That Darn Squirrel

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but there is a VERY unwelcome visitor in my gardens!! It has utterly destroyed my sunflowers and digs ditches in every single container I have. I'm also fairly sure it ate the last of my strawberries before the heat stressed my plants out and they stopped producing anything, even runners.
I'm not the first to complain about them, and the myriad number of suggestions on the internet for driving them away are just boggling.
There wasn't any money for a system that shot pellets at them. I didn't want to put up a sonic alarm because it might disturb my own pets. And programming a water gun using Python to shoot them when they showed up seemed awesome and geeky, but I just don't have the time or appropriate equipment to get it done.
So I resorted to chemical warfare.
After every rain, which sadly but perhaps conveniently for my memory and schedule has been VERY infrequent, I run out and sprinkle cayenne in the pot of every single plant I have. And it has worked! When I only did the lower plants and forgot the plants on my upper deck, I saw the little bastard bypass everything there and scale my deck posts to get upstairs. As soon as I sprinkled it up there... boom, he left that alone and paced back and forth along the cement brick retainer wall that pretends it is my back yard.
I just have to stay on top of it to make sure he leaves things alone, as I just got a SECOND sprout on my ginger and my pumpkin is finally flowering like crazy (I shall have to run outside and do some artificial insemination to see anything by Halloween at this point. Bees are disturbingly few and far between.)
I was upset and sad that he came and ate the flowers off of all the sunflowers I'd grown from seed, the ones that my daughter had helped me plant in the spring with such happy abandon, when Nature did that awesome thing she always does.
She showed me I was pretty stupid in thinking she just gave up that easily.
My sunflowers are atrocious and would win no awards, but currently they have new growth sticking out of the top of the stems that were chewed down to nothing and the leaves stripped. And in the middle of all of that.... a single flower perked open as if to say... "F*** YOU SCIUROMORPH!!"
I am going to protect that tiny flower, and any of its brethren that show up, with my life. And the cayenne wars will continue, because I want this bastard OUT OF MY LIFE.

NATURE FINDS A WAY. UP YOURS, SQUIRREL!

Fodder for Worms

So it turned out I needed to break out the second tray for the worm bin sooner than I thought, and it turned out to be a better learning experience than the first tray.
A warning, this will be pretty image intensive, as I documented everything this time in an attempt to give people an idea of what goes in to working a worm bin.
After I had loaded up the first bin with a ton of corn husks and other things that apparently take a great deal of time to break down, it became very obvious that the worms weren't going through the stuff in the trays as fast as I thought they would. This is probably because I bought less than they recommended and they hadn't had a chance to ramp up reproduction just yet, despite the plethora of food they were being given.
SO... I decided to start a second tray because I had a scraps bucket brimming to full and a pile of cardboard and newspapers ready to go and taking up space in my small-ish kitchen. I figured the worms could travel back and forth between the two trays through whatever looked yummier to them. Or tasted, since it's pitch black and they like it that way.

As you can see, it was pretty darn crowded in that first tray.

I began with the recommendation to create the food and roughage mix for the worms out of the stuff they included; the rest of the paper shreds (I tore up the paper bag they came in, too, because hey the entire point of this is not to waste resources!), the pumice, and the rest of the coconut coir, which I realized I had only used perhaps 1/4 of instead of half and probably explained why the worms were having a rough time in the first tray... not enough stuff to get a footing in.
Everything thrown together in a bowl...

This is me adding "worm minerals" on top of everything to give them some extra nutrition. I prefer gummy vitamins.

Then wet everything down and stirred it with the handy pitch fork they included.

Mmmm....

I then went about shredding the mail, the egg cartons, the extra newspapers and everything else available and tossed it in the bottom of the second tray I was prepping.

I then walked it outside and set it on top of the first tray, adding the coconut coir/paper/pumice/worm minerals mix over top of it in a surprisingly thick layer. They say this tray, being second, didn't need newspaper on the bottom of it because the worms would want to crawl up in to it so... I figured that was enough prep of the base!

Thankfully it just looks like dirt that survived a music festival.

I tossed in my scrap bin stuff to give them the "greens" that were needed to make proper compost , and to give the worms something interesting to actually find once they journeyed upwards.
Point of note here - "Greens" are plants, fruits, vegetables, loose tea, coffee grounds, anything that is wet and organic in nature. "Browns" are things like newspaper, junk mail, cartons, cardboard, anything that has been processed and is flat or "dead", if you will. It provides the proper balance of nitrogen and carbon within the wormy environment.

Yum yum yummy..... for them, anyway!

I then layered wet newspaper on top of everything per the recommendations to keep down fruit flies and pests and to help keep the environment nice and most. Plus it helps keep the inside of the lid clean.

The county newspaper - where I find out about deals on groceries from last week once it gets to me.

And voila! Finished! And seriously easy. I was able to do it with a toddler underfoot and a husband milling around trying to figure out what on earth I was doing with perfectly good mixing bowls.

Capped off smartly for that warm, dark environment your worms love!

