Ghetto Tomato

I'm sure you have seen the infomercial for the "Topsy Turvy Tomato Tree".

Great concept. Tomatoes use gravity to grow. I love gravity too, but this thing is sooooo gimmicky and....

pricey

$40+ $20shipping, really? $60 for a bucket, green sheet, and stand? really?

Ummm, no. We can do better than that!

Ghetto farm boy to the rescue. I made my own, ghetto farm boy style!

Introducing.....

"tommy's upside 'mater grower"







$1 bucket from dollar store, .15 cent sponge, homegrown 'mata plant, used wood.

BAM!

Ghetto farm boy strikes again.

I'll probably get a law suit from the Topsy Turvy people.

-T

This is why I Farm...

One of the things I love about gardening
is watching the process of
seeds growing into plants then growing into food.

Here is one example with lettuce and peas.


Lettuce and peas Feb 20th.


Lettuce and peas April 15th
(peas are growing on the trellis)


Lettuce and peas May 6th. Wow.


We have so much lettuce that we can't eat it all!
We gave tons away.
The kids are selling the rest!

Rose Organic Acres Farm, INC (AKA kids college fund)

I'm offically a worm farmer

5,000 (5lbs)Red Wiggler composting worms arrived. The mailman brought them and was wondering, "what in name of all things good is this Yankee boy doin?!".....or something like that.

Here I prep the worm hotel with wet shredded paper. Apparently worms love shredded paper to play and frolic.
Opening the box. Oooohhhh it's like Christmas morning, I wonder what's inside!

WORMS!!! 5,000 of them. AHHHH. Run for your lives.

I am splitting the 5,000 slime-ish ones with two other brilliant gardeners. So I had to weigh out our portions. Really? I weighing worms? My lil daughter is enthralled, she loves the worms and wants to name each of them (for real). I think one of them is named Chris, not sure of the other 4,999.
Here are the worms in their new home. Chomp worms chomp and make some fertile castings!

Is that squash or stink bug.

What I love about squash plants is the funky way the plants grow out of the seed.

The seeds shell stays attached to the leaf while the new plant grows. I just think that is cool.

First time I saw the seed shell, I thought a stink bug was on my plant! They kind of look the same to my noobie eye!

Rain Barrels 2.0

Last year I set up rain barrels to collect.....well.... rain water!

They worked great for supplying water for the garden.

But...I rushed the installation and did not elevate the barrels properly. Thus flow from the barrels was slow and annoying. Plus I could not connect them together since they were not elevated. Gravity is like that sometimes. Dang gum Issac Newton!

So this year I reconfigured, refitted, and repositioned. (of course I spent next to nothing on parts). Gravity is my friend this year.



Since the barrels are elevated, when barrel #1 is full ,water will flow into barrel #2 (via green hose). Then when barrel #2 is full, water will flow out of the overflow tube at the top of #2. (and away from my foundation!)

Cuz I'm redneck smart like that!

From the sky to roof to gutter to barrel to my plants. Forget the environment, this just makes sense (cents?)!!

Dora is still getting it done!

Here are the victorious Dora the Explorer
squash cups a week later. Take that peat pots!

aannnnddd I'm never using a peat pot again.
It's all Dora her super yogurt cups from now on.



Speaking of yogurt cups. Here is a pic of one
of the tomato plants growing nicely in a large
yogurt cup. Hope to transplant to the garden
on Tax Day!

It must be the gas from the plastic

I am cheap.

Really cheap.

So when I started the veggie seeds back in Jan, I made a decision to not spend tons of dough on seed trays, growing lights, potting soil, blah blah blah.

I used what I had on hand. So any coffee cup, yogurt cup, sour cream cup, etc was recruited for a seed pot. (shhh, I even raided my neighbors recycle bin).

The best seedling producer was the "Dora the Explorer" yogurt cups.

However, I did get a deal on "peat pots" which are supposed be great for growing and transplanting. So I gave them shot.

In fact, as an experiment, I planted some herb seeds and squash seeds in the fancy smancy peat pots AND Dora cups.

