24 Jul

June 2011 Garden Photos

Here is a nice collection of Photos from June, although I am a little late getting these posted…Things looked good in June…had regular rain…maybe too much rain…and the vegetable garden was a few weeks behind what it was last year…but most things look healthy and the season in quite underway. I was on a garden tour this month called the Sustainable Backyard Tour…we had about 50 people come by…and the garden looked really nice. I got a new wicker bench and chair which I have been wanting for several years for our main patio…and the weeds were mostly under control. The wildlife has been incredible this month, and it really feels like a garden of Eden out there.

02 Jun

Serviceberry Jam (and Strawberry Jam)

Today I had the house to myself and I decided to embark on my first Jamalama (Jam making and canning) I’m doing Serviceberry and Strawberry. Of course the first thing you must do when jammin’ is turn the music mix up real loud…I hope you like Jammin’ too…we’re jammin’ he he

26 May

May 2011 Garden Photos

May was a great month for the garden! I spent a lot of time out there and am pleased that it looks as good as it does. It has rained quite a bit and everything is extremely green! I stepped back for some of these photos so you can see the design of the garden more instead of focusing so much on individual flowers. I hope you enjoy taking a tour of the garden, I wish you all could see it in person because the pictures just don’t do it justice. It is like a garden of paradise out there, with so many birds and animals, flowers and fruit, I am truly one lucky gardener!

21 Jun

June 2010 Garden Photos

Time for another tour of the garden! June is a big month for the garden!!! Things that were small in the beginning of the month are huge now. Beans and corn that were still seeds a month ago are now over 5 feet tall! Here is a gallery of photos I took, mostly from June 21st (solstice) so you can see what is blooming and how far along some of the vegetables are. Click on the thumbnail for detailed descriptions and larger photos. Everything is grown organically. Read More →

28 May

Deer Resistant Plant List

Deer Resistance

So one of the most asked questions I hear from people in areas with deer is ‘what can I plant that the deer won’t eat!” This is tough for many reasons…deer eat things where they found something edible before (like if they eat your vegetables…and next year you plant poisonous plants there in the same place, they will eat the yew even though they normally wouldn’t) But I have a list of plants that I grow in my yard that are rarely touched by the deer. I would consider the deer pressure in our yard to be moderate…some days there are no deer, about once a week a herd of 7 or 10 come through. Read More →

26 May

PDF Download of Sprawlstainable’s Garden Design

2010 EDIBLE LANDSCAPE PLAN DRAWING 11X17 click this link to download

I thought it was very important for you to have access to the garden design for the Sprawlstainable Garden. This drawing shows the entire site, the legend to all the edible plantings of fruits and vegetables, the house, the gardens, the patios, etc. The download is of the entire yard, the little thumbnail photo to the left here is just a small section of the garden.

22 May

Value of Homegrown Fruits and Vegetables

These are the amounts I am using to calculate how much the food we grew would have cost if we would have bought it at the store. I got the majority of these numbers by pricing organic produce during May and June 2010 at the Whole Foods Market in Town and Country, Missouri. It would probably be more accurate if I got the numbers based on when these vegetables and fruits were at peak season, but it should be a pretty fair estimate of the actual cost. Some of the items are still blank because Whole Foods was not stocking them at the time I checked prices…so I am hoping by the end of June I should have everything filled in. There are a few items like currants, gooseberry, Jostaberry and serviceberry that I have never seen at the store…so I think I’ll just guess those to be similar to the blackberries and raspberries. Click here if you would like to see the food growing totals for 2010 to see how much we have grown and the value of that food. I am surprised at how fast the savings adds up and I expect that by the end of the year we will have saved quite a lot of money by growing our own food, although my numbers don’t reflect the amount I invested in the garden, but as I said before, I am a gardener, so if I wasn’t planting food, I would have been planting flowers. Read More →

19 May

May 2010 Garden Photos

I was asked to share some snapshots of the garden, so I have put together a gallery of images from the last two weeks. I included both edibles and ornamentals. I am looking forward to the season progressing, and you will get to see how big the veggies get, and how well the flowers do when I post upcomming galleries. I’ll include a new garden gallery each month. Read More →

05 May

Food Totals Grown in 2010

Final Totals

This is a portion of my spreadsheet that lists both the amount of food we have grown this year and the cost of buying this amount of organic food at the store. Also included at the bottom are the totals, including the percentage we have eaten of the produce (I am keeping track of how much we eat versus how much we give away.) Remember, my goal is to grow and eat 300lbs of food this year! I will update this list each week and keep it posted as a sticky to stay at the top of the list so you can watch the progress. Read More →

27 Apr

What Fruits and Vegetables We’re Growing in 2010

This is what we are growing this year, most of the fruit trees and shrubs were planted either last year or this year, so I don’t expect much from them in 2010. I do expect some serviceberries, a few currants, some strawberries and maybe a few pears. Of the vegetables, this will be my first try for growing dried beans, cauliflower, cabbage, sweet potatoes, potatoes, corn and artichokes. Visit my article showing the current totals of food harvested in 2010. Read More →