DIY - Concrete planters

 I  have a lot of succulents that needs to find new pots. Making your own planters is fun and doesn't take much time. Just need to have everything ready.

So you will need :

Plastic containers ( soft plastic )

I reuse containers, plastic cups, yogurt cups, plastic containers from the restaurant... be creative ! 

Vegetable oil ( I used canola oil ) 

Concrete, I use a mix that you can get anywhere... Of course than you can start to play and add colors, materials... 

A large bowl to mix the concrete 

A little water ( for the concrete ) 

Gloves ( latex )

Here are the plastic containers I used. You will need to find some that are soft, it makes it easier to get the planter out...

Then you fill the bottom with concrete and place the smaller container in the middle and fill in any remaining space between the two containers with more concrete. ( again make sure it's very oily )

I didn't do it but, if you want a planter with a drain I guess you can add in the bottom a piece of a cork or something with a smaller diameter that you'll remove after. ( make sure it's oiled ) 

You wait until it's dry. ( depending on the mix you are using ) 

And tada !  I made 2 of them just to make sure one of them would succeed for the picture and they both worked !

Isn't it sweet ?  It's perfect for a gift as well with a cute little plant in it.

These pansies found a new home

And my little succulent can grow until it will need a bigger pot...

Have fun making these !

Annabelle 

"Navette" of lavender

The lavender is in full bloom it's time to harvest it.

I want to share with you a way to keep your lavender and use it in your dresser or wardrobe to perfume your clothes. 

In France we call it "navettes de lavande".

This is what you'll need. 

Scissors 

4 feet of 5 mm colored ribbon ( it is generous but better have more than not enough ) 

Freshly cut lavender ( you can't use dried lavender the stem would break )

A little patience

The one I will make here is with 18 lavender stems. You will need an even amount of stems that paired would make an odd number.  For example, 18 stems = 9 pairs of 2.

  

You can also make them a lot bigger as long as it is still a multiple of 2, which paired make an odd number. 

Example 22, 26, 30 ...

You need to take the leaves of the stem and keep only the top flowers

Form a tight bouquet where the flowers starts.

Just at the bottom of the flowers you tight your ribbon and make a knot.

Then you gently fold the stem over the flowers to create a cage, sort of.

Be very gentle it could break the stem when you do it. 

Then you take your ribbon ( the tiny part from the knot should stay inside the "cage") 

And you start to weave the ribbon through the stems- 2 by 2. two stems over, 2 stems under, repeat.

Try to have the beginning pretty tight.

Here is how it should look.

Keep going until the flowers are encased. Make a knot.

And there is your "navette" of lavender 

ready to hang it in your wardrobe or you can also have it in decoration in a room.

Let me know how it goes !

diy mason bee house

I have a fun, simple project for you this week, and it will most likely cost you nothing, take you just a few minutes to make, and will create habitat for garden pollinators. It’s also an enjoyable way to observe nature at work. With a little pile of scrap wood, we made a few mason bee houses for our garden and yard, and a few to give as gifts as well.

 Mason bees are small, cute, fuzzy little bees that make efficient pollinators in the garden. They can be blue-green, or dark-colored like the one pictured above. This little lady is not the first to make a nest in this hole in our unfinished door frame.

The female mason bee gathers nectar and pollen and stashes it in the back of the hole until there is a sufficient food store for her young. Once there is enough food to supply the larvae, she lays an egg on the food store and then seals it in with a bit of mud. She then brings in more pollen and nectar in front of the previous mud layer, lays another egg, covers it with more mud, and stacks like so until the cavity is full. Once the cavity is full, she seals the hole with a final layer of mud. Maybe you have seen these mud filled holes and wondered what was in there.

Here is a link to more information on mason bees, if you are interested in learning more – http://gardening.wsu.edu/library/inse006/inse006.htm. I think these little bees are pretty fascinating!