I have noticed that within a week of putting the second tray over top of the first that the VERY full first tray dropped down at least an inch in height. A check of the contests -which I have spared you a picture of- shows everything as being wilted and a LOT more dark matter in the bottom than previously. I didn't stick my hand in it because I had a toddler there watching me and did not wish to have an emulatable moment, But it seemed to me giving them the extra space to move around actually made the digesting go faster. I call that a win!
And a fun side bit that I found out after this: I was telling my Dad about venturing in to vermiculture during our weekly phone call. He grew up on a farm, so everything that I talk about doing is stuff he has already done, including ringing the neck off a chicken when he was 6. HARD CORE.
When I explained to him that I had red wrigglers in my garage, he grew excited and told me about how HIS father used to have a huge compost pile that he raised worms in, just a pile of leaves and food scraps and whatnot in the middle of a pit made from cinder blocks. Nothing NEARLY so fancy as the small contraption I dumped money in to. But what he did was go through and not only sell the worm castings, but he also sold the worms themselves to an outfit that sold fishing bait out of vending machines all over the South. Apparently it made him a LOT of money.
"But I bet you've never seen one of those. They wouldn't be down where you live," he said softly.
"Actually, there's one right outside the car wash about a half mile from here," I told him, laughing.
It was an odd thing to learn about family history over, and do a bit of bonding with, but it was definitely cool to learn about. And also kind of funny to find out that I'm not doing anything new right now, and that this sort of thing is apparently in my DNA!
Anyway, I'm hoping this helped some folks out in getting an idea of what it takes to set up and maintain a worm bin, and I'll update again when we go to harvest the worm castings from the first bin!

~An end note; I negotiated to borrow my husband's travel laptop and will be using it write updates going forward. Thank you to everybody for your patience!

Technical Difficulties

I actually have a backlog of topics to cover here, but keep running in to the same problem... My computer has nowhere to go in our new place and both laptops I had been using previously are finally just sooo old, they can't be bothered to load anything without a 5-10 minute wait. Seeing as I'm usually pretty image-intensive, using my tablet isn't really a good option either (nevermind that it's also aging and starting to do things like freeze up or just refuse to admit I tapped something. Eight times.)
I'm going to look in to finding a cheap laptop to allow me tokeep writing, or else figure out a way to get my desktop set up ina closet for the time being. Because I am really in to these homesteading projects, and crafts, and everything that's been going on but you wouldn't know that by checking on here.
It's almost embarrassing to be a techie without functioning equipment, to boot. So trust me when I say I'm really trying to work this out.
Bare with me, and I'll have a solution of some sort by next week.

Vermiculture and Lactobacillus

Things are finally winding down on the "moving our lives to new digs" forefront. We have most of the necessities finally, and as of yesterday we emptied out our smaller storage unit and got everything in to the mid-sized unit. That was a hell of an accomplishment and a nice milestone.
The homesteading activities did NOT go on hiatus, however! I am bound and determined to work on things even if we don't have the "traditional " setup just yet!
The two projects that have been consuming my imagination are... Yogurt making and worm bins!
The yogurt was started first because you basically need milk, bacteria, containers and a fridge. I had all of those components walking in the door to our new place so nothing else was necessary. (Although I will cop to buying a 12-pack of Ball canning jars. Because it's something I would like to do one day.)
After asking if anybody had any recipes for making yogurt and being INUNDATED with the recipe on how to make it -and I will be honest, everybody told me their recipe made THE BEST YOGURTS EVAR and it was all literally the same set up steps- I went ahead and tried with organic whole milk snagged out of the dairy section of the supermarket. Nothing fancy, In fact, the love/hate/love/omgendthispain relationship I have with dairy had me concerned that perhaps I should be trying raw milk. Or almond milk. Or goat's milk. More on this in a bit. But for that first batch I crafted 3 and 3/5ths jars of whole cow's milk yogurt. I covered them in towels to keep them warm, dropped a lobster pot over top of them and let them sit for 14 hours.

And in this photo you see our high-tech yogurt making operation complete with stripey towel.

It was an utter success, and the worst part was waiting for the milk to cool down. I went and stirred it every time I got fidgety and tested the temp with a meat probe thermometer, because we are FANCY around here. As my friend Jennifer said, yogurt making is something you do while you're doing other things. Because really it's like that thing where you go do other stuff while the dryer is running. Or paint is drying. Or your mother in law is giving you advice. That kind of thing.
I DID cheat and use a single serve thing of Fage yogurt instead of going the purist route and popping open probiotic capsules, but there are no regrets. I enjoy the Fage product (or could when it still agreed with me) and therefore their bacteria was desirable.
You will note a trend of me buying food from places I like then using it to make my own food. Constantly. The only reason I don't have blueberry bushes right now is because you can't grow them from blueberries at the farmer's market!
After seeing how easy it was to do the cow's milk, I opted to look up almond milk yogurt and goat's milk yogurt and give it a shot.
No. Never again.
Because THIS is what happened with the almond yogurt after I cultured it and stashed it in the fridge for 2 days....

The separation was noticable in all 4 jars, and only got worse as it "aged". 

....and the smell was not good. Not good at all. Given that eating the homemade cow's milk stuff has actually proven to not trouble my stomach in the least, I will give up trying to make yogurt out of milk alternatives.
As far as the goat yogurt? I made it from raw goat's milk, and a mere teaspoon of it left me with goat flavoring in my mouth for an hour. I'll be using it for casseroles coming up, but it's just too strong for me to throw granola and fruit in to and munch on in the morning.
Happily, my second batch of cow's milk yogurt turned out better than the first, and this time in order to keep my kitchen counter clean I put it in the oven and left the light on overnight. The jars were warm to the touch when I stumbled downstairs 14-15 hours later, and definitely firmer and creamier somehow than the first batch was. I'm looking forward to making my third batch tomorrow and rolling the last of the second batch in to it as the culture! I have a love of generational things, and having my own slowly personalizing yogurt bacteria culture pleases me.

