God's Music: Portland Cityfest
Submitted by tired_gardener on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 19:42.This weekend, Louis Palau was in town and when he comes to town, he knows how to throw a party! He invited Veggie Tales and had several puppet shows and blow up toys (bounce houses, slides, etc) for the kids. Live music from big name bands like Mercy Me, TobyMac, Kutless, Chris Tomlin and more. And it was all free!
Well, that part was free. They also had food and you could buy merchandise from the musicians and the many of the sponsors had stuff for sale. But the main events were free. It was a lot of fun. I like free and I love to see Emma having a good time. She did. She was singing along with Mercy Me and during at least one of the prayers (this is an evangelical event) she was praying along. My little 2 1/2 year old singing praise and giving praise. It was so wonderful to see.
I'd like to say a thanks to Him for sending me such a lovely daughter. She is a joy and a wonder. She makes me smile every day and I am sure will do wonderful things for His Glory. He is great, yet he loves me enough to send this beautiful joy to keep us entertained. Yes, I'm a sap. I love Jesus and I love Emma. I'm a lucky man.
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Dining Table Shopping
Submitted by tired_gardener on Fri, 08/22/2008 - 12:54.I was given a link to a site for more furniture. I realize that I am not going to get anything for a while, but it is still fun to look. Once again, in looking at the prices I was taken aback by the amount one is expected to spend for furniture. I don't want to spend much, maybe I'm just too frugal to spend that much, but I like to be able to eat as well.
Well, if you buy a dining room table what are the chances you will be buying another one any time soon? They are a once a decade, or less, type purchase. So spending a little extra a getting the one that you are going to be happy with for the next 10 or 20 or 30 or more years makes since.
Are the ones there going to do it for you? I can't answer that, you will need to look around and see. I saw some dining room tables I liked all right, and some I did not. I happen to like the dining table we have, so I'm unlikely to get another, but perhaps you need one and can find something cool that will make you happy.
Adding Rain Barrels
Submitted by tired_gardener on Mon, 08/18/2008 - 23:20.I've been wanting to put in a rain barrel. I found a barrel that had been used for compost at a garage sale. I paid $2 for it and a bunch of other stuff that they had in the free pile, like a bag a steer manure, another of lime and a couple other fertilizers. I made off pretty good. I didn't get it hooked up right away because I did not have a lot of time and never made it to the hardware store for a spigot.
I finally got the spigot. And now, guess what... It is raining. And I still can't install it. When I put the putty on around the spigot, it needs to cure for 24 hours, and I need to patch a small hole in the bottom. The silicone also needs to cure for 24 hours. By the time I get it all done, the rain will be gone and I'll be wishing I had it set up. Oh well. I have a couple of buckets out there, so I'll get a little rain water to hold. And then I'll get the whole thing properly set up and I'll tell you guys all about how to do it.
Rain barrels really are a great addition to your garden. Rain water is so much better for your friendly fauna than the chemical laden hose water that we normally put on them and it is also better for the environment. It can also save you some money, be a conversation piece, and if set up properly, add beauty to your home. I hope you get one too!
Wildlife Biologist: Application for Dream Job
Submitted by tired_gardener on Sun, 08/17/2008 - 10:42.There is a contest to get a dream job in which you have to submit a short video application in order to be considered. I thought it was a fun idea and I need practice with my video editing skills, so I thought I'd give it a try.
Basically, you create the short video, submit it for consideration, then you get to vote on them and others vote on yours. The best 10 are considered by the panel of judges and the best 1 wins $1000, their dream job for a day, and a trip to the dream job location. There are other prizes as well. I hope I win, but mostly I did it for the video editing practice.
You can view my video here and be sure to go and vote for me. If you have applied, give a link below and I'll check yours out. (it is not embedded, because for some reason embedding it crashes IE, but the link does not...)