 

We have an endless supply of scrap wood from our various home projects and are always looking for functional ways to use it up. We cleaned up some sections of 4×4, cut an angle at the top to accommodate a little sloped roof, and then drilled 1/4 inch diameter holes in the outer rows and 3/16″ holes down the center. We used all the depth we had in this case, and drilled almost to the back of the 4×4. Typically, larger diameter holes are recommended (5/16″), but maybe our bees here on the coast are pretty small, or maybe they actually prefer smaller than the recommendation. The hole in the door frame is about 1/8 inch, for example.

We used sections of old fence pickets for the roof (not totally necessary, but shelter from rain is nice, right?) and as a backing to make mounting it easy.
Apparently, it is best to hang the house facing east or southeast, for morning sun. The face of that door frame above is pretty much dead south, so a little variation from that recommendation probably won’t break the deal.

I'm looking forward to observing these bees more closely.  We really enjoy creating habitat for beneficial species of all kinds at our place.

How do you invite beneficial insects to your garden?

easy patio herbs

I wanted to share a simple project we started last spring, in case you might like to try something similar while it's still early in the season.

We had a few empty strawberry pots that our parents had given us, and last spring my partner had the idea of creating a little herbal table out of one of them. He loves to propagate plants, and it seemed like the perfect situation to create an easy, tiny, functional herb garden. We didn't yet realize at the time just how much we would enjoy this living table.

We started at the top by planting some lemon thyme, and then worked down from there. We filled each of the smaller chambers with cuttings of established herbs we have growing around our home, including a couple varieties of thyme and oregano, marjoram, savory, and chives. Thyme, savory, marjoram and especially oregano, propagate quite easily if the soil is kept moist. The chives were divided off of a larger cluster.

The pot is beautifully full now, (and chives are about to burst into bloom!) but even last summer - just a few months from the time of starting - there were plenty of herbs filling out the planting vessels.

For the table top, Steven nestled 3 long stones into the soil, and then set a piece of salvaged stone tile on them. The triangular arrangement of the stones makes it easy to keep the top level, with a simple push or pull of a high or low side.

We eat a lot of meals out on the patio during the warmer months, and it's a real treat to be able to pick fresh herbs right at the table.

 

 

What are some of your favorite fresh herbs? We have been working on expanding our choices. I love to pile fresh herbs on my plate, adding healing properties, and a complexity of flavors to my food. Herbs can bring the simplest of meals to the next level.

diy pvc paper pot maker!

today i want to share with you a simple diy project for making paper pots! 

i work for a school garden-based education nonprofit & during this time of year, we are often outside planting seeds & transplanting seedlings with our students. we use our handmade pot maker that costs a little more than $3 each for making little newspaper pots. the pots are easily made by our elementary school students & biodegrade in the soil if you choose to plant the pot. it's an easy, affordable project for making paper pots rather than using it's plastic counterpart. 

supplies needed:

all pvc pieces can be found at most hardware stores

1- pvc circular cap for screwing onto #3

2- 2 in. pvc coupling

3- pvc end cap with threaded male end to fit #1

- newspaper

-tape (optional)

1. tear off a piece of newspaper that is about 1 1/2 in. longer than the pvc coupling (#2) & wraps completely around your coupling.

2. wrap your newspaper around the coupling.

3. once all of the newspaper is wrapped around the coupling, you may tape the side to secure the newspaper (optional).

4. turn your pot upside down & fold the excess newspaper inside the pvc coupling.

5. turn the pot right side up & press down on the top.

6. screw your pvc cap (#1) onto your pvc end cap (#3). i will refer to this as the "handle."

7. using your handle (#1 & #3) with the cap side down, place inside your pvc coupling & press down until the excess newspaper inside is pressed flat.

8. remove handle from coupling. remove pvc coupling from newspaper. you should have a sturdy newspaper pot!

9. fill with soil & a seed! 

10. place in a sunny window & watch as your plant grows!

do you have any other ideas for making your own pots? we would love to hear!

Sunprints

Remember the collard plant from my first tend post that wintered over? Well we're letting it go to seed so we can harvest the seeds. One morning a few weeks ago I was out in the garden with my film camera. The bees (mostly honey bees) were swirling around the collard blooms, the sun was warm and beating down, and it was simply a glorious morning. Can you see the bees?

