Miss Modish- Mojo Maker

You say Potato, I say Po-Ta-Da!

Spring seems to be teasing us all, and I've had a serious itch to get some dirt under my nails. What better way than to start off with a food crop that literally gets you down in the dirt? Yep! Let's talk tubers 'n taters.

How do you grow potatoes, you say? First, find out your freeze date then count backwards 2 weeks. That's when you want to get your seed set in the ground. For me, that's pretty much right now.

Start with seed potatoes; that means ones that haven't been treated to prevent sprouting. That also means they're disease free. Cut them into 2-inch chunks, leaving 2 eyes on each chunk.

As for soil, potatoes are very adaptable. Many books will tell you the exact soil conditions you need to grow them, but don't worry about that too much, they'll tolerate a lot. Just make sure the soil is loose so the roots can stretch out and grow into those tasty little tubers.

Trench down into the soil about 6 inches. If you make more than 1 trench row, make sure they're at least 2-feet apart. Crowding potatoes means a smaller yield. Lay seed potatoes in the trench about 12- to 15-inches apart, cut side down, and cover with a few inches of soil. They'll sprout a couple weeks later, and when they do, cover them again with a few more inches of soil. Covering them will build your rows up into a mound of loose soil, the mound is where the magic happens.

Keep the vines well watered during summer heat, while they're flowering, and while the blooms are dying off. After the blooms are gone you can ease up on the watering you do.  Wait 2 weeks after flowering finishes to harvest and ta-da! You've grown potatoes!

Look how lush and green they are in flickr user ksuyin's New Zealand garden (picture below). Did you know potato plants were so pretty?

Alrighty now, who's ready for some hashbrowns?

This Mother Earth News article is informative and will answer many of your questions.If your short on space, try out the garbage can method Gayla Trail explains with easy-to-understand in-depth detail in Grow Great Grub.

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

Revisiting My DIY Birdbath

This is a revised version of a post I originally wrote for a guest spot on the You Grow Girl blog, but I still use it. It's a super easy project worth sharing again and again.

Birds are great to have around the garden, eating the grubby little insects I would rather just not deal with. They also emit a certain peacefulness that enhances the gardening experience. Simply put, I gather great joy in watching birds play and interact with my plants. Nothing brings out the kid in me like finding a nest, either.

So, I like to attract birds. We have the feeding and housing pretty much covered in our yard, but water features require a little more upkeep if one doesn’t wish to become a breeder of mosquitoes. Birdbaths offer a manageable amount of water, which is either used or evaporated rather quickly, evading the little blood sucking insects. Birdbaths are available in every price range, and with an even greater variety of design. However, with my eclectic yard, not just any birdbath will do. I was looking for a birdbath for a kitchen themed garden bed.

If you have less clutterbug tendencies than I, this project is a good excuse for an excursion to the hardware and thrift stores. I scoured my closet and garage through the piles of mess I collect and rationalize keeping by saying I’ll use it one day (I will use it one day) all in the name of art. I found 3 pieces of rebar and the basin from a wash pitcher/basin set. Really 3 or 4 of any hefty pole/stick will work . . . use your imagination: broken tool handles, steel pipe, logs stacked to resemble something of 3 dimensional Constructivist art. I used rebar, which is solid and cheap.

For a standard height birdbath similar to my design, you will need 3 4-foot pieces. As for the actual bath part, anything with depth enough to hold an enticing amount water will work. Look at the water reservoir upside down, a flat band around the edge will be a beneficial design element that will give the rebar something to hold, providing it shifts on its stand. Just remember the birds generally won’t pay attention to the materials, they just appreciate a community pool.

