Homesteading fluffiness: First strawberry harvest, pineapple and kombucha!

I harvested my pathetic strawberries a couple of days ago and more today. The ones from a couple of days ago ripened enough for me to start freezing them so they don't go to waste. As I mentioned in a different post, I have to start harvesting them before they're completely ripe to beat the robins from devouring them. Here's an already posted pic:

These are now being frozen along with a fresh pineapple that John brought home last week. They say to eat the pineapple right away but we lost sight of it on our cluttered kitchen table so it was neglected. But no worries. It just got that much sweeter.  I found it, hacked off the top, cut all of the skin off, chopped it into bits and prepped it to freeze for smoothies, along with the batch of home grown strawberries (which didn't yield very much).  I love pineapples. Along with a lot of other fruits.  I hear that the pulp has extra goodness in it that helps muscles to repair quickly. I didn't throw those bits out. I put them in my high-powered blender along with some harvested strawberries, raw honey, pineapple chucks, and plain Greek yogurt for a quick snack. Yum.

And for the most exciting part of my day, ok, it doesn't take much to excite me... I have read that you can make a starter scoby from a regular bottle of commercial raw kombucha. I have sweet friends that have offered to give me a "baby" from one of their scobys but they live very far away and there is timing to this. It's like jumping rope, you have to jump in at a certain time in order for it to go correctly. I will keep you posted on how this works out. If you don't want to make your own, you can get a kit here http://www.culturesforhealth.com/kombucha-tea-starter-culture.html. If you want to learn, I found a youtube video (along with tons of other ones). You can see this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgi8ZrQM6Ow. Kombucha is a fairly expensive drink and is impossible to find where I live so It's better that I try to make it. It cultivates healthy bacteria in your intestines, like the bacteria in yogurt but a different family, which is excellent for your immune system. I love this idea and HAVE to make it myself :)

This is very fun for me. I'm enjoying every second. I'm hoping for a good harvest.

The rain has stopped. Got some work done :)

I was able to do some more planting and transplanting today, yay! I started off splitting up my dad's basil bunch. They still seemed a little small, so I'm hoping for the best. I planted one with a small tomato plant that I grew from seed. (I grew a bunch from seed, and took the one that was more separate from the rest assuming it would be heartier to do it this way.).  Below are two basil plants that I took from the original bunch that I split up. I will be taking one to keep at work at my desk :) Hopefully it will grow nicely in-doors without too many bugs. One can wish.

Here is a pic of the baby tomato plant with some unknowns. I'm hoping they are flowers. I can't remember! There is supposed to be some cilantro there too but it's not taking very well. I'm hoping those long stalk in the foreground are not grass! I love experimenting. I took some red pepper seeds from a pepper we ate a couple of days ago, let them sit out, then planted some in this pot too. You can see the pepper stem with seeds to the right. I kept that there so I will know that I planted peppers when some foreign green stalk pops up.

I'm a little disappointed that my spinach is barely making it. And now I'm even more disappointed to learn today that spinach is a cooler-weather plant and will go to seed, or what they called it "bolt" in hot weather. Just great. Just in time for summer. :/  In the meantime (before I learned this), today I planted more spinach seeds since it would be good to grow leafy vegetables in stages. Ok, so this pic is a little boring. Sorry.

Here are my planters where I am growing more basil (surprise surprise) from the same seed that my dad used to grow my basil plants. Half of one are those seeds, half are more spinach seeds, and in the other one is a lettuce mix that I got at Marc's. I learned on that seed packet that it's good to thin as they grow, and also sow more seeds throughout the growing season. I love learning. I've also read in this e-book  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D3B16T2/ref=as_li_tf_til?tag=wholesoystory-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B00D3B16T2&adid=0PHTYC2VGHT26BJMKW7J

that you can grow green leafy veggies in partial shade if you don't have all-day sun. That's promising. 

I've brought these into the garage because it's going to storm tonight and I don't want my seeds splashing out of their new home or getting knocked over and spilling. They're not really considered by me "delicate" at this stage, but it would certainly ruin my work that I've done today.

In another post I will talk about my strawberry harvest that you see with the basil pots.

One step forward, two steps back

My garden is growing, so painfully slowly but surely. Too slow for me. Much slower than the basil seedlings that my dad gave me. Those are doing great. I will be planting more seeds tomorrow. Some that I bought at Marc's, and some that I got from my dad from his basil plants from last year. I can never have enough basil. Here's my baby tomato plants. I'll have to transplant these soon.