A successful "jarring" occasion. Get it??

Now! On to vermiculture!
I hate food waste. This was probably instilled in me by my father, who had to make do with soooo much less as a kid than I did when he was growing up. You ate the watermelon rind, damnit, (pickled for a treat sometimes) and the corn cob was sweet so you chewed on that, too, to get a little sugar when 5 cent candy was outside of what you could afford.
This is why I was chafing at the bit that we would be losing our compost bin with the sale of our last place. There would be so many fruit skins and pits and vegetable peelings going down the road in a plastic bag to a dumpster, waiting to be transported to a landfill where they would just sit, removed from the energy cycle until the bag split open and things could properly rot and shift around. I am also looking to start as many projects as can be safely and sanitarily done in our diminished space so there's less downtime when we finally have a place we can muck about in the dirt on. So while a compost bin would not be doable due to the smell and potential seepage and the fact that we can't put anything out on the grass because the landscapers can't mow  -not to mention complaints that we're putting rotting food outside that might attract the wildlife- I knew that a worm bin was the way to go.
I found a very simple model, the Worm Factory 360, on Amazon. It was compact and expandable depending on the needs of the household, meaning we could stow it in a corner in the garage and have our neighbors be none the wiser.
There are a TON of tutorials out there on making worm bins and some of them could be made with something as simple as a rubbermaid storage container. If you have the room or can have your worm bin outside, it's a much cheaper option and I highly recommend it. I only went with pre-made because it needed to be very compact and very clean. The model we got has a small bowl at the bottom to catch drippings if the compost gets too wet which you can pour off courtesy of a spigot as "worm tea" and go make your houseplant and garden plants' day by adding it to their regular water.
It arrived with a lot of bells and whistles, and a VERY in depth booklet explaining how to go about starting up the bin, caring for the worms, setting up the substraight, etc. I was so excited that I got to work immediately despite not having purchased the worms yet.
I started out by mixing up the coconut fibers, crushed mineral and shredded paper that they included in to a damp mound to help keep moisture and air in to the initial pan.

Yummy!

I then set down a few layers of wet newspaper to keep the worms from falling through the bin floor since there would be no soil yet for them to roll around in, added the substrate in, then tossed on all of the vegetable and fruit scraps I'd been saving up that week so the worms could start out with something yummy. I'd made chicken chili, so there were a LOT of greens to deal with.

Fun fact, you can throw in newspapers, flyers and junk mail for them to chew! As long as it's not glossy!

As you can see, we opted for the orangey-red model, because that seemed more fun to me than black or green and it would also stand out in the garage for people not to kick or bump accidentally. It lives right by the door going in to the garage currently, but I'm hoping to move it to the far wall after we get the mess in there from moving better organized.
After all that was complete, the only thing left to do was wet down some more layers of newspaper, lay them on top, then replace the lid. Voila! First pan started!

Looking respectable and slightly short.

One of the nice things about this model is that when one pan fills up, you just add another on top, and eventually the worms get done chowing on what's below and move up through the grid on the pan's bottom. It came with 4 pans but can expand up to 8 high. Seeing as you can sell the castings and that I will definitely be needing it to amend pot and garden soil in the future, I suspect we'll need those full 8 pans. But for now, we start with just the one!
 I then had to figure out how to get worms since it did not come with them. I opted to buy 500 live red wrigglers off of Amazon and opted for rush delivery because it's damned hot out currently and I didn't want them to get too stressed. There are cheaper ways to get your worms, such as having a friend dig a bunch out of their worm bin, or visit a vermiculture or bait place and snagging them there. I was in a hurry and didn't think I had the time to sit down and research where to go to get cheap or free worms. In hindsight, I could easily check it out. If something happens and I need to repopulate this bin, or a second or bigger bin when we're finally truly settled, I'm going to go the non-website route. You'd rather have local worms anyway, aclimated to the soil and climate.
When the worms arrived, it turned out they were from a worm farm north of here in PA. I was highly amused at the thought of those little guys traveling through the mail to come to rest still within the same state they started in. It was a cool day, and I popped open the bag ASAP to check on them.
As mentioned by the fabulous in depth booklet from the bin, the worms were in a ball in the middle of the peat and not feeling up to doing much. I quickly took them out to the bin, popped the top, peeled back the newspaper and just dropped them on in. To help rehydrate them I also drizzled half a cup of water over the peat and the ball of worms. They began to move immediately, to my relief.

Smile for the camera! Or... not.

Over the next 48 hours I checked several times to make sure none were making a run for it. Some explored out to the edges of the bin, but nobody fell all the way to the floor. As of tonight when I went to put this week's compost pail of goodies in, they had all disappeared down in to the greenery and were munching away happily.
So there you have it, my adventure with tiny, tiny creatures and learning to make my own food and make best use of what has already been consumed and left afterwards. When the first tray is mostly turned to worm castings I'll take a few pictures so everyone can view the transformation. The more I look at the amount of food in there and the number of worms I bought, I'm starting to think the advice of buying at least a pound of worms was wiser. about 1,000 worms equals a pound, but I didn't think I would have enough for 1,000 worms to eat so I hedged. I could take stuff out to the bin every day if I wanted, between junk mail and deliveries and cooking dinner. They'll catch up eventually, I'm just not sure how quickly. A mini science experiment, perhaps!
As far as the yogurt, in the near future I'm going to do a post showing all the things I've been doing with that on top of just maufacturing it. It is the single most popular thing I make currently, with Girlchild requesting "Yoguh" every morning when we start making breakfast. She downs it like it's going out of style, prompting me to make more each time! But I digress, this post is enormous, and that's it for now.
Thanks to all for reading!

