The Digital Homesteader (Beta)

While I have been TRYING to not spend a lot of money on the garden, there are times that I just can’t resist. Since this was a birthday present to me, it technically won’t go into the budget. I grabbed this mini-greenhouse which is perfect for starters at Lowes this weekend. If you are using Jiffy starter trays (72 per tray) you can get 216 starter plants per level or over 850 plants in the whole greenhouse. That is amazing to me! I don’t just use the Jiffy trays so I only have about 540 plants in there right now.

There are many added benefits to having your starters in a greenhouse like this. First, my wife loves having the kitchen table back. Having the plants in a vertical way really utilizes your space well. Second, this greenhouse is pretty portable. The warning stickers warn against moving everything when loaded, but I find that moving the greenhouse indoors at night ensures that I won’t have to worry about the cold weather at night.

I will likely move all my plants to the garden in the coming week, so I will have an empty greenhouse. I think that I will do some experimenting with ways to use this “off-season”.

The farther I go, the more I am looking at things for the purpose or recycling and doing my garden as inexpensively as possible. Today I found just one more thing that I can do for free, and it helps me and not some land fill.

Today I was delivering a coffee for my wife (it was one of THOSE mornings) and I started to look at the stir stick that I used to stir in her half-n-half. All wood and just the right length and width to use as a plant marker. I grabbed my favorite pen and listed the plant and for fun drew a little picture. I don’t think I will do the picture going forward, just too small. But, this is a great way to use something that you might normally throw in the trash and doing something useful with it. My coffee came from Starbucks and I know that they really work hard to recycle and reuse. My old coffee cups are becoming the pots for my starter plants (more on that later).

You don’t have to be a radical environmentalist to preserve the earth. It is really all of these little things that add up. If for no other reason, its something that you can do to help your garden for free.  But the end results are that these don’t help pack our landfills. As a wood product they are bio-degradable and they can just be buried in the garden at the end of the season.

Ferry Morse Company is terrific. I was just in my local big box home improvement store and I couldn’t help but walk over to the seed section. I was so surprised to see that they now have a nice selection of Ferry Morse heirloom seeds. Had I not already purchased my seeds this year I would have walked out with one of every variety that they offer. The next time you are looking for seeds, take a look at your local retailer for Ferry Morse heirlooms, and pass them on to your kids and grandkids.