So, here goes: hammer the rebar into the ground about a foot deep. Test it when you think you have it deep enough, checking for stability. You want to form something of an equilateral triangle, and the deeper the bowl, the more you need to make sure the triangle sides truly are equal in length. A too-long side will allow the bowl to tip off the stand, putting quite a strain on a very surprised little bird’s heart. Balance the bowl on top. With last year’s model, I didn’t use anything to adhere the bath to the stand and it stayed up all summer. If more stability is desired, a glue like E-6000 will do the job, dab it on the top of your rebar, place the bowl in place and in less than 2 minutes it will be set enough for use. I would also be willing to speculate hot glue would work, but running an extension cord out into the yard to heat up hot glue might be a little embarrassing.

Add clean water and watch the birdies bathe!

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

My Seed Sowing Equivalent of Girl Talk

Seed Starting! Yay! It's time again to think about all those tasty spring and summer veggies we all love to grow so much and I have this weekend set aside specifically for Phase 1 of seed starting. Every year I tell myself I'm going to "do it right" and every year I try something different. Last year (was it last year?!) I tried to make germinating mix from scratch. Never again. It was too expensive and too. much. work.

This year I've got a bag of Fafard Germinating Mix, the soil blocker, some toilet paper tubes and other implements and I'm ready to go. This year, Girl Talk is to music what seed sowing is to me. Anything and everything goes, and maybe something brilliant will come out of it.

How about you? Are you ready? Find yourself a handy dandy way to keep track of your seeds. I hadn't seen this one by Mother Earth News before, but I like how it has all the info you need right there on the same page. Double check your last frost date with the ol' faithful Farmer's Almanac.

Now, go get your dirt hungry fingertips in the soil! Are you starting seeds this year? What's on the menu for your garden?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

Hungry for Hostas

Last weekend I went to a forest gardening class taught by Dave Jacke. One of the plants he suggested for an edible perennial garden was the hosta. Errr wha?? Hosta? All records within a 50 mile radius came to a screeching halt the moment hosta escaped his lips.

I have to say I've been skipping over the aisles and aisles of hostas at the nursery for years. They're pretty enough, but I'm not interested in adding simply ornamental plants to my cart. I guess I've been wrong about "simply ornamental".

Through lots of searches and internet time suckage here's what I've gathered: hostas are a common food in Japan, called Urui or Yuki-urui. Look for Hosta montana or Hosta sieboldii--they're tender and less bitter than some of the other types. Prepare young hosta leaves like you would asparagus or substitute it for spinach.

New Hampshire Hostas (middle left) have both H. montana and H. sieboldii. I've never ordered from them, though, so I can't vouch for their quality, but might give them a try. Hostas just might be what I need to fill in the shadier parts of my garden that I can't fill with the average annual veggie crops.

Want to try a hosta recipe? Giboshi arekore has all the info you need to make Urui with Vinegar Mustard Miso Dressing (middle right). Dcarch on the SeedSavers forum gets really creative with his (her?) hosta recipes. The pictures (bottom) alone are enough to send me down the hosta aisles.

All this talk has my belly saying, "hello hosta!"  Have you ever eaten hosta leaves? What do you think? Plant them for food or stick to spinach?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

An Inside Garden in Belgium

Plants, sweets, coffee and crochet. It's the set up for a beautiful gardening blog called Belle fleur de lis.  Lotte makes beautiful objects, takes beautiful photos, and blogs mostly from her lovely indoor garden. Reading her blog is cozy enough to take the bite out of the never-ending winter we're experiencing stateside.

{Belle fleur de lis found via the mine creations.}

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

Annie Novak is not your garden variety farmer

I do a whole lotta web browsing looking for interesting posts for Petals and Pedals. Sometimes it takes me on a journey 12 blogs away with no trace of gardening evidence to blog about. Like this morning. . . gardening inspiration turned to interior design blogs which led me to The Selby, and just when I told myself to refocus, I came across the incredibly stylish, exponentially inspiring Annie Novak

Novak isn't your garden variety farmer. As the founder of Growing Chefs, a farm-based educational program (with a super cute logo, I might add), and Rooftop Farm farmer, the lady has her hands full.

