DIY fake wasp nest update

So it's been awhile since I first made and hung the fake wasp's nest (see this old post).

I've had many people ask me how they've worked. All in all I'm really happy with them. After a couple months (and a few rains), two of the bags burst and the stuffing fell out. But the bags were still hanging and looked kindof the same so I left them. I have not seen any wasp nests in our yard. I know there's not because I've been looking. I've been looking because there have been quite a few wasps in our yard, especially the last few weeks.

I heard a quick story on the news that Calgary is having quite a battle with wasps this year. Pest companies are extremely busy, and wasps are #1 on their complaint list.

So yes there are many wasps (they love my container garden it seems), but I do feel like I've been successful as there are no nests. We live right next to a large greenspace, so I'm sure there's a ton of nests close to us, but not in my yard!

I will be doing this again next year!

Jen Made Bread!!

Yes I did! We have been trying to make more of our own food and eat less prepackaged and processed food. And something that we eat a lot of is bread. Gareth has been wanting me to try making bread for ages, but I was pretty intimidated. Something about all the kneading, and resting, and punching, and I don't know, it seemed so complicated. My mom lent me a bread maker, but I never did get around to trying that. Then I came across a review of the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes. That got my attention! I reserved it at the library, but it was so popular I would be waiting a few months. So Gareth surprised me with the book!

And what do you know? I made bread!

I started with the basic recipe, and made a boule loaf. It was small, and a little dense, but it was good!



Then I tried again and made a partial whole wheat loaf, and it turned out much better.



And then I tried a cinnamon raisin loaf. That is one of my favorite breakfast meals. It turned out awesome!!




So I highly recommend that everyone runs out and gets this book. There are a ton of recipes, all with the same basic procedure. But the title is a tad misleading. The main premise is that you make up enough dough for four loaves, then it sits in your fridge for up to two weeks. Mixing the dough doesn't take long at all. But then it needs to rise for two hours, then refrigerated overnight. Then before you bake it, it needs to rest again at room temp for 40min. Bake for 30min. So while you may only be hands on for 5min, there is some preplanning to take in all the rest periods.

But you just can't beat freshly baked bread! (Especially the cinnamon raisin loaf!)

My potatoes in a bag

For dinner tonight, we harvested the first two hills of potatoes. It was early, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But what did I have to lose?

I decided to dig up the bag of potatoes. Out of all the hills, this was the one I was most curious about how/if it was working.

So here is the bag before, you can just see it under the foliage...



Here is what it looked like on it's own...



I dumped the bag into a bin, dug out the potatoes, then put the dirt back in the bag.



And here are the potatoes! The yield was small, but it was early. These were planted about 10wks ago. Another few weeks and I think the yield would've been much better. But the quality was amazing! We grilled them on the bbq in olive oil, garlic, salt and some onion. My mom and stepdad were here to share in them, which was great considering their contributions to my garden. And hopefully they'll be able to share in many more meals to come. I have 20 more hills!

Vegetable container garden Wk 11 harvest

It has been about 11wks since planting most of my vegetables. And finally we are starting to eat quite a bit from it. First it was spinach and lettuce, both of which are done now, and now we're into the peas and zucchini's. I have four zucchini plants, and it is fruiting like mad. We're also finally getting good sweet yummy peas. I have six pots of peas, three that were planted in one batch, and the other three were planted two weeks later in a second batch. I don't know what happened, but my first batch have all died. I managed to get a few peas off of them, but not much. My second batch seems to be doing much better and I'm getting more peas. We're snacking on about 6 pods/day. Hopefully this is just the beginning, but that may be it with such a small amount of plants. Next year I was to do waaaay more peas. I love love love them!

Here's what we had the other night. Another day or so and we should have that much zucchini again!



And while not a vegetable, I'm excited to say my cosmos have finally bloomed! Those too took about 11wks since I planted the seeds. A little too long to wait, next year I might do a bunch of indoor sowing so I can enjoy them much earlier. There are only a few flowers at this point, but hopefully they'll explode soon!

Homemade worm bin update

So I haven't mentioned my vermiculture bin (aka DIY worm bin) since I made it. There really hasn't been much to mention. It lives under my sink, I put in a few handfuls of chopped fruit/veg scraps once or twice a week, and you'd never know it was there. There is ZERO smell, no bugs, no escaping worms. But there are a ton of worms. Many more then I started with. Healthy, big, red worms. Probably double at least. And there is compost. Lots and lots of compost! As someone who had know idea what I was doing, I can tell you that it is easy to tell when it's finally turned to compost. The bin is much heavier then when I started, and it's rich, black, moist compost.

So I've decided it's time to get the compost out and start again. But how do I do this without losing all my worms? I have no idea if this will work, but here's what I'm doing.

I have pushed all the compost over to one side of the bin. I am not feeding them on that side anymore. My only concern is that it's so heavy, I don't want them squished under the weight. But I have to have faith that instinct will lead them out. On the other, now empty, side of the bin, I have started fresh. I have fed them some moldy strawberries, covered it with several inches of damp newspaper, and voila. The plan is that all the worms will migrate to the new side for food, and I will be left with one side of compost that I can then take out for storage (I won't be using it on my gardens this year, I'll save it for next).

There isn't much to take pictures of, it's hard to see all the worms in a picture. But here is what it looks like with the two sides set up. I figure I'll leave it like this for 2-3 wks to make sure as many worms as possible make it to the other side.

My new purse!

