Gardening in a bucket...............

This has been a very fast paced and worthwhile past few days. 10 days that is. I have been busy looking through seed catalogs ordering seeds and plants, gardening gadgets and purchasing soil, containers, plus making a planograph for the upcoming planting extravaganza that will begin this week. I love this obsessive/compulsive part of any project. "Get out the graph paper and start the measuring".

the flowers blooming in my garden are dish flowers

As so many others are doing, Casa de Cuckoo will be attempting to grow more of our own fruits and veggies. I know that in the long run, it will cost us more than if we just go to the grocery for our produce but I will know where it came from and what went into the growing of said produce. Besides that, I will be able to feed my family unusual and almost forgotten heirloom veggies with a whole different taste profile than the bland we get from the store.

I know we will continue to attend and support the growers market but whose to say that in a couple of years, we too will have some varietals to sell to folks, knowing that we are helping the planet. It's a warm and fuzzy thought on a cold and windy day.

Jameson checking out the area

Ellie Mae making sure Jameson did it right

It is so scary to think what we have been ingesting based on the market research and also the scare tactics of some of the "health" gurus. I don't believe everything at face value anymore. I research and ask questions. It just makes sense to trust ourselves and make the best of what we have and use it for our own well being.

I know my family trusts my judgment and tenacity, but they can never not use the sarcasm gene that I bestowed upon them.  When I brought the idea of a container garden up to them, they reminded me of the "great failed straw bale garden of 2014". Nothing like an experiment gone wrong to arm teenagers with facts. But I persevered and went on with my research and licked my salty wounds.

We will be gardening in the backyard, on part of our back porch slab, with twenty four, white, 5 gallon, food grade plastic buckets (Lowe's $3.45 ea.), ten, white, 2 gallon buckets ($2.95 ea) for crops that don't require as much root space and 10 after Valentine (red) clearance buckets ($.25 ea) for the companion flowers to keep the bees coming around to pollinate, the other harmful bugs at bay and my continued happiness with viewing the riotous colors. The same volume pots would be so much more expensive and would make the garden adventure cost prohibitive. And because these buckets will not biodegrade, these are forever planters (or at least pretty indestructible). I also purchased some potato bags. They really aren't bags per se. They are garden cloth stand up containers that have a "trap door" so that you can go in from the bottom and harvest potatoes and not disturb the whole plant. I also purchased white plastic colanders to hang above the garden from the gutters to have more flowers growing as well. More bee and butterfly attractors.

potato bucket along with my number one pest control, peppermint juice from dried plants. spiders and mice neither one come around with this great smelling concoction

Each of the buckets will have holes drilled on the sides, 1 inch from the bottom to allow drainage, the bottom of the bucket will be filled with 4 inches of packing peanuts, you know the things that never go away but are inert and non toxic. I have begun the mixing of the soils for each of the crops. Some are acid lovers, others not so much.

Our rescue of the back porch has helped us all to be enthusiastic about being in the backyard again and so this weekend the grands and Shelley thatched the lawn, cleaned up the area around the shrubs and bushes and I worked on the patio slab cleaning up the area. When we were all finished it looked so amazing. Funny how hard work always shines brightly when you reach your goal.

my much loved "collection of memory stuff" on the back porch

Then we went shopping for the dirt. You know it always seems strange to know that for all my life, I have been buying soil in which to plant. Why do I not live on a hill? Where has all the soil gone to? I still am walking on the same sidewalks and they aren't buried in the ground. Just a side note observation.

I won't even go into the exact seeds and plants that we are planting because this is long enough already. But we will be planting 22 fruits and vegetables, 9 herbs and medicinal plants and 15 flower varieties (some of which are also edible) both in the garden containers and in the flower beds. Whew. Can you tell I have a plan? And that implementation of said plan will be taking many hours of work and hopefully, with measured steps we will be eating lots of safe, great home grown veggies in the months to come.

I will not even entertain the thought that the grands will have yet another salty bit to rub in an olde ladies, failed, wounds.

So there.

saucer magnolia "fixing to bloom out"

Happy Spring to come, my lovelies,
Smooches and Squoozes, Oma Linda