food grown in it. I lined it with two layers of weedcover. This will allow the soil within it to be contained while water can be contained through. An after thought is to put a worm bin beneath it, as the nutrients can then be caught in the bin and the soil can be reused, while maybe making a worm food supply for the chickens. But, that is a thought for later. The finishing part of the project is to measure off a board to contain each side and pile in some dead leaves and used chicken fodder to break down with some soil for placing seeds in for this Spring.  

   Apparently, it does not take much to make me happy today...been yucky sick all day...did still have to go out long enough to feed the chickens, gather the eggs, and made a gander through the garden. I am less than impressed with how the straw bales are progressing with the cabbages and broccoli. The broccoli and cabbage and kale in the raised beds are doing well. The same crops, placed at the same time in the bales are still puny. Lettuce seems to well in either. The chard in the bales is doing well also. On another note, it seems some little squirrel or some like critter has been having fun with my radishes.

 Bones were added to deep pot and veggies added as well. The pot here contained chard, kale, onions, garlic, bay, oregano, peppers, apples, mushrooms, some other stuff, and bones. :)  After 48 hours on the stove, the liquid was strained and separated from the leftover veggie and bone parts. This was fed to the chickens...recycle, reuse!!  The broth or stock was poured into pint jars.  Each jar was filled - four in all.  Three were placed in the pressure canner. One was refrigerator. These are the three pressure cans of stock or bone broth.

I installed a mailbox onto the fence of the garden to keep the garden tools handy. :)

My younger son found a rotary saw blade that had been discarded and brought it home to make a knife. It is process in the making, and is not a finished product yet, but he is making some progress.  I did not get a picture of the saw blade before he started.    This is where the knife piece he started with came from. You can see how the pieces fit together.    Here he has shaped it out a bit.    And, here it is more knife shaped. It is sharp. He plans to make the handle from recycled wood pieces.

This summer a tree fell and took out a large section of the chicken yard fencing and part of the coop itself. We built back a fence to get the chickens back into the coop as soon as possible, but knew the fencing would be temporary. I came up with this idea that it would be good to have sections of fence that would be permanently affixed to the fence posts, but each independent of each other. If something is to fall or damage a section, it can be easily repaired or replaced. I used most of the wood we had laying around that I had left over from other varying projects. I spent like $50 total I think in the end with the wood I had to buy to finish off the project. Each section is framed together and then I recycled netting and fencing we already had to cover each frame. Each frame is then screwed permanently to the post and then the pieces have scrap wood or extra fencing between the frame pieces to close the gaps. It sounds more complicated a process than it actually was. As usual, som...