Making the Most of Your Mulch
Submitted by tired_gardener on Sun, 08/17/2008 - 09:17.Mulch on your garden beds helps to cut down on weeds, makes the weeds that do come up easier to pull up, and helps to keep moisture in the soil. It can also make the beds look a lot nicer. When you have a lot of beds to mulch, it can be very expensive to buy a big bunch of bark mulch. By the bag is really expensive. If you have a truck, you can get it by the yard for around $30 in my area. Or if you need more, you have to pay someone to deliver it. I need about 4 yards for my flower beds, plus I need something to mulch my veggies as well, probably 2 or 3 yards for that. I have a lot of garden beds, so I need a lot of mulch.
What is a guy with no discretionary income to do? I had an extra $30 a while ago, so I got some bark mulch in a borrowed truck and put it on my rose bushes. Now funds have gotten tighter as I look at the budget till I finish school and wonder how I'll make it, but I still need to mulch the beds or I'll be spending too much time and money watering and pulling weeds. What choices do I have. I came up with some and thought I'd share.
Steal It
I don't recommend this method. By the dog park we go to the city has piled up lots of mulch and I could just go and grab buckets full. I could not get a truck up close to it, as they have it gated, but I would not do that any way.
Grass Mulch
I've heard of a lot of people that would put their grass clipping on as mulch. This works well if you have a good grass lawn to do it with. My grass is mostly dead right now and when it is not, it is mostly weeds. I think I'd get too many weed seeds in it this way.
Newspaper
Newspaper works as a mulch, but you really should put something over it, because it will blow away otherwise. Besides, it is kind ugly. I use this method in the beds that don't have bulbs because it helps more with the weeds, just like the fabric you can buy.
Yard Chippings
If you have a chipper/mulcher, you can take any brush you have, run it through the chipper/mulcher and viola, you have a good mulch. I looked for one new, and saw that they cost $500-$600. I almost choked on my tounge. I had talked to my wife and said "if we can get one for around $100 it will be worth it, because it will cost more than that to haul off all this debris, and we will get mulch. I was disappointed, I wanted the mulch.
Then I went on CriagsList. I found one listed for $125. Went over, checked it out, and brought it home. It claims to do 3 inch peices, but it bogs down so much, if they are still green, that I would not do anything near that. When they are dry, if runs them much easier. It is not as pretty has the bark mulch, but it works well.
Coffee Grounds
You can go to coffee shops and they will give you their old grounds. While you probably would not want to use solely coffee grounds as that might make the soil a little too acidic and might make your worms a little too hyper. Adding it to the mulch will help with color and give it a little fertalizer for you roses and other coffee drinking flora.
Leaves
Not as easy this time of year, but come fall when the leaves are all over the yard, you can pick them up and put them on your beds. This works great for garden beds as in the spring you can then turn the rotten mess of leaves into the beds for extra organic matter.
Shopping Online: Finding The Right Piece
Submitted by tired_gardener on Fri, 08/15/2008 - 12:08.Sometimes we need to buys something and we want to make sure we get the best deal. We can shop all around, looking from store to store, wasting time and gas. We can also shop from site to site. In this way we save gas, but it can still take a lot of time. Another option is to use a shopping comparison site that links to a bunch of different e-retailers.
This last option can save a lot of time, as you only have to look in one place, but they usually only link to retailers that will pay them for the products. This means that if the shopping comparison site does not get a commission, they will not tell you about it. They need to make a profit after all. I recently found a shopping comparison site that claims to link to anyone and everyone that sells a product. Shopwiki doesn't require them to have an affiliate program.
As usual when I hear about something I think my readers will like, I need to research it and tell what I find. I've been wanting some bamboo towels, so I first searched for "bamboo towel". I found 343 results. I thought "a lot of these are part cottom, I'm only interested in 100% bamboo." So I added "-cotton" to the search. To my joy (and suprise) it came back with only 200 results. So it understands the minus operator. Nice.
They also allow you to limit by price, which a lot of sites do. In the searches I checked, it was accurate. I then noticed that you could limit by color. It is a full color bar that you can choose any color. I'm not sure how it works, but I picked the darkest blue I could find and then looked at the five results:
- The first came only in beige
- The second said "Product not found!"
