Accidental pumpkins

When we first moved into our house the back yard sloped down pretty bad. There was about a 3 1/2 foot difference from my back door to the back corner of my yard, so every time I did a project around the yard I would take the extra dirt and throw into the back corner to even out the slope. After Halloween in 2006 I had a pumpkin that started to go bad, so i chucked it out into the back corner and forgot about it. Next summer all of these vines appeared out of nowhere!

Once I saw the big yellow blooms I knew exactly what it was and where it cam from! We got about 4 pumpkins the size of basketballs that year. Every year we would throw the old one out back and next season we would have more pumpkins, last year we even had some gourds. This year I replaced my green beans that didn't make it because of the drought with a variety of pumpkins that are supposed to get about 3 feet round and weigh about 100 pounds. I will add more pictures when they start to bloom.

Canna Bulbs

So i was in Lowes a couple weeks ago and noticed that they were selling Canna bulbs for $5 a piece! Then I saw you could buy 1 Canna plant in a one gallon container for $15!!! I have 30 of these growing around my yard right now and every season they multiply! I started out with 6 bulbs 2 years ago that I got for free from my parents. Maybe next season I should just pot them up and sell a bunch.

propagation

I started these about a month ago, they already have their roots and new growth. Geraniums on the left, Hybrid tea roses on the bottom right and French Lilac on the top right.

I keep the new cuttings in a container in coarse sand and sealed up in a large trash bag to give them plenty of heat and humidity to help grow new roots.

Wine and Rose Weigela on the left and Smoke Bush on the right.

Rose of Sharon. The wires or rulers help keep the plastic off the leaves.

 

 

Red twig Dogwood bush. The tubes in the middle also keep the plastic off the new cuttings.

Front of the house after I ripped out the ugly shrubs and built a flower bed.

Zinnia

Grew this from a seed, now I have a flower bed full of them.

http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/


Interesting movie for anyone interested in starting their own permaculture garden.

Gutter Garden

Another idea for people with small yards that want to grow something!

Strawberries on top and lettuce down below

Fire pit

This is the fire pit I made this spring from leftover pavers and on old rusted out fire pit.

The second pic is my son roasting marshmallows on it.

Why Tightwad?

Like I said yesterday, I don't have unlimited resources so I make due with what I have. 90% of the plants growing in my yard I either grew from seed, grew from a cutting or division or I rescued it( someone thought it was dead and was going to throw it away and I brought it home and made it into something really nice).

I started by growing my seeds in little dixie cups in my utility closet. It wasn't bad but I had to make sure they got the right amount of water, light, make sure they stayed free of bugs and mildew. It was a lot of work with a success rate of only 50%.

In the last year I have tried a new method that has worked so much better with almost no work. I found several ideas in books and online that I incorporated into one to come up with a better way to start seeds.

From all of those ideas came the self watering seed starter. consisting of a recycled 2 liter bottle, cotton rope and a certain type of growing medium i have had about a 95% success rate with everything that I grew this year.

I had about a dozen 2 liter bottles that I used to grow everything in my yard this year, flowers and vegetables. Sometimes it got a little crowded and I would have to weed out the weak plants, I already ave about 60 bottles saved for next season. About once a month I would have to add water to the bottom part of the 2 liter, it works like an old fashioned oil lamp because the cotton rope hangs down in the water and absorbs the water up into the top part to keep the soil moist. It never got to wet or to dry, but stayed constantly moist and the plants did really well because of the consistent source of water.

A few pics from around the yard.

Shady side of the house.

Hostas and Hucheras.

More Hosta and Huchera.

You can see one of my Canna plants in the back coming up.

Asiatic Lillies.

Daylillies.

My first attempt at gutter gardens.

Strawberries in the gutter.

In the Beginning the house was typical of every other house in every sub-division, Bradford Pear tree in the front yard, plain shrubs in the front  and a mix of grass, weeds, rocks and construction fill  for a yard. I threw a ton of grass seed down, sprayed gallons of weed killer and fertilized the hell out of it to no avail. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong!

Finally one day I decided to dig up those ugly and neglected shrubs from the front of the house. I grabbed my shovel and slammed it into the dirt with all my strength, I immediately broke the handle on my shovel and almost broke my thumb. I quickly realized the dirt here in Indiana was not the same dirt that I was used to growing up in Illinois. Where I live in Indiana is nothing but very hard clay, almost as hard as concrete, I was used to the nice black soil I had in Illinois that was like potting soil compared to what I had now.

After a couple shovels and a sore thumb I decided something had to be done about the dirt. I figured if I added nice top soil on the yard, grass would grow. It did for about a month or two, then it would die. The Problem was that the hard clay was still underneath and the roots couldn't penetrate it. That's when I decided to go all in, I borrowed a tiller from a neighbor, got about 1 ton of top soil and compost,  way more grass seed than what the bags recommended and 2 bales of straw. I tilled up the hard clay, added the top soil and compost and began to till that it as well. When it was a nice loose mixture I leveled out the yard and started spreading the seed down until it completely covered the dirt. Then I covered it all with the straw and watered.

My neighbors thought I was nuts for tilling up my whole yard, for 2 weeks it was nothing but straw for a front yard, then one day I got impatient and raked up some of the straw and to my amazement was a beautiful green carpet underneath!

After that, I just had to do some annual fertilizing, aerate it once every couple years and keep the neighbors weeds out of it. Now I have the greenest yard on the block,  weed free and low maintenance. Half the time I don't wear shoes when I mow(for safety reasons I wouldn't recommend it) because it is like walking on carpet now.

Why?

I don't claim to be an expert when it comes to gardening, landscaping or horticulture. I do know what has worked for me over the years through a lot of trial and error.

 I bought the house I live in 7 years ago in a quite little neighborhood on a cul de sac, I immediately decided I wanted the nicest yard on the block! Unfortunately, I didn't have unlimited resources to go out and by a ton of plants and sod to throw in my yard and put my neighbors to shame. I didn't even have limited resources, I did have a little experience and a lot of determination.

I hope to share my experiences from the last 7 years of what has worked and what has failed miserably in making my yard my own personal Shangri La. Hopefully you will learn from my mistakes and share in my successes!