The Ambient Weather WS-1080 weather station has been operational and gathering data for several days now. So far I’ve been very pleased with the unit. Living several miles north of Fort Wayne, we often have slightly different temperatures and weather conditions than those reported by the television stations and weather websites like weather.com or wunderground.com. It’s…
After a long, cold. snowy winter, the indoor-outdoor carpet on the screen porch was looking pretty bad. We’ve discussed replacing this carpet several times throughout the last year. From the looks of it this spring we knew we wanted to do it before summer. We considered ceramic and porcelain tile options but had concerns about the tiles…
This past week has been full of minor garden related activities and some lessons learned. First, all of the berries have been planted into their containers. We currently have three different blueberry varieties, two raspberries, and one strawberry container. Blueberries- For nearly all blueberries, it is critical to have multiple varieties for efficient pollination. I thought I…
The compost bin is finally up and running! I’ve had the addition of a compost bin on my list for some time, but I hadn’t decided where to place it and what to make it from. I wanted to have a compost bin that was self-contained, wouldn’t dry out to quickly or stay too wet during rainy…
It’s been close to a week since I planted the container garden starter pots. So far, I’ve relied on the windowsill and clam-shell greenhouses to support germination. As of this morning, the only things that have sprouted was one tomato, two of the herb planters, and some of the lettuce mix. To help kick-start the…
Having spent a lot of time in the great out-of doors, I was aware of the synergy that the web of life provides, but I never gave much thought about the inter-relations within the home landscape. Jack Spirko, and his TSP podcast, helped enlighten me to principles of Permaculture. I’ve been hooked on Permaculture research…
I’ve got the first round of seeds started for the 2010 container garden. The first set of seed starts includes several variety of tomatos, sweet and hot peppers, salad green blends, green beans, and zucchini. I’ll be planting some ever-bearing strawberries in hanging strawberry planters very soon. I made the starter pots out of toilet paper rolls. …
For Valentine’s day, my lovely wife bought me a three pack of mini pots for our kitchen windowsill garden. I didn’t waste any time getting these filled and into the sunlight. These three pots will be the first herbs in the windowsill garden. We’ve decided to start with Oregano, Sage, and Dill. I’ll be adding…
A few weeks ago I planted a green onion kitchen scrap root trimming. Looking at the roots on the green onion and the plantless pot sitting on the window sill, where a spider plant start failed to take, I figured ‘why not give it a try?’. Within a few days the center of the green onion started growing…
The time has come to take down the rest of our messy hybrid willows. Come Monday, they will be nothing but stumps. We’ll have those ground out come springtime. We were in no rush to deal with the last eight willows but after seeing the mess of switches they littered all over the neighbors’ yards after just…