Friday, May 27, 2011

Friday Green Item-reusable produce bags

Happy Friday! I thought I would dedicate Fridays to providing you with a “green” product discovery.
I came across these mesh reusable produce bags at Crate and Barrel, http://www.crateandbarrel.com/search.aspx?query=produce%20bags. They were 5 for $10.95. I love this idea! It kind of defeats the purpose of bringing your own bags to the grocery store only to fill your cart up with plastic produce bags. They are washable as well since we should wash our reusable bags VERY often-since they have been shown to carry lots of germs from being in the stores since we use and reuse and reuse….
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Wishing you a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.
What are your plans for the long weekend?

Monday, May 23, 2011

Grow an Organic Garden

Finally, it’s that time of year here in the Midwest!

This is the 2nd year we have planted a garden. Last year we started fairly small since we knew it would be trial and error, and with having a 1 year old, we didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew…which is so unlike me (I am sure my sleep deprivation was still keeping me grounded). Smile

This year we planted 3 different tomato varieties(the same as last year so we had different flavors and tomatoes throughout the season, I am so spoiled now, I hate to buy a tomato at the grocery store), 9 different peppers-we are trying different varieties to see which ones will yield the colored peppers we desire,  3 bibb lettuce, 2 different cucumbers, and a sweet potato. I also will plant a pot on our patio for the herbs, since we need all the room in the garden this year.

We made a raised garden  3 x 12 using 1x8’s and metal garden corners you can get here: http://www.gardeners.com/

Since 1x8’s are actually not quite 8 inches, my husband just used a mallet to secure the extra metal down into the ground. Please excuse the dirt messes around the garden-my husband executes the installation of my ideas, but I am the cleaner upper. Smile Looks like I still need to do so…

Here is the bed we built from last year planted this year.

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Since the garden was pretty successful last year, we have added a 2nd raised bed which is 3 x 8. It’s all the space we had left on the south side of our house-so we will have to be selective in our plantings.

We made it the same depth and used the same garden corners. You can see how the wood has weathered from last years’ to the new raised garden.

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We filled the beds with Miracle Grow Organic Choice Garden Soil

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Added Preen Organic Vegetable Garden Weed Preventer, this really helps keep the weed pulling to very minimal, and you add it about once a month or so through the gardening season.

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Fed the veggies with Espoma Garden-Tone for Organic Gardening and will continue to feed every 2 weeks.

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Oh, and how could I forget…our strawberries in a strawberry pot!  Yum!!!

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Wednesday, May 4, 2011