Weekend Projects pt 2.

To continue on my previous post...

Other than just starting some seedlings, I wanted to get serious about planting veggies. As I have said earlier, husband and I are renting, so we need somesemi-permanent planting methods. We wanted to do raised beds, but we didn't want to cause any problems. Instead we decided to try container gardening.

Containers sounded like the perfect solution for us. We could try our first vegetable garden on a small scale, not place anything we couldn't remove, and not damage the rental property. There was one problem. Planters are expensive!!!

Inspired by a post I saw on pinterest where a woman was growing potatoes in a tall landry hamper, I decided to see if I could use landry hampers to plant. I went hunting and found hampers at WalMart and the various dollar stores for $2-3 each.

I lined each one with my junk mail (like grocery store mailers) that I have been kepping in my "paper to be recycled box." I had some masking and painters tape in a craft box from when husband and I painted an accent wall in the living room. So, the cost of turning a laundry hamper into a planter was free.

You can see the regular landry basket in the background. In front you can see my basket lined with a gracery store add, and the blue tape I used to hold it in place. As you can see from the photo, the soil stayed in the basket very nicely. I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Another technique I tried was using these pails and buckets I found at the dollar store. They are brightly colored and have nice handles on them. The only problem is that they didn't have any holes in them for drainage. I meant to drill some holes in them (or have husband do it) but completely forgot! So, I got to have the fun of drilling holes after I had already planted in them *facepalm*

Let me say this, using a drill and a bit, most of the buckets gave way and I had perfect drainage holes around the bottom with about 5 seconds of constant pressue with the drill.

pretty, right?

On some of them, just putting the drill onto the bucket made the plastic crap out.

And I would end up with this mess (which happened to several of my buckets)

And some of them , after 30 or 45 seconds of pressure with the drill would suddenly bust like the hole above...

And leave me with this drill-sized hole...which happened twice.

So...learn from my mistake. Drill your holes before you plant so you don't end up with a nightmare. And good luck! lol. These buckets were only a dollar, and I bought about 10-12 of them. Similar sized planters at Wal-Mart and Lowes were $4-12 each (depending on how fancy they were). Even with the cheapies, I saved about $30 just by buying cheap buckets and drilling my own weep holes as opposed to buying planting pots.

And, at the end of the day, I have my first wave of plants in the dirt. More to come at the end of March and April. But for February, I'm finished (good thing it is already the beginning of March...)

Please ignore my neighbor's junked out yard, haha

At the end of the day, I planted 7 baskets of yellow onions, 2 baskets of peas, 2 baskets of carrots, 2 baskets of cucumbers, 3 buckets of tomatoes, and 10 buckets of strawberries (I let my lovely niece plant those, and she insisted we plant the whole pack, lol) Not too bad for a day's work.



Celery

Another "I read on pinterest and decided to try it" story...

So, I read on pinterest that you could take the bottom of a grocery store celery and replant it and it would make a new celery.

What I didn't read what that you were supposed to take the celery and leave it in a dish of water until it started to sprout. So I just planted the base in a pot and started watering it. (I literally dropped it in a hole and covered it with dirt).

I threw it in the ground on Monday, February 25

As of Saturday, March 2, I have new little leaves growing out of my celery bottom

So, I guess sometimes forgetting to read all of the instructions is okay :)

I'll try to keep posting pictures as my new little celery plant continues to grow.

See the update on March 12 here.

Weekend projects pt 1

As of March 2 (Saturday), my sweet potatoes are starting to sprout. You can see three little sprouts coming up out of this one. No roots yet, but I'll keep you posted.


I worked on a couple of projects this weekend. It was time to get my garden in the ground, and I needed a few projects to get that started.

First, I wanted to start my lavendar seedlings, and my puppies ate my seed starters from the fall. Instead of buying new seed starters, I decided to try making my own. I've seen on pinterest about a dozen ways to make seed starters. I've been saving my toilet paper and paper towel rolls to try one of those faux wrought iron art things, which led to me having an entire box of rolls. I decided it was time to use them, and this project was perfect.

So I started by cutting the tubes in half

And then rounded them back out (because I smushed them when I cut them)

Until I had an entire box of them

And put them in these "shoe storage" boxes that I found at the dollar store (for a dollar! lol)

And filled them with soil.

Then I just added my seeds, watered and put the lids on.

I labeled my lids so that I knew what I had planted in them. Now I had psuedo-greenhouses for my seed starters.

Cost of tubes: free

Cost of soil: I used about an eighth of a 2cu ft bag of soil for 4 boxes, so soil cost was about $.80

Cost of 4 boxes: $4

Cost of seeds: $4. I used 2 packets of $2 seeds.

              Total <$10.

Spring yet?

Well, down here in Texas, Spring comes quite early. It has been chilly this week, but I think we're looking at the last cold push of the year. Which means what exactly?

Ever since my husband and I moved out of an apartment and into a house (back in August) I've been trying to do more gardening. I had some back porch planting going on in the apartment, but the upstairs neighbors would throw their trash down on my balcony, so anything on the porch usually go trashed or smushed. A couple of my plants survived (included a really neat Pony Tail Palm tree I got as a wedding gift from a friend). But now that we have a yard and lots of room to put stuff, I've been trying to plant more.

Of course, we're still renting, so everything has to be able to come with us if we decide to move. Plus we don't want to make any lasting changes to the house (like installing raised planting beds or anything).

So, where does that leave the point of this blog?

