In our last post we mentioned plans for building a hoop house. Well, we got it up sooner than we had thought we would. With a 55-mile mountain bike race on the schedule for one of the weekends this month and then a mother-in-law accompanied by her sister (The Great Aunt Laurie), we had to choose to get it done sooner or later. Man! We can really be motivated when it comes to gardening. But hey…like I said…what else would we be doing?? Watching TV??

Space is somewhat of an issue for us on our lot and this hoop house works perfectly since it can be dismantled during the summer months. For about $102.00 at Home Depot you can have one too! Our supplies (plus a little work and a tiny bit of thinking) bought us an 18′ long by 8′ wide hoop house with extra’s to build another small hoop house  over an existing raised bed. (or we will just keep it for repair.) Oh, and we haven’t put the doors on it yet…actually we haven’t even made them yet but the tomatoes that are currently inside would roast if we had them there so we will keep you posted on the doors (more on that after the mountain bike race, family birthdays, and out-of-town visitors.)

Our materials included…

- 2 X 4′s for a rectangular frame to fasten the  hoops to.
- 10′ sticks of 1/2″ PVC plus fittings (couplers, T-couplers and 4-way couplers)
- Gorilla Tape (This stuff is great!)
- 6 mil plastic
- staples
- 1/2″ pipe clamps
- 1-1/4″ wood screws
- 48″ wood lath / slat board (for securing the stapled plastic from wind / tearing).

We’re well on our way to a fruitful winter garden inside our hoop house and our cold frames. We haven’t even closed the ends and the tomato plants that were in the garden space we covered are loving the warmth and showing us this by ripening faster than our outdoor tomatoes.

Building the hoop house is pretty simple. If you have any specific questions or need ideas on integrating your own available materials into a hoop house let us know and we will see if we can help you out.  Here are some photos we took along the way and we’re sure you can figure most of  it out from there.

For years we have talked about having a winter garden and we are finally making it happen. While grocery shopping the other day I noticed how expensive organic produce was at the grocery store even when it was in season! We haven’t bought much much produce in the last 6 months since we grow a lot of our own so this really made us realize just how much money we have been saving. And so we were even further inspired by our efforts of spring and summer gardening and put forth some extra energy to get set up for some year-round (winter garden.)

Back in the spring we came across a couple of nice vinyl windows for $5 each. One blew over during a wind storm and busted (so sad) but we used a few older windows to replace it and completed our cold frames for forcing seeds and essentially maintaining a mini greenhouse. Our cold frame is simply a wooden box with a hinged window top. We framed in the window with 2 x 4′s and connected it to the box with hinges. The frame that uses the older windows used three to make up the lid but it was easy to screw them together….just work with what you have.

Our next project is to build a hoop house over one of the garden beds in the back yard. We’ll share more on that soon, hopefully!

The weather is still mild here in Eugene but the summer crop is past its peak and on a steady decline. We started basil, radishes, Romaine and a second type of lettuce in the cold frames.  We also added some 4″ pots to one of them and planted cauliflower, and two varieties of brocolli. These will go into the future hoop house once they have rooted. It’s all an experiment…we are having fun just doing things and figuring it out along the way. Learning when to plant successive crops (and exactly what to plant and when) would be awesome but I don’t know if I will ever be that organized. I guess it will just have to fall into place because the balance found itself. In the meantime….we are eating enough food to make it worthwhile and it’s fun. What else would we be doing?? Watching TV?? blech!

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I certainly don’t spend my mornings or afternoons watching soaps….does anybody really watch those anymore? But the days are getting warmer as the earth continues to turn into the warm days of spring for us in the northern hemisphere and with that the expanse of our garden is growing and we have plenty of places to plant vegetables yet I am still brewing up ideas of what space will expand next because it still seems as if we aren’t growing as much as we should to sustain our family for any period of time. Let me tell you though, if you were to have seen our yard 4 months as compared to today you would understand why we are so happy to have what we do have because at this time last year it was much less.

The last of the blackberry roots have been dug out although I’m sure we will have to attack a few spirited sprouts every now and again. The nasturtium seeds that the kids and all their neighbor friends sowed are now sprouting, in large, thick clumps. I considered splitting them while young and spreading them around a bit more but that is low on the priority list right now, at least until I get the rest of the veggie starts planted which is just some tomatoes, a couple hot peppers and some mystery plants. All of the leaves that we had delivered in the fall have become a good composting mulch and it all has a home in the yard now. This fall I will double our drop because I could surely use some more!

The cinderblocks that were around the original garden bed are now gone, mostly. A few remain because we don’t have any material to fill in the gap that will be left behind and cause erosion. I am so excited about this though because I always thought they were the biggest eyesore and they honestly did not serve a very good purpose in the form they were being used. It was difficult to get grassy weeds out and weeds and blackberries would even grow up inside of the little cutouts that are in cinderblocks.  Here is what the bed used to look  like (this was our only gardening space) and what we have now. Removing the cinderblocks and adding leaf mulch will increase our gardening space, soften the edges of garden making it more visually appealing and as I mentioned above, weeding will be so much more efficient with them gone. Notice the blackberries in the back of the yard in the photo on the left. That was just a few months worth of growth since they had been hacked back the previous fall so the area was a bit larger when we tackled it. It is difficult to see in the current photo what has been done in the area that was once a blackberry patch but I will get a better picture soon. For now I can tell you that we have a plum tree planted back there along with some summer veggies and perennials that I divided or being grown from seed.