Here is my pallet garden. See the seedlings coming up? The basil in the bottom right corner is from the Tremont Farmer's market that I potted.

Here's an up-close shot of the seedlings. If anyone wonders if there are toxins in pallets, my husband says that the wood from these is not treated lumber. It's not treated at all.

Well, I was so excited that I put mesh over my strawberry patch only to find my method faulty. You see, I was hoping that the mesh alone would be a wonderful detractor of those pesky robins only to find they outsmarted me. Boogers. :/ I draped the mesh over some metal garden decorative posts, about 1.5 feel long each, and each are at least 2 feet apart. Not much structure to it. Then the mesh lamely draped over to the back of the "patch". The robins just step on it until they get their desired strawberry and mutilate it. So now I have to resort to picking the strawberries when they're not quite ripe, and ripen them on my windowsill. I didn't get a picture of the patch, but here's a picture of the strawberries I had to salvage before the robins got to them (and my dad's beautiful basil):

Other than that, it's been raining here and I can't get to more planting. There's not much maintenance at this point. I'm still waiting for things to grow!

I'm going to have to play the "thinning of the plants" by ear (or do a web search). I have no clue what is appropriate spacing for each vegetable. I think I still have the seed packs to refer to. Those don't say enough for a newbie farmer like me.

Make-shifting

When you have a tiny homestead, you have to be creative. I just bought a little tomato plant (I'm so excited!), and plopped it in a VERY old planter that was left here when we bought the place (I like to be as frugal as possible). Our one car garage is holding our small boat (that my hubby built, you can see it here http://johnblazydesigns.com/default2.asp?active_page_id=119. It's the most gorgeous, frugal boat you'll ever see), a frig, and lots and lots of hubby's crap, so there's no space for a gardening table. We have a grill out back, table, chairs and my pallet garden so there's really no room for a gardening table there. So, in his brilliant ways, he told me today, "I'll put your gardening dirt on here so you can pot your tomato more easily". VOILA! I'm so easily impressed.

And here's my newest addition to our family:

Old pot and all.

When you live in a tiny space, you gotta do what cha' gotta do.

Welcome to my micro homestead

I'm always crazy interested in many things. Today's flavor is homesteading. Well, since I don't have any land to speak of, and I barely have room in my condo, I have to do what I can. I've caught the fever of homesteading and I'm running with it. See what I do to make my condo my micro homestead.

I've read a few blogs and have seen some online magazines speak of pallet gardening. Well, of course I'm completely interested in this since I have limited space. So my husband found a pallet for me and sealed the back so I could fill it with dirt. I have some seedlings that I'm nurturing and hoping that they'll mature into small plants that I can put in my pallet. I've used this site for inspiration:  http://www.growingagreenerworld.com/plug-a-3-minute-hole-with-a-pallet-garden/ . There are many more places for ideas, but this will give you a good picture.  We have not followed it to a "t" so we will see how it holds up. Especially year to year. Websites give you great ideas but rarely do they share how things pan out in the long run. I can share my hits and misses with this since I really don't have a green thumb. This will be fun :).

My pallet:

Here are my seedlings freshly planted (egg shell idea taken from pinterst):

Here are my seedlings (the ones that are growing) today. The tall ones are peas:

My dad gave me some of his seedlings, basil, in the "terrarium" next to the peas. I LOVE basil so I will do everything in my power to get these things to GROW! I put a clear take-out container to help with the process since my dad says basil loves heat and sunlight. Because I don't have a professional heating pad to help them stay warm or serious planting lights, this planter will assist in keeping the heat in. Luckily I have great sun coming in from the east which is where this window faces. It's great in the mornings, anyway.

I also have larger pots in the back that I will take pictures of once it starts getting warmer. It's too cold today. Hopefully this will be the last freeze of spring. I'm crossing my fingers. But in the meantime, I have the grill cover covering the planters outside! I can't see that working. Wish me luck. Lol.

I'm not afraid of trying anything. I'm certainly not afraid to fail (unless it's scuba diving. Failure is not an option!). If this all fails then you (and I) will have a good laugh. If this doesn't fail, then we'll have some awesome herbs all summer! Woo hoo!