It is spring soon! Which means plants need to go "in the ground." However, I won't be putting them in the ground. I've been trying to think of how to plant/have raised beds without actually having rasied beds. After learning about how to grow potatoes in a tall structure, I saw a picture of a woman growing potatoes in a tall laundry basket and I had a Eureka! epiphany moment. I could use laundry baskets as small raised beds! I already have garlic (almost 100 heads) growing in window boxes on my porch. A trip to Wal-Mart last night led to the discovery of $2 and $3 laundry baskets. So, this weekend I plan on planting a BUNCH of goodies. Pics to come.


Today I will leave you with this. One of the things I want to try growing are sweet potatoes. I'm not that big on them, but my mom and my husband both want them, so I'm going to try. Everything I've read about sweet potatoes says to start them like Avocados. So, last night I cut two sweet potatoes in half, stuck toothpicks in them, and suspended them in water in vases (who says you'll never use all those damn centerpieces from your wedding?) and put them out on the porch. It is already pretty warm here (into the 60s during the day) so I don't think I need to keep them inside and warm. I'll try to update with how they progress through each stage. As of right now, I'm in day one hehe.

Obviously this is my first time trying to grow them, so it is going to be an adventure. Actually, this is my first attempt at growing veggies in general, so I'm pretty excited to get it going.

Sweet Potatoes Day One:

Please ignore my messy yard. My new puppies took everything off of my porch and drug it all over the yard. This weekend that will be getting cleaned up, lol.

This year I also planted some stalk-type flowers for the first time that are now starting to bloom.

The snapdragons came in first, and are really beautiful and all different colors. These pink/purple ones are my favorite though. You really can't tell in this picture, but they have yellow centers, so they are a stunning mix of purple and yellow.

This week my Larkspur also started blooming. They were just this weird grassy plant (you can see the grassy part at the bottom) and then a couple weeks ago these long shoots started growing. The zoomed up very quickly and started popping out these green buds (which you can see on the stalk on the left). Then a couple days ago, I went outside and there were these georgous purple little flowers popping out. I couldn't be happier.

Coming up I have some tulips, gladiator alliums, and bearded irises. I might also have some foxglove, but the put kept getting knocked over, and I'm not sure the plant has recovered enough to produce. We'll see.

In other news

I know that up to this point I have only blogged about crafts (does it count as "crafts" if I've only been blogging about crocheting? I don't know, lol). Today I have something else fun to talk about.

This weekend, my niece and I did a 5k called the Color Vibe. What is fun about this 5k is that when you register you get these packets of powdered color (dyed cornstarch) and throughout the race you get to throw them at people. There were also 5 stations set up throughout the race where volunteers would pelt you with this color, too. Sometimes it was in giant squirt bottles with the tops cut open, some would just throw handfuls at us, and some took an entire box of color and dumped it over our heads as we walked through the stations.

My niece is 11, and I thought this would be a wonderful first 5k for her. It was! She had a stinking blast, and as soon as we got into the car was already asking about the next 5k we could do together. So I'm thrilled that not only did I have a ton of fun, but I also got my niece excited about doing 5ks, too.

 After the actual 5k, they had a "party" at the finish line. They had a DJ, and were throwing prizes from the stage (like free t-shirts, running socks, and more color packets).

And finally, when we were leaving, my niece decided she wanted to take pictures lying on the ground at the starting line. Note...this ground used to be regular grey concrete. Not anymore. :-)

On the horizon

Just so you don't think I'm off not working on anything, I wanted to give a heads up on what projects I'm currently working on. There are a couple, and I think they're going to be great.

Wrist warmers. I think these are going to be fun to make!

Monkey butt for my niece's new sister.

Blanket to be.

Another blanket...kind of

I have been very excited about this project. I've been working on it for a couple of months off and on in my spare time. I finally finished sewing all the pieces together and adding the edging this week. 

This was my pinspiration for this piece. Which led to this very simple Lion Brand pattern. I love simple patterns. They are, by far, the best :)

This is my version of the pattern, and the one I worked off of. Each color was made into one large circle, 2 medium circles and 4 small circles. I did this for all 8 colors. Because this was a scrap blanket, not all of the colors exactly match the colors I had planned in my pattern.

If you saw my previous post about flower hat then you know I recommended the magic circle as a good way to start working rounds. I have to admit I'm a little new to using the magic circle, and was awestruck at how easy it was to learn and how beautiful it made my projects (I love not having that little hole).

This is how the start of my circles looked with the magic circle. Very tight and no ugly hole in the middle.

So, I used it to start all of my circles for this circles-to-squares project.

Except that, again, I used what was basically a metric ton of leftover yarn from other projects. Most of it being the cheapie red heart supersaver. Of course I tried my previous strategy of washing the project with fabric softener afterwards. This time it took three washes (on the gentle cycle of course) before the yarn became soft...which was not so good on my circles that I started with the magic circle.

Because this is how about half of the circles came out of the wash. :( :( :(

The magic circle blew out, leaving a ring of unattached stitches. I guess I'm going to have to use a needle and thread to tie these back into their original ring and repeat for each messed up piece. I'm pretty bummed about it.

Other than that, the scraps blanket has a kind of neat 70s retro feel (it definitely looks like something that would come out of the closet at my grandma' house)

These pictures are literally right out of the washing machine and onto the bed. The circles are all lumpy because they are still a touch damp (the hubs wasn't exactly thrilled that I layed the damp blanket out on our bed...oops haha).

So, all in all, it needs some work. I wouldn't call it a failed project yet. But it is definitely one I am frustrated with. I will post update pictures when I finish it and make it look much better, haha.