- The third came in a blue
- So did the fourth
- The fifth was a set of trays, not a towel
So, the color match needs work.
Next, I checked out the Pacific Northwest Guide. This was part of their Outdoor and Garden Shopping Guides section. I expected to find a bunch of links to products that are specific to gardeners in this region. What I found instead was a page with information about gardening in the region, with no purchase links at all. Now the information was stereotypical saying that we are so wet our seeds might float away and that we never have to worry about drought. Well, we are in a drought right now and have one many summers. We do get plenty of rain, but there are some places known for being sunny that get more rain than we do (Florida for instance). They also totally leave out the deserts on the east end of the state. This wiki could use some work, but they do provide a space for some good information and I am impressed with that.
Mint, a loved weed
Submitted by tired_gardener on Thu, 08/14/2008 - 21:40.Raise your hand if you have mint growing in unwanted areas of your yard. I can raise both my hands very high to that one. I've gotten rid of a lot of it and my roses are now mint free, so I thought I'd share some of the methods I've used to get rid of the very useful and good smelling weed. Before we talk about getting rid of it, lets talk about controlling it.
control
The surest way to make sure you don't have mint in unwanted areas of your yard is to make sure that it is always in a controlled area. Use a pot of some sort and keep it above ground is a good method. Some people will bury a put underground. This will help keep it from freezing in winter, but mint is so hardy, I'm not sure that it is needed.
I plant mine in tires. Yes, I know I have plenty of mint all over the yard. It was here when I moved in. I don't want it in most of the places it resides, but I do have two plants that I want to keep: one spearmint and one lemon balm. Those two plants I don't want to go crazy and take over my yard, like the ones I've been removing, so I planted them in an old tire.
- Take an old tire and cut out one of the side walls.
- Lay it down with the cutout side up.
- Place some plastic sheeting in what is now the bottom of the tire.
- Place the cutout sidewall on top of the sheeting.
- Fill with potting soil.
- Plant
With this method, the roots can't easily get out of the tire, they grow too shallow to go under the plastic, but just in case, the plastic is there and held in place between the sidewalls and the dirt is holding it down as well. If the roots threaten to go over the tire, just trim them back. Be sure to water your tire regularly as all potted plants drain more freely and have less soil to get the water from. You should also mulch it to keep down evaporation. I also use this method with my sunchoke, except I use semi-truck tires.
removal
Ok. You didn't know better and you planted some mint in you flower beds. Or you just moved into a place and the former owners/tenants planted mint and it went wild. You now have mint everywhere. Time to get out the napalm, right? Hold on, before you get out the big guns,we can try to get rid of it with just a little bit of work.
Mint has shallow fiberous roots, so you don't have to dig very deep to get it. The problem is, since it is so fiberous, you miss some. The mint will grow back from those little bits of root you missed. So here is the method of digging that I found worked best. This works for many other weeds too. It requires a bit of sweat and some time, but it does work well.
- Dig: Dig up what you can. You should get as much of the root as you can, but you don't have to go crazy. Just dig up the chunk, shake off the dirt, toss it in you curbside refuse bin (you don't want it in your compost). I just push the spade at a shallow angle under the clump and pull it up as I go.
- Mulch: Around my roses I used a fabric barriar and then bark mulch. I did not dig up the mint as well here as I did in areas where I did not use the fabric. If you don't use the fabric, put down a good 3 inches of mulch. The mulch will choke out a lot of the little bits before they can make it to the light. It will also make it so that those that make it up have such loose mulch around their roots that they pull up very easily.
- Weed regulary: Go out once every week or two and pull up anything you see that does not belong. With the mulch layer, you will get up a lot, very quickly. Not a whole lot will have made it to the surface, the rest will come up so easily you will wonder why you would garden without a think mulch layer.