Further Adventures in Altered Couture

This was actually the very first thing I decided I wanted to do when I got sick of my maternity clothes - a Beehive Shirt!
It was a boring button down with the same boring horizontal stripes on it that damn near every maternity shirt sports that isn't a solid color (WHY?? Why are they all like that??). And I decided I wanted to embroider it a bit...
There are photos but they are buried in the depths of the internet right now, so I'll just show you the finished product. Replaced some buttons with bee buttons including one on the shoulder for decoration and went with a honeycomb theme across the shoulder and neckline.

This is a detail of the shoulder. It's hard to tell, but the thread is variegated butter yellow to goldenrod.

This is the entire piece. I'd intended to do more, but would have given birth by the time it was finished.

So it's a really nice alteration, it's cute, and I intend to wear the hell out of this thing for the duration of having tiny humans in side of me.
The only tricky thing was embroidering on knit fabric, which required tearable stick-paper to put on the back of the areas so the fabric didn't pull and stretch too much. I have a ton left over, and fully intend to use it on other non-maternity t-shirts once the ideas strike.

We're Not Dead Yet!

I AM still around, and have still been taking pictures and doing things that warrant blogging but the move has taken up the entirety of July and is creeping in to August like that cousin that wants to make sure he gets food before it runs out. We're still unpacking boxes, making such lovely discoveries as we go ("Why in the actual 9 hells did we pack this stuff and not donate it??") and realizing how much downsizing we need to do in order to be comfortable in our new place.
I am actually looking forward to it, because there's just so much STUFF that I can't possibly see how I would use or enjoy all of it. Somebody else can, so we're going to try to sell it/donate it/gift it as best we can.
Right now everything that we sell is going right back in to the "Homestead Fund", since we had our AC unit explode and basically cost us $10,000 out of the house closing price. We're dead in the water and having to save up like mad in order to have a decent down payment for our next place.
In the meantime I am still creating, cooking, drying, planting and proceeding as planned. I can't have chickens, and there's no land to plant things in but I've managed a bit of a container garden on the deck and have plans to try and grow fruit trees in containers until we can get them in some good earth somewhere.
Lots of projects with photos to come, and I'm excited at everything that's been going on now that our lives aren't centered around leaving our old place. Can't wait to share.

More Pota-tosity (???? if that's a word) and Second Tries

The potato is actually doing just fine, completely negating my fears that it would get damp and all of the leaves would get moldy, rot, and kill off the plant. The weather has been all about the summer thunderstorms, and always in late afternoon or evening, which could have potentially exacerbated the problem.
Nope. It's fine.
A quick peak under the earth just shows the leaves yellowing like anything that isn't exposed to light anymore. Apparently there's plenty of drainage and the potato vine is incredibly happy to have dirt to wiggle around in. So all is well.
On a sad note, my betta fish died the other night. He'd been suffering from bloat and no treatment was working, so I knew it was coming. It didn't feel right to just flush him because he was so pretty and because he'd been around long enough that even the baby asked to see him when I fed him. I took a spade and put him down deep in the potato pot to help fertilize it. Weird? Maybe. But it was done with other plants by aboriginal tribes, and they didn't even use pet fish. So I felt it was appropriate to bury one thing my daughter had liked to help perpetuate something else she brought in to my life. We'll see if there's a sudden jump in growth in a week or two.
I decided to start over with a different tactic on all of the other projects that had seemed to fail, since I HATE not being able to get something to grow. Especially when internet articles and uncharismatic YouTube bloggers insist that it's super easy and stuff. So I began with the sweet potatos, this time trying the "shove it in a jar of water" method. This was decided on based on a photo a friend sent of her potato she upended in to a jar and just left for a week, which is now growing vines that would make a kudzu plant jealous.

Very artfully set up and whatnot.

I don't think this leaves me enough time for them to develop slips, get potted and produce actual sweet potatoes this season, but maybe I can rig something so that they can continue to grow indoors, then start the process early next year.
I also decided to try again with another piece of ginger, this time doing the soaking it overnight trick that I avoided last time because it was supposedly organic ginger and therefore wouldn't have any growth inhibitor on it. And I purposefully bought a very wide, deep colored container that would catch and warm the soil and allow lots of space for roots and rhizomes to spread out. But since I was starting to run out of dirt, I decided to use the peat mix from the old pot with the ginger that seemed to never prosper.
As I knocked the soil out of the small pot, though, I noticed that it was clinging to the bottom of the pot strangely. And then I saw roots. And after I carefully extracted the roots, I saw..... a small green shoot coming out of the end down lowest in the pot! !!!!!!! Excitement!!
I quickly moved it and the soil in with the last of my regular potting soil and some coffee and cocoa bean grounds (it said ginger loves compost, so....... maybe it won't kill these guys.), mixed thoroughly, added in the newer ginger rhizome, and patted the soil in to place. I moved it out to the picnic table where I knew it would be kept warm in the sun all day today, and the rain from the crazy storm would keep the soil moist but not sopping. All in all, an excellent tropical start!
I walked out today to see that the shoot had poked it's way above the soil line by about half an inch and was a brighter green than it had been last night. So maybe I'm not a murderer of ginger after all? Nothing would make me happier than to discover all was well with it and it went on to provide us with years of fresh and lovely ginger!