This description is from the Growing Chefs website:

A lifelong vegetarian, Annie spends several months of the year traveling and investigating different ways people grow and eat their food around the world. She's followed blueberries and cows through New Zealand, sheep and hops through Argentina, quinoa and llamas through Peru, cassava and fish through Fiji and the Cook Islands, and chocolate through Ghana. Her current interest is to visit all the countries in the world in which one can harvest salt and grow pepper.

(Images via The Selby- lots more to see there)

Looking for more information on rooftop gardening straight from the mouth of experience? Read Novak's posts for The Atlantic. Do you dream of turning energy zapping roof tops into an agrOasis and raising urban chickens of your own?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

Run-In With a Seed Catalog

Maybe i'm just getting the itch a little earlier this year, but the seed catalogs are lookin' extra good. Maybe it's the paper flipping, the little bits of reading I can do while tending to a toddler. Every seed description seems to be a tiny romance novel and Fabio is played by Tasty Evergreen tomato seeds. Reading one description is the closest I get to finishing a task these days, so I savor each one and anxiously await each new morsel. 

More than a few other people are ogling the glossy catalog sheen. Vintage Chica is doing some seed homework. Both she and Chiot's Run captured the magic of the Baker's Creek catalog, perhaps the most  drool worthy one I've seen this year. While less apt to entice you with the quicksand of pretty pictures, Stony Run Farm's endorsement of the Fedco catalog is worth a mention, as is their tagline: "This is not a fancy picture but an actual reality."

What are you eyeing? Is sifting through seed catalogs a favorite past time or a waste of time?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

Permaculture Dreamland

One of my personal pledges this year is to finish projects. I want room for new: new ideas, new projects,  new blank spaces for possibility. The first project I've attacked is my Permaculture Design Certification. {Ahem, baby steps. . . my goal is to complete the design, not the implementation of the design.}

To finish up the certification process I have to do a master plan for a permaculture project. In my case, the project is our yard: just under an acre of potential. Potential space for gardens brimming with edible and medicinal plants, multi-functional architectural elements, natural habitats for the critters, several 3 bin compost systems, rain water collection and irrigation. The dream goes on and on. 

Having a 1 year old, though, makes it hard to find a lengthy stretch of time to sit down and finish the design. My solution? A Google presentation. I can work on it during down time at work, then work on it during nap time at home. Even better? I'm not distracted by the physical outdoor work since our entire yard is currently covered in a thick layer of ice. One of the beauties of this project is its long-term scope {it is, after all, for my own yard}. I can dream, jot, and eventually refer back to the master plan when I'm ready to get to work.

Are you using the cold winter to plan your outdoor space? Daydreaming of an edible yard? What puts the fun in functional in your yard?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

Seeing Green

This, my friends, is what I call biding my time until it's time to start seeds. In all the post-holiday hooha it's pretty easy to find amaryllis and paperwhite bulbs on clearance. Why not grab a few and get the tiniest amount of green going?

 
image credits: (top) my own; (bottom) flickr user Ex.Libris

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

Gourds: kitsch or cool?

I'm down with a fair amount of kitsch in my yard--see the pic below of our severely wilted front yard {please rain, please!}. Last year when I found the mother load of birdhouse gourds growing in an overgrown ditch near my house I harvest a few when they were full grown. Actually, I didn't have one-stroke tole painting in mind when I picked them. 

I had two straight lines' modern birdhouse in mind. Fall is here, people are are decorating their porches with corn stalk scarecrows and dinner tables with dried gourd centerpieces.  While a little more kitsch would fit right into my decor,  I think a glossy coat of paint is just the perfect way to bring the gourd look into modern cool. What do you think?

On that note, I'm taking the next couple months off Petals & Pedals to tidy up my over-neglected gardens {and do a daily rain dance}, but I'll see you back here in the spring with more gardening projects and growing fun!

 Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.