June Garden Update...In July

Better late than never...that's what they say.

June was a busy month...full with swimming, pizza nights (at the pool), homemade popsicles and more swimming.  You'd think the kids would be water-logged...but we still have a lot of Summer to go!

June started out with a bang in the garden and then ended with some complications, mostly of the buggy and hot kind. 

This being my first year of having a REAL garden means there is quite the learning curve.  Being a newbie coupled with my almost visceral reaction to researching anything before doing it means we are learning on the fly y'all.  

That being said...Lessons learned in June:

Plant your zucchini in mid-July to try and avoid vine borers that will suck the life right out of your plants and leave you with wilting, sad shells of zucchini plants and if you manage to get ONE zucchini it will have a gross grub in it.  :( 

Also, make sure your soil has enough of the right minerals and such to avoid blossom end rot.  (Gotta get a soil testing kit)

Peas don't like it when it gets too hot and will start to brown and die.  Replant in Fall for more pea goodness!

Cucumbers don't typically like it when you transplant them.  I got lucky with one batch but the ones I moved to the pumpkin patch...no dice.

DON'T plant your carrots too close together or you will end up with something more like microscopic carrots...not even on the baby scale.  

Plant your onions sooner after you purchase them than later...poor babies didn't make it.  

This month I tried to wrangle the cucumbers that have taken over everything, keep all plants watered as best I can, planted more carrots where the failed onions lived and did  lot of looking up ways to control bugs naturally in the garden.  We ordered neem oil to try and get rid of all the pests eating my sunflowers and peppers and our Fall seeds and a good ground cover for Winter.  

 Here are some pics (only from the front of the house...no backyard pics yet): 

 The sincere pumpkin patch with failed transplanted cukes in the middle 

 Struggling jalapenos, basil, rosemary, strawberries, sunflowers and greens

 Box #2: Sunflowers, marigolds, cosmos, newly planted carrots, cuckes, dying zucchini and dill

Box #1: Jalapenos, carrots, zucchini, cukes, marigolds, peas

Visitor

Will be back with pics of the tomatoes and backyard zucchinis.  Looks like we may get to harvest potatoes this weekend!  

Total food grown this year:

2.93 lbs

Garden Update

This is our first year of REALLY planting a garden.  In the past I tried to grow a few things (one year even in the square foot box I ordered online).  Usually it was just a few pots of herbs and some failed tomatoes.  My problem is I get lazy and forget to water everything and in the Georgia summers that just doesn't cut it.  

This year will be different though.  I am determined to grow something of substance and begin learning about growing my own food.  That, combined with the 9-year-olds (be it short-lived) desire to have a garden had me placing a decent sized order for seeds in the late Winter.  We combed over our High Mowing Seeds catalog and chose what we wanted to grow and what we thought we had enough sunlight for.  

We started with trying to start a few seeds indoors.  That didn't turn out so well.  Our tomatoes and Iko Iko peppers just didn't do so hot so, I abandoned starting them inside and just waited until it was warm enough to throw everything outdoors.  I ended up having to purchase small tomato plants since I wasted all our seeds trying to DIY it.  We ended up purchasing a mixture of plants from the big box garden store and through our CSA market.  

Once it was warm enough we started with green arrow peas, zucchinis, cucumbers, spring mix, carrots basil, rosemary, spinach and jalapenos.  In the back of the house we planted our tomato plants in buckets and some organic potatoes I had saved in a large garbage can.  We quickly ran out of space and added a second box of onions, sunflowers, cosmos and some thinned cucumbers and zucchinis (I went a little crazy with the seeds).  We were also gifted some free strawberry plants and raspberry plants from a kind neighbor and added more strawberry plants, all in pots next to the boxes.  

I ended up having to thin the cucumbers and zucchinis big time so some zucchinis were moved to a spot in the back yard under this strange flower pot thingy that is filled with basil seedlings. 