Same dirt, same room temp, same sun exposure, same watering schedule.

Look at the results!


Cilantro seeds in Dora, growing.
Peat pots...just some cups of dirt.


Squash seeds. Dora is 1-1. Peat pots are 0-10.

It must be the Bisphenol A off-gas from Dora's plastic!

Lastest on the Garden.

The lettuce is growing very nice.
Threw some baby greens in my salad last night.



Now until recently I hated broccoli. And I mean HATE.
But as I get older, my taste buds become numb and now I love it.
Hope we see some broccoli soon!

Sleet turned to snow

The sleet turned into 2" of snow. The gardens are covered layers of cold, brutal death.































Hopefully, my 4 layers of protection will be good enough. :0)

(just in case I started some more lettuce seeds inside, hope I don't need them....)

sleet a cometh.....

Sleet is a coming.










So to keep my baby plants warm and protected from the weight of sleet, I gather all the milk jugs/"frat boy" red cups/cottage cheese containers I can find in the recycle bin. Being a dad of four kids, I have lots of milk containers!! :-0

Then I cover with an old shower curtain and sheets.














Then the finishing touch with a good 'ole blue tarp.














It's the ghetto-farm boy version of lasagna!!

Hope it keeps my baby plants warm and protected.

survived the cold? for now....maybe.

Well I think my lettuce and pea babies survived this week's "touch of the the north". It was 20 degrees several nights. I armed the plants with covers of milk jugs and heavy tarps to keep out the cold.

Here is what they look like today. Some of the lettuce actually grew. Tough lil' buggers.














Today is 65 degrees and overcast with rain coming. So I used the warm and wet weather to plant the spinach youngins'. They were looking a little sad in the shed. Think it wanted to be free to grow. We'll see.....














Here are are the Earliana and Roma tomatos in the shed. I kept the fluorescent bulbs on today since it was overcast. The light gives them an angelic glow. Perhaps a sign of much produce come June! ;0)

burrr.....

Last night the temperature was 20 degrees. Ouch! And tonight is not that much better.







So I resorted to three layers of plastic and empty milk jugs over my lil lettuce and pea plants.
Live babies plants live!!!!! You can make it until Wed!!!! Spring is a comin'!!

cups of dirt now planted

So I planted my lil cups of dirt yesterday.

Planted lettuce and pea seeds in Dora the Explorer cups on January 15th. I set up a ghetto-rig green house with florescence lights to be the sun and incandescence light to be the heat.
















Work so far.

Now they are planted in the garden. Many frost filled nights ahead.















Hopefully the plastic shower curtain (background) will protect my lil' plants.

new vigor

Motivated to start blogging again. So here we go.

A little background.

I have a fear of writing. Not a fear as an uncomforatalbe feeling; a fear as in terrified "i'm 'bout to pee my pants" type of fear. (example the the last sentence took me 20 minutes to write). My fear... it's called dyslexia or something like that. It grips me into a procrastinating fear lots of times (actually, all the time).

So I don't write or blog and all the God is teaching me goes forgotten or unsaid or both.

But despite my fear but I will push through and write. Because I think I have some stuff to share. Lots of it will be sucky writing, but better than nothing; which is what I have been doing.

This reboot of the blog will be the sum of my adventures in growing a:
garden,
family,
and church.

probably mostly gardening, but we'll see.

I renamed it "cup of dirt" because of my past, present, and future loves.

Past: I used to be a geologist and love any kind of rock, dirt, or mud. dirt for me always brings a sense of opportunity. (still do love dirt and still consider myself a geologist)

Present: I love me some veggie gardening. The fact that I can plant lil' seeds and eat big fruit later is so cool! However, the seeds start off in little cups of dirt that show little to no promise. But a little love, correct temperature, water, light and POOF out comes a plant.

Future: Currently I am a counselor, pastor, mentor which is very similar to a my old geology gig Trust me it is very similar (look for a post on this in the future). Sometimes people are like cups of dirt, just needing the correct care to grow as God intended.

So come back often to read my tales of growing stuff.

-T