Look at that lovely green bud!

 We (Girlchild and myself) also took the time to grab two new Opal Basil plants from Home Depot to replace the ones slowly withering in the Italian Herb Bowl out on the picnic table. The heat and humidity served to wreck the previous plants and grow fungus on the top of the soil, causing the plants to drop leaves. I'm going to take the old ones down to the raised garden beds, plant them and wish them well. Then I'm digging out all of the water logged earth and obvious fungus patches and putting in better draining soil. It is annoying and unheard of to me to not have basil in my garden, so I'm FIXING it, damnit. And having widened drainage, it should be a lot dryer this time.
We spent this afternoon repotting all of the pumpkin and watermelon starts, as well, as we had meant to give them to people attending Summerween at our place this past Saturday as party favors. Alas, mega sickness canceled the event, one of my favorite non-holidays (a fabulous excuse to celebrate Halloween in the summer, courtesy of my beloved cartoon Gravity Falls). But the seedlings didn't get the memo and went crazy, so today they got moved to their own individual pots. I'll be distributing them like some gourd-wielding crazy lady on Thursday and Friday as I see my friends. We also took the opportunity to repot the rosemary snagged from Trader Joe's in to a container twice as large so it would have a happy home over the winter. There were also big pots snagged to move the baby apple tree that has survived and let it spread out a bit, and smaller pots to replace the broken ones, as I intend to start some new apple trees from seed again falling the strange death of all but one.
Coming up on the list of Gardening To-Do's:
~pot new fuji apple seeds to get starts
~transplant leftover pumpkin and watermelon starts in to much bigger pots for their summer lifetime on the deck at the new apartment.
~get the Savage Garden Terrarium's base gravel and fast-drain soil mix set up
~order plants for Savage Garden Terrarium
~repot Teddy Bear Sunflowers in to their own, much bigger pots.
~start peach trees from seed
~start pomegranate trees from seed
~start a second avocado
~bury potato vines up to lip of the pot
~trim dying secondary leaves off Swiss Cheese Plant
~get everything safely moved to new apartment and happily situated.

After that, we have Everyting Else To Do:
~treat betta tank with Melafix to finish off whatever disease is in it
~pack up kitchen, art room, garage, closets and storage spaces
~get pink washi tape to mark items going to storage for movers
~find a new betta as pretty as Momotaro was
~take extra food and bulk items to food pantry
~take donation items to Good Will.

So there's a lot to do between now and the 7th when we move, but now that I think I've finally kicked the crappy dragging illness that was long suffered, stuff should fall in to place quickly. Especially the gardening stuff, because my little helper enjoys coming outside with me just to touch the soil.
And as a final note, today we did the anatomy ultrasound for the baby inside of me, and this one's a boy. I'm happy to get to experience being mom to both a boy and a girl, and look forward to finding out what kind of cool things he'll be in to, too.

Pet Potato Project Part ???

I've been horrendously sick with back to back Martian flu bugs the last few weeks, so I haven't been able to do as much around the house as I had wanted. After being laid up for a week and a half I couldn't take it anymore!!! I absolutely HAD to get one of my outdoor projects done, fever and leaking nose or not! Thankfully my fever, my Girlchild and the unrelenting heat and humidity cooperated. 
I had been taking pictures of the potato vine to keep track of how much it had grown. About 3-4 weeks ago it was only an inch above the dirt. Then suddenly.... ZIIIPPP!! It was a LOT, LOT more.
This thing has been transplanted more than an Army brat, so I was hoping to make this the last time this summer I touched it, letting it grow until it was harvested later on.
We bought a pot at Target that was sufficiently attractive but also heavy duty plastic so I wouldn't have to worry about it potentially shattering in the winter cold the way a clay pot might, and also probably shelled out $80 less. Seen here, you can see the difference in height. It was also wider by several inches, allowing for outward root expansion and tuber room.

And you can see what a monster the potato vine turned in to.

I had initially been thinking my way through several scenarios where I planted the vine and it couldn't get sunlight, so was envisioning setting it up at an angle to catch sunlight, starting the potato on top of Styrofoam that I dug out slowly from the bottom to lower it in.... but that really wasn't a problem by the time I compared the two.

Yeah. It's almost to the top already.

It'll be able to get sunshine juuuuuust fine. It's about an inch below the rim of the pot already, which now has me concerned it'll run out of room almost immediately.
The Dirt Princess was on hand to make sure that the soil was properly aerated, stealing dirt from the "master pot" I had filled to put around the potato vine once it was in the pot.

Don't mind me, Momma, I'm over here being adorbz.

So the first problem to address was the complete lack of drainage in the pot. The sheer amount of rain and humidity had already killed off my basil plants in a pot that HAD drainage and several of my herb seedlings, so keeping it from being waterlogged was a priority.

 Easily dealt with, we have a very handy drill set. I chose the 1/4 drill bit. The worst part of it was apparently the noise, but once I showed the Dirt Princess what I was doing, she was fascinated, watching the annoying little curls of plastic rise up out of the base and snap off. The entire thing was done in 2 minutes, tops.

Behold, the wonder I have wrought with power tools.