On another sunny day this past weekend I made a few sunprints from one of the collard stems (pictured above left). For the second sunprint pictured I picked a weed that had an interesting leaf pattern. I believe it is wild carrot, or something of that nature. Making sunprints is another way I like to bring the garden inside. Have you made them before? The process is straightforward and a fun activity for kids to see art and science overlap.

And the sugar snap trellis:

Last week you commented you'd like to see the sugar snap trellis made from last year's okra plants. We literally left the okra stalks in their original row in the ground over the winter. Then this spring planted sugar snaps beneath them. Since the sugar snaps are now four feet tall or so we added stakes for additional support and have simply leaned the plants to the stakes. The sugar snaps attach on their own. You could string the plants to the stakes for a tidier appearance. Ah, I see it's time to pick sugar snaps!

herbal shampoo

for one reason or another, my gardening sensibility has always revolved around growing things that are useful.  to me, when speaking of gardening, useful most often means edible.  and this is probably why i have little interest in growing plants that are merely pretty to look at (though, this has been changing a bit in the past few years).  beyond edible, however, there are many other practical uses for plants.  plants can be used for medicinal purposes, in body care products, for dyes, among other uses.  and, as a bonus, many of these plants are also pretty to look at.

when we moved into my house a year and a half ago, i was not so interested in the two rose bushes that were planted in the perennial bed in our backyard.  aside from some childhood memories of my grandfather tending to his rosebushes at their old house in new jersey, i have no attachment to roses.  but then i started to think about what uses those roses would have.  and they survived the summer.  i picked the roses and dried them and have been using the petals as ingredients in bath soaks and batch after batch of herbal shampoo.

as you think of what you'd like to plant in your garden this year, maybe take some time to think of what you'd like to make with your garden at harvest time.  and plant accordingly.

rosemary rose herbal shampoo
{adapted from methow valley herbs}

ingredients:
8 oz boiling water
2 teaspoons of dried rosemary
2 teaspoons of dried rose petals
4 ounces liquid castile soap
3 Tablespoons aloe vera juice
¼ teaspoon of jojoba oil
30 drops of pure rosemary essential oil 

place the rosemary and rose petals in a jar and fill to 8 ounces with boiling water.  cover immediately and let it stand until the jar has cooled.  strain out the herbs, and pour the water into a bottle or whatever container you will be storing your shampoo in.  add the castile soap, aloe vera juice, jojoba oil, and rosemary essential oil.

*note: this shampoo is much more watery than the kind you buy in the store, so it takes some getting used to.  i've found that it works best to give the bottle a gentle shake before each use to make sure it's properly mixed, and then squirt a little bit straight onto my head (i used to pour some shampoo in my hands, lather it, then put it on my hair--this doesn't work so well with this type).

i will say, i've been using this shampoo for almost a year and it works great! i love not having to purchase shampoo every few months, knowing exactly which (very few) ingredients i'm putting on my head, and reducing packaging waste.  not to mention, taking advantage of the usefulness of my garden.

garden pests: cutworms

this year as soon as we transplanted our broccoli, broccoli raab, brussels sprouts and cabbage seedlings, we installed cutworm collars. after two seasons we know (and perhaps we should have known after just one) that cutworm collars are necessary to save us the heartache of waking up only to find all of our brassica seedlings cut off at the stem.

cutworms are active in may and june. if you've been digging in your soil and have noticed a red pupa case, beware. these pupae will turn into cutworm moths which will lay eggs and produce more cutworms. the worms are grayish brown and usually will curl up if disturbed. a quick google search will provide you with photos of the worm, the moth, and the pupa case.

the solution is easy. just install a collar around each and every small seedling that you plant, particularly the brassica crops. we cut up old yogurt containers to make our own. the collars need to be pressed firmly into the soil to make an effective barrier. when the seedling grows and is sturdier, you can easily remove the collar and save it for next year.

by paying attention to the insects in your garden, you can garden smarter.

do you use cutworm collars?