The cinderblocks have been repurposed into a wall that disguises our compost/clutter area and I planted a marionberry in front of it which will likely outgrow it’s place there but it’s close to one of the raspberry patches so it seemed like a good spot. Marionberries aren’t super vigorous though so it won’t be too hard to keep cut back. Speaking of berries, I added another 8 plants for a total of 48 raspberry plants! We won’t see a very big crop this year since half of those were planted this year and we have yet to see if some of the plants make it but I am hopeful and so excited that the kids will be able to forage in the yard.

With inspiration from some friends we brought in some straw bales to give straw bale gardening a try. I let them sit out in the rain for a week and then I dug a small hole out of the straw and spread some compost on the top then planted some of my veggie starts. then I put the straw that I pulled out back around the plant. I fit 3 pepper plants into one bale and put 2 summer squash plants into one bale. The biggest reason we opted for straw bales this year is because the garden bed that we sheet mulched last fall just doesn’t seem ready; the ground is full of clay and the soil is very compact.  Often times a garden bed takes years to really be prime for gardening so we aren’t rushing it and I figure that having the composted straw bales with compost getting mulched into the bed will only help the soil composition. I am still planting some tomatoes directly into the bed because they seem to be doing well. We also have some mystery sprouts growing from the compost that was put into the bed. I think they are a summer squash that we grew last year, Ronde Nice, although I hope they are pumpkins otherwise our neighbors will be full of squash too!

Once I get these veggies in I don’t think I will be doing much more planting and I don’t have any major projects planned and I prefer to sip ice tea in the shade when it gets hot out. My goal is to keep the weeds from creeping back into the space that we have mulched and I will also be learning how to increase the soil composition of our garden area and we’ve got cold frames that need to be ready for the fall. Plus I would like to figure out a way to build the kids a cool fort on the cheap. Any ideas?? Oh, and we needed to get the clothesline put back up last week! Work, work, work!

I look at our backyard and I remember that we rent the house we live in. I look at our backyard and I see an expanse of grass. I look at our yard and I see work that needs to be done. I look at our yard and I see a paradise. A place we can call home and envelop ourselves in a bit of nature right outside our door. We have many reasons not to improve the land we live on but we have many more reasons to make it better than it is.

My thoughts are constantly stirring with new ideas and garden plans of how the next section of yard might look. Yes, we are fortunate to have a flat city lot where we can do just about anything when compared to a sloping lot but sloping lots are gems of another category but we aren’t covering that right now. Having a few small areas and sights like these keep me motivated to continue building our own paradise.

Today was a gorgeous day and Eugene, Oregon finally got a break from the rain. The soil was a bit more wet than I would have liked but we went ahead and turned over the compost that is creating our newest garden bed and the soil under it. It still needs a little more working and settling so we covered it with tarps since more rain is on the way. In retrospect, we would have been smart to have covered the area much earlier in the season and we would have seen the organic matter compost much more quickly with controlled moisture.

While we were working on this garden bed project, a great friend and helper stopped by the house and took all three of our children to the park! How amazing is that?? Sammy and I worked head-to-head moving down the 4×20 foot bed as we relished over the awesome earthworms and black dirt that we were going to be gardening in. The turning of this bed went much faster than we had anticipated. Renting a rototiller would not have been money well spent plus we would have killed so many great worms. (Some people actually try to grow worms, you know…)

Amazingly enough the sun continued to shine on us and we moved on to the blackberry eradication project. I had bought Sammy some leather gloves with the hopes that the project might be a little less painful. They did prove to help because he was able to grip the vines but finally he realized the usefulness of a metal garden rake and started using it to his advantage. We still have some digging of roots to do and then we will be moving as much leaf compost into the area as possible. I am so excited because this is all happening much sooner than I expected.

At the advice of a good friend and fellow gardener, I reluctantly plucked the blossoms from my newly planted 1 gallon size blueberry plants. Doing this is suppose help the plant get larger during the growing season rather than working on producing a handful of berries. I tossed the blueberry blossoms at the chicks to eat because I thought they must be packed with all kinds of energy and nutrients….probably should have ate them myself. The raspberries that were planted last year have some blossoms on them also but I left those on since they are such vigorous growers but I did have some weeds to pull from their growing area.

In the vegetable garden I planted some more radish and lettuce seeds since it has been about 2 weeks since I planted the last set. We now have 4 different varieties of lettuce growing, so long as the buttercrunch and romaine sprout. Speaking of sprouting seeds, we have some sunflowers that are peeking up out of the ground. We even had a couple of frosts over the last 4 or 5 days so I was a bit surprised to see them. I meant to put a little bit of leaf cover over them today but forgot to. If these puppies make it we are going to have some great looking sunflowers!  Looking forward to sharing some photos as things keep moving along.