Now, had this been pottery I would've tried the same thing but using water and at a muuuuuuuch slower speed. I've heard people say "Use a masonry bit". Well... I don't have one of those, but I HAVE drilled excruciatingly slowly through a glazed pot with only a few small flakes around the hole to show for it. So I know it can be done. Just a handy tip. And don't press down too hard or you'll crack it in half. Just generally BE DELICATE WITH THE THING!
At that point we got rid of the drill and its accompanying bag o' bits before it could become a potting soil receptacle, the fate of any open receptacle on the porch when my precocious daughter decides to spread it around and share with the plants. Or the citronella candles.
I followed up with an extra two or three inches of soil at the base, oh-so-carefully tipped the plant out of its previous post, and set it in the bottom. It was shored up at the side with more potting soil, then I began the complete guesswork of filling the dirt in around the potato vine, using it to hold up and separate the now two arms of it and give them space to grow outward.

Dirt Princess shown here working on her own private and intensive project with wiry potato vine next door.

The problem is, most tutorials online assume you haven't waited while your vine bolted and you've been diligent covering it every two inches or so. AKA - you know what the hell you're doing and you're properly prepared. HAH. I managed to find one article that said once you had seven inches, bury it and keep on top of things until it reached the top of your container courtesy of Gardening Know How, Article found (here). All other references to potato vines involved sweet potatoes. Those are another devil I want to tackle, once I get a potato that creates slips and doesn't just rot instead.
It took several trips to get soil in the pot I could carry up and down the deck stairs (I will not miss those deck stairs, seriously) but eventually we had a mostly potted potato vine, looking pretty dandy.

Shown for scale on its side, the large blue pot I filled with potting soil three times to go around the potato plant.

I'm glad to get this off of my checklist of things, as we are moving on the 7th and I need everything to be transplanted by then so the plants can be moved in to their mostly permanent summer/fall homes at our new place.
I moved it in to its location where it'll get morning and early afternoon sun without an issue, and I know I have a spot at our next place that will allow for the same. And because I had been so gently placing soil in around the plant, the Dirt Princess promptly volunteered with her own soil she had been diligently spreading around and aerating, adding the last inch to the top of the soil. It was really neat to have her helping!

Look at my cool little helper!

Am I doing this wrong? Probably. But the guides I read online are very hazy about exactly what happens with the vine when you put it in dirt so I don't know for sure if it's going to be a glorious success or it's going to rot and die horribly in the next few weeks. But given how much it's fought through to get to where it is now and how gentle we were about transplanting it this time, I think in the very least I may get a next generation potato to use for next year. Barring that, I have experience and this will be more fun to try again later.
I did see a video where a man just placed wire mesh around the potato plant and literally dumped a bucket of dirt over top of it without preamble or care, explaining that it would grow up through all of that and continue to do so with each successive bucket. That has me thinking that I may be treating it TOO delicately, if anything. If this thing starts to go monster on me again, I may add a mesh cage and more dirt to get a few more inches and a few more potatoes out of it. I just have this crazy dream of making a potato dynasty out of something my daughter swiped from the grocery store, you know?? I'm looking forward to seeing potato blossoms for the first time in my life come August/September.
It felt good to be outside, although it left me very winded and dizzy after all of the carrying and hefting. An incoming cloudburst was the only thing that sent us inside afterward, otherwise I would be trying to transplant the pumpkins and watermelon seedlings that are already getting leggy on me.
There's just something about getting my hands in soil and helping living things get larger that makes me happy and content, and I needed that in the midst of growing pregnancy pains and battling illness. If I'm feeling better tomorrow, I may use the very last of my potting soil to transplant a few things and move some teddy-bear sunflowers to a more permanent home.

Savage Garden Preparation

I hinted at a future for the glass case I brought home over a month ago, and over the last few days I was afforded a chance to get in to prepping it for its future as the home of my carnivorous plant garden!

The first thing, learned from a beautiful glass-and-basemetal dodecahedron purchased at Urban Outfitters, was to coat EVERY seam and between the glass edges with silicone. Otherwise the moisture will creep in and cause rust and leaching. I had a BEAUTIFUL D&D themed terrarium complete with miniatures in aheated battle, mindflayer and minion vs. undaunted adventurers.... Like seriously, there was a halfling in there. But because of the rust and leaching, every plant died a horrible death and the metal became VERY rusty. I want to try to clean it up and redo it, but that'll have to wait until after the move.
To that end, silicone went down EVERYWHERE. I mean it. Including places that were not glass or metal in the case.

I squeezed the silicone tube so much and so often I actually bruised my fingertip. But the expenditure of time and energy was worth it, as I am 99% sure there will be no rusting or leaching this time and my plants will liiiiiive!

I left that to dry and cure overnight, then tackled the next issue... The base was just base metal and there was no way I was spreading silicone over that much open space. We already had on hand some spray paint for outdoor metal, so that was drafted to help waterproof the base.

 First paper was taped to the glass to keep the spray paint from coating it. I used washi tape to fix it to the glass so there wouldn't be residue to have to wipe off the glass afterward.

This really has nothing to do with the project, it's just really adorable and I love using it for washi tape instead of regular.

Office supply snail is ready for your washi tape needs!

Then there was nothing to do but do the painting. I took it outside and sprayed away! It was dark so the pictures aren't great, but you get the idea.

It'll be drying outside overnight. And in the morning if there aren't any fumes, I can start prepping the soil mix and drainage field for the terrarium. I'm really excited that this is coming together so fast!

Gardening Update

Things are coming up green! All of the seeds we planted are starting to poke their heads up above the soil, save for the Munstead lavender and the rosemary(which we knew was a long shot anyway).
Behold the current (partial) lineup!

