While Jessi was at camp Matt & I decided to build what we now call a "garden house". It's not a greenhouse because it's just too dang hot here in Central Texas to have a greenhouse, so instead of plastic we covered ours with shade cloth around the top to keep the birds out & chicken wire around the bottom to keep the big critters out (dogs, coyotes, deer, bobcats, armadillos, raccoons, opossums, etc). It's 14'x 20' right now, but we can easily expand it to make it longer. It took us 2 very hot days & about $250, give or take a little. We haven't planted anything yet as we are still trying to figure out the best way to prep our ground - nasty clay - and how to get an organic garden started. Because of the amount of clay in our soil we'll have to use gardening soil for a good 4 inches on the top, but we still have to mix sand in with our clay for the deeper rooted veggies. If we are going to do this I want to take the time to do it right. Matt stopped by The Natural Gardener up in Austin & got a lot of good info, so now we just have to wait for his pay & all that to stabilize (everything's kind of screwy right now between the military pay coming to an end & his AT&T pay starting back up so we don't know when, how much or from whom he's going to get paid).
We will be implementing the square foot gardening technique & therefore will be planting seasonal herbs & veggies year-round. I'm really excited! We have our compost bin set up & Matt ordered 500 worms which we will put in the compost bin. I think we'll have a 'worm garden' (or whatever they call it) under our sink to put the meat scraps & stuff we can't put in the composter. We did get some Night Crawlers at the local bait shop, but they are bottom feeders (they go down deep), which is why Matt got the red worms that like to feed closer to the top.
Eventually I would like to be as self-sufficient as possible - I'd even like to get a couple of cows for milking & meat. Maybe even a hog, although Matt says he'd rather just hunt the feral pigs running around instead of raising our own. Definitely chickens or geese (for eggs & to eat the grasshoppers). Some of this will take years to get to, but we have to start somewhere, right?
3 comments:
You guys are good! It looks great. We finally gave up on amending the soil and just built a raised bed. By the way, I like that composter! Did you get it from Natural Gardener?
There's an interesting book called
Encyclopedia of Country Living that you might enjoy... I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list!
What a great idea Trish! I wish we could do that too. Not being able to ever be self sufficient is one thing I don't like about living in the desert. That pesky no water thing is really a roadblock to so much.
Hey you tole me to post more so I did and you stopped -- what has happened in the last week or two?
We actually got the composter from the San Marcos Walmart in the gardening section outside.
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