Monday, January 10, 2011

Busy Turtles!

Lovely pots from Mexico, adapted by drilling holes to be a wonderful hanging planter for some calendula and alyssums!


 Apologies for the gap in time everyone, we've been some busy busy girls! From long term illness, working hard, playing hard, winter colds, epic road trips, nursing a very sick kitty, and much more, we just haven't been writing anything down at all. I also undertook a new job, as the Turtle Princess's teacher! After many instances of arguing with her public school teacher about my beloved girl's education, or the lack of it she was getting, and the teacher lying to me and not caring about the child's well being, only her own annoyance that the child did not fit a cookie cutter mold, I took it upon myself to do her schooling via a private school's home study program in which the parents pick the curriculum. She is doing much better and is a much happier girl now, and is learning so much more! But don't worry, the recycling project was not forgotten. Quite the opposite! Now we have a patio garden just brimming with beautiful lush edible greenery, most of which is in recycled jugs and yogurt containers, reused nursery pots, some altered decorative terracotta pots from Mexico, and a few repurposed $1 dish tubs from a local dollar store. I managed to at least remember photographing every couple of weeks as new bits and pieces were added. We now have over 19 types of plant life and will soon be adding more as February draws closer. From our continuing lettuce plantings to tomatoes, peas, thyme, rosemary, sage, catmint, spearmint, basil, celery, volunteer squash of some kind (which a snail has eaten off half of the first baby squash),broccoli, carrots, onions, garlic, olive tree cuttings, orange tree cuttings, calendula, and alyssums, we've been working plenty on our not-so-little-anymore project!
Our first lettuce harvest... it makes a tasty salad!

 
The first tomato from my rescued tomato plant that was mostly dead when I moved in.

Turtle Princess planting Catnip seeds in recycled egg cartons! Those little buggers aren't keen to sprout, we only got 12 out of the 24 planted.

The abandoned tomato plant, beginning to thrive again after some TLC.

My little Princess holding some olives she picked from a nearby tree and will be learning to brine in Home Arts class! What's that behind her you ask? Why, that is indeed a volunteer squash plant in the background!

The veggie garden as of about 3 weeks ago. It has flourished much since then!

Peas on a homemade bamboo trellis, they have grown a foot and bloomed since this pic!

I bought some planters for the onions and garlic, but the rest up here is the herb garden, flowers, celery, and broccoli. The celery has doubled in size after this was taken, and the alyssums bloomed!

Rosemary, olive tree cuttings, and wheat grass for the cats.
Orange tree cuttings from the tree that produced the tastiest orange I have ever eaten. 






That's all for this update, but there will be some more step-by-step projects coming up, as well as some related recipes and probably a craft project or two coming up in the future. Stay tuned, and the next post will definitely be sooner than the last!
-Mama Turtle

4 comments:

  1. It all looks fabulous! Love how you're growing so many different things in containers.

    I had the same situation with my daughter and also took her out of school to homeschool. Best decision we ever made. She's 19 now and in college and doing better than all her classmates!

    Manuela

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  2. what a lovely basket of Olives! i'm so jealous... your garden plot does look lovely... i wish tomatoes would overwinter here, unfortunately am buried in snow at the moment!

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  3. I almost posted a question to ask how you rooted your olive tree cuttings but decided adding plants I'm allergic to would be a bad idea. I can just go into the city parks in season to pick olives.

    How did your brining turn out? I did a post a couple of years ago on how to "cure your own olives" the first time I tried and mine came out really tasty - both black and green ones.

    Oh, and kudos to you for taking on your daughter's education!

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  4. What a lovely set of plants! You have a really nice porch too. :D

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