You will note there are 3 new pots. That's because we went back to Target for some beach gear and I noticed some different, cute pots in the dollar section. I grabbed them, hoping perhaps there would be rosemary seeds in THIS Target, as there's 2 in the area about equal distance away.
Turns out the great rosemary seed search is in vain, as there was not a single packet to be found. I feel more responsible for plants I've grown from seed for some reason, so that was kind of a bummer. HOWEVER! We also found some cilantro seeds this time, and some watermelon and pumpkin seeds. I thought those would be fun to try out. I have actually grown watermelon in the past and had a nice sized one growing on my upper deck before a bastard squirrel chewed a cavern in to it. Grrr... So I'm pretty sure we can duplicate the success.
I've also decided that even though we'll be in an apartment for the rest of the summer and a chunk of winter, I was growing most of my stuff on the deck anyway. There's plenty of room and sunshine for all of that so I'm just going ahead with plans to grow starts and keep my seedlings and treelings growing strong.
To that end, I decided to start some sweet potato slips, thusly-

And once those are ready to go, I'll get a tall pot for them like I'm doing with the Pet Potato and grow me a stack of deliciousness on the back porch.
I made a trip to Trader Joe's to get snacks for Girlchild and noted they were selling herb starts. There was a singular pot of rosemary left, thus answering my question about the missing rosemary. It is just THAT popular! It and a pot of lemon verbena came home and are perched on our neglected grill out back.
In the meantime I'm hoping that we find a permanent place to move in to with lots of light, great soil, and room for a greenhouse somewhere out back. We'll need it for all the veggies and fruits I've got going!

Altered Couture - Maternity Edition

Now that we've sold the place and inspectors are done tromping through, I'm free to break out my crafting goodies and get back to work!
Maternity clothes ate boring, unless you want to shell out serious money. As a result, my first pregnancy I spent a lot of time not only feeling like a swelling alien mothership, but also not able to dress as I did usually. It was doubly alienating. I felt like my identity was lost somewhere in the black hole of my uterus. I'm sure there's a while world of psychological fun in those sentiments, but we're here to focus on slapping some personality back in to boring stuff!
I ended up with a LOT of solid, boring colored tank tops and shirts and skirts. I put up with it because I worked at a conservative business and that was required. But now that we're freelance and homesteading, the creativity dam is opened!
The first item of clothing I wanted to work on was a rather bland, but comfy, navy blue jersey skirt I usually save for the beach. We're going to the beach this weekend to celebrate, so it seemed perfect timing to try some bleach painting.
I gathered my supplies: a bleach pen, a cardboard box to prevent the bleach from soaking through (unless you want the design on both sides of the garment) and the garment to be decorated! Note -While we highly enjoy Cinnamon Toast Crunch in this household, we do not solely advocate the use of its box for crafting. Any flattened cereal box or long cardboard will suffice.

Next, shake the heck out of the gel pen, uncap it, and get to work! I googled
some paisley designs and made the decision to put them across the hip so it was asymmetrical. Shown here, my sorta funky free-handed attempt.

Then I decided to add some elements around the outside to expand it. I would have done more but the bleach pen was only half full when I started using it, so I quickly ran out. Either way, it was looking pretty swanky!

I let it sit for a few minutes, noting the reddish tinge starting to show up around the edges of the bleach, then promptly ran the design under cold water, washing the bleach off.

After employing some soap to make sure the bleach didn't seep in to other parts of the skirt thanks to the water bath, I also gave it a splash of vinegar to try and kill the reaction, since it seemed to still be brightening even as I washed it. It seemed to work, but various forums online say that's a super bad idea, so don't follow my lead. Just wash the snot out of it with water and soap!
I loved the results. There was a purple-pinkish design across the hip that reminded me immediately of blueberries that had been smashed. In my head it has become my Blueberry Skirt.

Isn't it pretty??
This was very easy to do, the hardest parts being keeping the Girlchild from getting curious and pulling it down, letting the bleach sit too long that it might burn through, and not letting it seep through the clothing. Cardboard and care can safeguard against all of those things if you decide to try it. I'll be breaking out the new bleach gel pen to do other designs on two tank tops I have that are in need of sprucing up, as I love how this turned out! I'm excited for my new, more "me" maternity wardrobe! The other modifications I make will be shared here as well, so stay tuned!