I made something for me! Actually it's not as exciting that it's just for me, but more that I actually got to sit down and start and finish something, in only two days. Gareth very kindly took the boys out this morning to give me the last hour to finish it in peace :)

When I go out with the boys, I now no longer need to carry the big diaper backpack. But my small every day purse is still too small. I needed something inbetween. I have my stuff (which really isn't much), plus snacks, drinks and Roans diaper change kit. And occasionally a few extra items too. I wanted something that I could wear over my body to keep my hands free for child wrangling. And something that was easy for me to just reach in and out of (ie no zipper).

So here is what I made. I found an awesome tutorial on Craftster, and it was actually so easy to complete. I added four inner pockets and a key hook so my keys don't just fall to the bottom of the bag. It closes with a magnetic snap (which is decievingly strong) which is nice that I can sneak my hand in if needed. I interfaced it with a lightweight fusible interface, just enough to give it some structure, yet still be soft and light. This used about 3/4m outer fabric, although I'm glad I got a full metre. I might make a matching zipper pouch to keep my stuff seperate.

Anyways, here she is. I haven't taken her out yet, but wearing around the house has been great!

Container garden - wk 10

I've missed posting for a few weeks. It has been a busy summer for us so far. Lots of activities and just playing outside. And we took our first family camping trip! I swore my version of 'camping' included a motel at the very least, but we met up with my best friend and her family and went camping in a tent! And you know what? It was awesome!! We've already booked our second trip of the summer, and hope to even do a third.

And in the meantime, my garden has been growing, and growing, and grooooowing!

So here is the update. I took these pictures last week, about the Week 10 mark.

Here are the herbs and Batch 3 potatoes. I've been harvesting the basil which is doing great. The cilantro seeds I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted and are growing quickly. The potatoes are big, but who can tell what's happening underneath.



The tomatoes!!! My awesome awesome tomatoes! They're all still green, but there are so many of them. It's crazy! We're going to turn red once they ripen as we'll be eating so many tomatoes.





The spinach and lettuce have bolted. The spinach was yummy, I will definitely do spinach again. But I didn't like the lettuce. I did a leaf lettuce (Early Curled Simpson), and I found it limp, wilty and tasteless. While on vacation, we stayed with my sister in law who is growing her first garden, and she had an awesome leaf lettuce and made us a great salad. I'm going to try her variety next year (I forget the name, I have to remember to ask her again!).

And in the same picture is the zucchini. Holy Moly, the zucchini! It's huuuuuuge. It's completely taken over the container, is running over the lettuce, and I have to keep cutting it back from totally covering my carrots. We've been harvesting the sweet tender young zucchini's, and jebus was it yummy. I thought I had some time before the next harvest, yet tonight my stepdad pointed out a huge zucchini that I swear wasn't there yesterday. Grilled zucchini, roasted zucchini, baked zucchini, stir fried zucchini, zucchini bread, chocolate zucchini muffins...




The beets are beets. You can just start to see the tops of them, but they're still pretty tiny. It will be a while yet before we get to eat those.



The potatoes are great. There were flowers, and now the foliage is starting to fall over. It has been super hot here for a couple weeks, I don't think they liked that much. Next week I'm going to try harvesting one. Hopefully they'll be the yummy little 'new' potatoes, yum!! I missed taking pics, but they don't look that much different, just a little bigger then last time.

And my peas. Sigh, my peas. I love peas. I love eating fresh peas right in the garden, shucking them, eating them and thowing the pods back in the garden. I was so excited for my peas. And they were doing well! So well! These picturs taken last week, they still look like they're doing well. Although on closer look, you could maybe tell something was starting to go wrong. And now, one container from Batch 1 is all pretty much dead. And the other two containers from Batch 1 are looking sad. It doesn't seem to be pests, my stepdad mentioned perhaps a fertilizing issue (nitrogen poisoning?). I don't know. There were a ton of peas growing, but they've all stalled and though some of the pods are getting bigger, when you open them, there are no peas inside. Batch 2 is still looking pretty good, so fingers crossed I haven't lost them all!



My peppers are surprisingly great! I have two hot peppers about ready to harvest, and several small sweet peppers. While the plants are much bigger then when I bought them, I don't know if they'll be big enough to make grocery store sized peppers. Right now they're about golf ball sized peppers.





My front flower garden is doing really great. The scarlett runner beans threaten to attack anyone who stands too close. I've added extra, taller supports, and they covered those in literally days. Not sure what else I can do. I might get a super long piece of wood (1"x1" or so) and pound that in the middle. Otherwise I think they may just reach across the lawn and crawl up our tree! The sweet peas have bloomed and are wonderful. I cut a bunch for my first 'bouquet'. They looked much better on the plant I have to admit! The cosmos are so tall. I didn't realize how tall they'd be. And they're so close to blooming. But nothing yet. One thing I don't like about them is they are covered in ants. I'm guessing they're like peonies where the ants crawl all over them and eat the sap which allows them to bloom. But it's kindof icky when you look really close! The pansies look good. Can't go wrong with pansies. But one thing I did do wrong was try and put a dahlia in the middle of a container and surrounded it by pansies. The pansies grew way bigger, completely covered the dahlia, which is now dead. Oh well, live and learn! The snapdragons are in full bloom with lots of great colours. And the osteospermum are okay. They don't bloom nearly as amazingly as when I first got them, but there are always a few flowers every day, and the greens are so pretty on their own.



And the sunflowers and marigolds are looking great. The marigolds are blooming nicely, and the sunflowers are growing steadily. Can't wait to see what they'll look like!



And that's it for now! I probably won't update this week (it's hard playing catch up), but plan on definitely posting Week 12's update. Hopefully the peas will still be in the picture!