 (first box with jalapenos, carrots, spring mix, zucchinis, peas, cucumbers and spinach)

 (potato can)

 (thinned zucchinis underneath weird planter thing filled with basil)

 (second box with onions, dill, sunflowers, cosmos, more zucchini and cucumbers)

(16 tomato plants of various varieties)

Now one month later, things are coming along pretty well.  I managed to rehab the fledgling cucumber plants and zucchinis that looked a little rough in the beginning.  Here is how things looked over the weekend:

(Various strawberry plants, basil, rosemary and wildflowers in pots.  newish greens and spinach along with some extra sunflowers in gifted pallet)

 (salvaged cucumbers in long pot)

 (second box still coming along with added marigolds)

 (original box with added marigolds, re-homed jalapenos and some cucumbers that need to be thinned again badly)

 (peas coming in)

(more peas and cucumbers on back deck)

There you have it...one month of work and growth.  Still doesn't look like a lot, but its improvement.  We have been weighing and tracking all that we harvest so we can see at the end of the year what we have grown.  SO far we have a whopping 1 lb of berries, a few ounces of spring mix and a gallon freezer bag of basil that I haven't weighed yet.  Creeping along y'all, creeping along. 

Marching...

We are enjoying our long weekend with Mister at home...the first weekend that really feels like Summer is here.  All the kiddies are out of school (not that we attend public school), our co-op classes are done for the season and our newly acquired pool membership (thank you gramma) is now active.  

Saturday found us attending the world March Against Monsanto day here in Atlanta.  We would have likely flaked on it if it weren't for our 9-year-old's passionate dislike for Monsanto and GMOs.  While we wavered back and forth on going: "its hot...my foot hurts ...I'm tired...I want to stay home..."

we decided we couldn't disappoint a kid who had been saving his anti-Monsanto birthday shirt all month for the march.  We also determined we had to set an good example.  How can we preach about the things that are important to us, justify our huge grocery budget by saying we have to "vote with our dollars" and then puss out at the last minute because we were being lazy?  We had to show him that if something is important to you...you do something...anything...about it.  So, we got up early to take him for poster board for his sign and off we went.  

Proud isn't quite the right word for what I was Saturday.  He was so excited and so serious about the march.  It brought a little lump to this mom's throat to see that kid be passionate enough about something to march through downtown Atlanta hanging out literature and chanting.  

Of course after all that walking and general do-goodery we figured we deserved burritos and a nap.  

For more information about the March you can check out their website here:
http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/

Back at It...

With two abandoned blogs under my belt...I figured it was time to get at it again.  We stopped blogging over at Flex Family Arts (which someone else has now commandeered the address) quite a long time ago.  Before I left work as a medical social worker, before we pulled our baby out of public school to begin homeschooling, before we found out we were pregnant and had a second baby named Edie.  We have also since moved houses.  The "baby" is now 9, the other actual baby is already 1 and we are living in (blech) an even more suburban area of the sprawling greater Atlanta area.  

We have pretty much given up on the embroidery business and barely mess with etsy at all anymore.  We are still selling vintage and other items online and before the recent move began selling off much of what we don't need to pay off medical bills and start saving ton FINALLY purchase our own house.  Its been a bumpy ride given that we had a surprise move in March which ate up much of what we had saved so far in moving expenses and 3...yes 3 new appliances.  So, here we are...starting over again.

There is a new focus though..however unfocused it may still be.  We're still trying to figure it out y'all.  Mister is currently in the midst of a stressful job search (aren't they all) and I am trying to balance having a baby and a 9-year-old at home all day...every day while still finding time to tend to our meager online sales and the house.  So much is in the air.  We don't know where Mister will be working, where we will finally end up living, what we will ultimately be doing.  Its a difficult period of transition for all of us.  I HATE CHANGE.  But, its also a bit exciting because anything could potentially come out of all this.  

So, this brings me to the new blag name, Ounce by Ounce.  It was originally a reference to the slowly burgeoning garden I have been tending at the new house, planted in response to our desire to begin living a little more independently of our failing food system in the United States.  I am keeping track of the amount of food grown so we can see how much we have at the end of the season.  Most days it is literally less than an ounce right now.  A strawberry, a half an ounce of Spring mix, a few bits of basil.  I am writing it all down and slowly its growing....ounce by ounce.  However, in sitting to write this new introduction of sorts to this blog...I am noticing that this is how everything is coming along right now in this season of our lives...the savings account, the garden, the future planning.  All of it is coming along...an ounce at a time.  

I hope you all will stop in often and we will regain some of the wonderful blogging community we had back when we were FFA.  

Much Love,

A, J, M and E