Evie's Pet Potato

So a lot of my friends know this story, but random internet folks do not.
Let me preface this by saying that when the dirt princess and I go to the grocery story, she WANTS TO HELP. Big time. And when she WANTS TO HELP, that can be satisfied usually by handing her whatever I've picked off the shelf to put in the cart. She holds on to it until I find the next object, at which point she usually lays the current object aside or helpfully turns and drops it in to the cart behind her. And she does this while charming the boogers out of everybody who works there and some of the shoppers.
The only exception is when I hand her unpackaged produce. This started as an attempt to show her what different things were that we were going to eat. I would hold up a tomato and say "This is a tomato!" and she would happily grab at it and hold it until I held up the bag with several more tomatoes in it, at which time she dropped it in among the others of its kind.
Sometimes this backfires, though. See, my kid is curious and loves to learn and she's still at the stage where things go in the mouth. Parents are familiar with this across the board, so I won't explain.
Earlier this year, winter I believe, I was picking potatoes up for reasons I can't remember. I held up a big ol' Idaho baking potato and told my daughter "This is a potato!" Forgetting at that moment that I also referred to hash browns and french fries as "potatoes" so she would understand what she was about to eat.
By the time I had turned back to her with a bag filled with more potatoes, she had scraped a half inch gap in to the top of the one I had given her, was making a face, and clenching the potato closely to her. When I attempted to get her to put it in the bag, for some reason that time she refused, holding it close to her chest.
I jokingly asked "Is that your pet potato?" to which she nodded, as she does almost any time I ask her a question. And onward we went through the grocery store, my child clutching this potato for dear life.
I couldn't put it back because the kid had obviously drooled all over it and torn it up, so I was resigned to taking it home and making something out of it. It got all the way to checkout with my daughter holding it before she grumpily let it go to be weighed and rung up.
I set the potato aside and almost forgot about it until one day I remembered I had NOT used that one with the others in the dish I'd made (the top turned gnarly colors and I was concerned about cooking it for someone) and that it was still in my kitchen somewhere. I sought it out, found it nestled behind some bananas on our toaster (I don't know... it must've seemed like a good resting spot) and realized with surprise that the thing had green sprouts coming out of it!
I have big plans for my dream garden, and one of those is having a potato "tower" to grow my own potatoes in. When I saw those sprouts, I realized I could start growing the potatoes right now, just keep it in a pot and size up as necessary until I had the proper space for it. With great excitement I sectioned it out so each part had two "eyes" sprouting, and buried it in a mixture of potting soil and coffee grounds.
Don't do that. It's horrible, retains moisture, and I ended up losing three of the four sections to rot. At that time the 4 sections of 6 that had survived being in a dish with standing water went on to be transplanted to an apothecary jar. I thought it might be cool to see the roots grow in it. I labeled it in case people would be coming in to see the house, as I still had pipe dreams of getting the place on the market back in January/February. It just seemed important that people know WHY I had an apothecary jar full of dirt chilling on my pie cooling rach-cum-plant stand.

I promptly left it to its own devices, thinking that it would go slowly due to the lack of sunlight and heat until I opened it one day and OMG WHAT IS THIS THING??

I had apparently grown a miniature Elder God. Which was cool, don't get me wrong. But it just looked.... wrong. And I'd read that exposed roots and tubers could turn poisonous so I quick-like-a-bunny got some more potting soil and coffee grounds in there (see? I kept making the SAME MISTAKE. DON'T USE POTTING SOIL AND COFFEE GROUNDS, IT DOESN'T DRAIN AND GETS MOULDY LIKE CRAZY. End of public service announcement.)
I was happy that I would have one potato vine when I peaked in one day and....... a neighbor??

In the midst of February this thing was bound and determined to grow, and it DID... like gangbusters. You can see the white roots pushing up against the sides of the jar behind the label.
The only problem was that apothecary jars offer no drainage, and coffee grounds and dirt apparently don't drain worth a galldang. I have now tested this three times by accident, trust me... they do not. So a fine whitish blue fungus grew on the surface of the soil and eventually took out one of the vines.
I decided to transplant the other one to try and save it, and when I dug up the dirt, the stuff around the other potato just smelled of solid rot. There wasn't even anything left of the potato or plant, just black smoosh. So I quickly got the other plant out of there, dumped the entire thing of corrupted dirt, set it on fire with napalm, then sanitized it so that nothing would ever grow on the surface of that glass. Except I'm exaggerating, I just ran it through the dishwasher. The other vine, though, went to its happy home in a pot with drainage and plain, boring potting soil. It even had two tiny buds on it that looked like they might become potatoes!
I actually ended up having to move it from THAT pot in to an outdoor-ready pot, to accommodate the root growth and the inch or two of extra growth the vine put out.
I ended up accidentally tearing some of the roots, so it was only left with a couple to try and grow from. I was concerned for a bit, but it kept green. It stayed about 2 inches tall from then until I moved it outside to hang with the strawberries, trying to see if the sun and outdoor life would suit it. For size reference, that pot is about 6 inches tall.

I eventually moved it to the plant rack where everything is currently living happily, including our new seedlings (update on that later, there is news!) seeing that it was starting to grow a bit finally OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO THE POTATO????

So this thing is a MONSTER now, and that top part literally grew in 4 days, after 2 days of mist and rain and 2 days of 80 degree temperatures. I have to transplant it AGAIN. That will be the THIRD TIME. And I'm going to do it in a plastic pot, which is very big and will only be half full of dirt, so I can start mounding up because I need to get some of that stuff covered if I'm going to be getting more potatoes out of it! Needless to say, it likes its currently home and seems to be doing just ducky. I predict we'll have a nice-sized vine by the end of summer and quite a few tubers to try and dry-store and start the process over from again in the spring. I have in my mind an idea for a potato dynasty, all sprouted from the one ridiculously chewed thing my daughter brought home that acclimated to the Pennsylvania summers and crazy soil conditions to be hearty, delicious, and highly bake-able. And that's more than you needed to know about any potato ever, but will help you understand why I take so much pride in this little guy and why I'm bothering to keep him alive so much. I have the same type of story regarding my fruit trees, but that's a post for another week.
In the meantime, we were in the grocery store yesterday when I tried again, saying "This is a peach!" and watched her take a tentative bite from its flesh (we only pick up veggies and fruits we're buying anyway, as an aside. I don't let her chew on stuff we don't intend to use) chuckling that we might have a pet peach tree soon.... except....

...nope. Not this time. It was cleaned to the stone before we even got home and the pit had to be tossed before it could get sticky and end up in dirt princess's hair. Which is where all sticky things end up lately.

Ah well. Another time then. I still have three more peaches waiting to be snacked on, anyway.....