- Take it in stages: If your yard is like mine, mint in every corner (and vetch and blackberry and...) then you should take it in stages. I have three rose beds, so I started with the smallest. I got that under control, saw that it worked really well, so I continued to the other two. I also have gotten just the mint and vetch in a couple of areas, letting the other weeds take over, as I just can't get to everything yet. Now, I'm working on my azaleas and bulbs. Next I'll work on where my fruit buses are. Most of the mint is gone from these two areas, and I am working on the vetch. I hope to have them both under control by the end of summer.
Blocking out the heat
Submitted by tired_gardener on Wed, 08/13/2008 - 20:12.With the heat of summer hitting hard, one wonders, "how can I keep this heat out?" The best answer will also help with the winter cold: insulation. While insulation in the walls is great and helps a lot, much of your lost heat or gained heat comes through the windows. You could have a great insulation rating in the walls, but even with the best windows, much of your heat transfer still occurs in the windows. If it is cooler inside, the heat comes through those windows and heats the house. In the winter, you heat leaves your house the same way.
Shade helps a lot in the summer, but in the winter those trees that blocked out the summer heat also block the winter sun which could help heat the house. How about exterior shutters? Shades inside are good in adding extra insulation, but the heat still get inside the house, trapped between the window and the interior shade. This heat slowly seeps out around the shade, getting into your house. It slows the heating of the house, but there is a better way. With exterior shutters, the heat never gets into the house.
Shutters should be mounted on hinges, not just nailed to the side of the house. If they are nailed to the house, they look cool, but serve no purpose. If they are on hinges, you can close them to help keep out the hottest hot and the windiest wind and the coldest cold. Shutters also add some great character to your home, as well as adding great insulation qualities to your home. With all the styles available, you are sure to find one that will match the style of your home.
Blog Carnivals Updates
Submitted by tired_gardener on Mon, 08/11/2008 - 12:37.Many of you have seen the Dirty Fingers Blog Carnival. I post the carnivals every month, but it has been a while since I invited people to join, so I thought I'd do that today. I am also hosting another carnival, so I thought I'd mention that as well.
What is a Blog Carnival?
For those that don't know, a blog carnival is basically a table of contents, or a list of related articles that are found on other blogs. They are sometimes broken into categories, and sometimes have a specific theme they follow. Other times they are very general.
Dirty Fingers
Dirty Fingers is a monthly blog carnival. I keep this fairly general, anything eco, gardening, home, cooking, how-to, etc will be considered. The point is that it is something you get dirty doing. You get dirty hands when you cook, when you garden, when you build, so these will all be considered.
To submit an article, visit Blogcarnival.com.
Make It From Scratch
I will be hosting the October 7th issue of Make It From Scratch. This weekly blog is focused on things that are hand made. In living sustainably, we have to learn to make things our selves from local material. That is why I'm interested in this particular blog. It is also often less expensive to do things yourself than it is to pay someone else to do it. That is not always the case, but often.
To submit an article, visit Blogcarnival.com.Looking for a new couch
Submitted by tired_gardener on Sun, 08/10/2008 - 08:32.We need a new couch. Can't really afford new furniture till after I finish school, but felt like looking anyway. I found this site that sells Designer Furniture, and went looking. I looked around for a while and realized that Modern Furniture is another way to say ugly furniture. Some of it was not too bad and there were some that were kinda cool, but oh my, look at those prices!
I guess I'm not their kind of clientelle. I would not want to waste all the ozone that would be destroyed by taking such a large peice of Italian Furniture and shipping it across the world. Yes, I've bought stuff that was born across the world, but I've learned a lot since them. I'm now trying to be a better buyer of local, or at least made in America, buyer. Even made in Canada or Mexico would be much better than buying something from the other end of the world. China is closer, by the boat, than Italy is. I could not imagine flying those products here!
Alright, I might be a little harsh. Not all of the stuff they have to offer is ugly. Some of it is cool, but it is still way too expensive. I don't think that Contemporary Furniture is my style though. I'm more of a Goodwill Cheap type. I do have a lot of stuff that is made over seas (like this laptop), but I am trying to limit that, as I learn more about sustainability, it is becoming even more important to me.
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