I am in one of those areas that got lots of snow this past week. We have 3-4 feet in our front yard and rather than being depressed about it… I am loving it. Winter in general this year has been very easy on me. I just stay home and relax. As I look at the calender I am a-okay with a many more weeks of cold even though Spring is my favorite season. Why? Because winter is for dreaming and planning. All good gardens and beautiful yards begin in the winter time… with seeds that begin sprouting in our imagination.

Now is the time to search your local Craigslist and thrift stores as I have been… to look for garden tools, planters, trellises, seeds, seedlings, harvest baskets, and other garden goodies. Now is the time to think about what you will plant and where. I must have kept my hubby up for half and hour past his bed time last night mumbling about snow peas and sugar snap peas. We have decided to gut our front yard and take advantage of the empty flower beds. We are going to remove some ugly bushes and plant herbs instead. We are also going to remove some of the lawn to grow food. In the backyard we are going to build some raised beds and I found two ready-built ones on Craigslist recently for $20!!

I have been compiling my wishlist with things like pea fences and bean towers. I have also been deciding what we need to plant. We are going to have a salsa garden and a salad bar garden this year for sure. In general we will concentrate on growing as much food as possible to see just how self sustainable we can be and it will be a tall order because we used to have 2 acres and now he have a teeny city lot. But I love challenges! To help us get a lot out of a little space  we will be doing square foot gardening. I also want to plant lots of wildflowers and sunflowers in the unused space around our garage. We eat outside almost every night in the summer months so I want fresh cut flowers on the table. Another goal is to make my own Citronella candles and bug-off bars to deter bugs. The bug-off bars recipes is from one of my FAVE books for winter dreamin… MaryJane's Outpost. Also check out MaryJane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook: For the Farmgirl in All of Us. MaryJane Butters is someone I really admire!!

We also plan to help my parents with their garden and share the bounty. The kids and I will likely be spending every weekend with them come Spring, since hubby might be switching to a three day (weekends only) work week. We will have two gardens to work and enjoy.

AND we are planning to make up for the trip we missed in the Fall and hopefully will get to DC to see the Cherry blossoms this year. Smithsonian here we come!

So what are YOU dreaming up this winter?

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All week we have been eating fresh from the garden. We are overflowing with tomatoes, bell peppers, banana peppers, chilis, cukes, and other deliciousness. The kids just pick and eat too. I swear my 3 year downed a half pound of snow peas before we even got any in the house. A bowl of sugar snap peas lasted about 3 hours before they were devoured. And of course tomatoes can be eaten just like apples, still warm from the sun and juicy sweet.

Fresh picked! We reused our berry basket from the local strawberry farm… those were heavenly too!

We have a couple pumpkins going strong too!

So what are you eating fresh the garden right now?

As people begin to be more environmentally and economically conscious or perhaps just more conscious of the amount of garbage they generate, composting becomes popular.  However, for many it’s still a new concept and it seems kind of mysterious. If you’re interested in learning more about it, here are a few composting basics to get you started. It really is very easy.

So What is Composting Exactly?

Composting is essentially decomposing.  The leaves that collect in the corner of your yard decompose.  The grass clippings that fall on your lawn decompose. It is actually a HUGELY inportant process. If you facilitate this process, then it’s called composting.  It basically involves mixing your yard and household organic waste, like food scraps, in a container and providing conditions that encourage or facilitate the decomposition process.

Why Should YOU Compost?

Composting is a very environmentally friendly practice.  It reduces the amount of garbage we toss into landfills by 20-30% and as we get closer and closer to running out of space, composting becomes more and more important. 

In addition to making space in the landfills, composting provides you with a source of chemical free fertilizer, which you can use for gardening and soil conditioner. If you garden and grow your own food then you want nutrient rich compost and making it yourself is cost effective.

Materials to Get Started Composting

To begin composting you’ll need a few things to get started. You can find many of these items at your local hardware or gardening store.  You can also buy home composting kits only.  These kits come with everything you need and provide a relatively “stink free” composting experience.

You’ll likely need a compost bin.  The materials will be decomposing here so if you’re keeping the compost in your home, you’ll want a lid as well. I have a small 5 pound bucket I use for kitchen crap collection and it will start to get smelly after 3-4 days so I take it outside to our main composting place. At our previous home we had a HUGE 10×20 compost bin made from lattice. It was actually a bit too big IMO but we had several acres of leaves and grass clippings. We still ended up taking a couple truck loads of leaves to the local compost yard each Fall.

Now we have no bin whatsoever, just a big pile in the backyard, behind the garage. It was there when we moved in and it seems to work just fine. It is not the most attractive thing but it isn’t where anyone, including neighbors, have to look at it.

You’ll also need a pitchfork to turn and mix the compost regularly.

But what about the actual compost?  Can you toss anything in there?  Are there right and wrong ingredients?  The answer is yes, the ideal compost recipe includes:

* Greens – include grass clippings, kitchen scraps including eggshells and coffee grounds. (Avoid using any meat, fat, grease, oils, dairy products, bones, or animal droppings in your compost.)
* Browns – include dried leaves, straw, wood chips, paper bags and drier lint.
* Water – Keep the pile moist but not soaking
* Air
* And time

If you have two much brown stuff it will take a lot longer to compost. That is why we often hauled some leaves away because it threw our mixture way off balance and the compost would come close to “cooking” like it should.

We allow our compost to sit for 6 months or more and we end up with dark, rish compost that our garden loves.  So when doing yard waste cleanup this summer and fall, it may be a great time to try your hand at composting.

Photo Credit:  solylunafamilia

We are now 90% moved into our new place in the city. Of course our old place won’t be going on the market for months so we have our garden to tend to still. It is already overflowing with lettuce and cilantro ready to eat and the first tomatoes will be here before we know it.

Of course we still wanted to do a small garden at our new place… tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, etc. We love our salsa. So before we even have unpacked very many boxes we got started on the new garden. I would guesstimate it is 12 by 6 feet and we put the kids to work immediately. … muhawaahaw.

Doesn’t his hair cut make him look ornery?

At one point I saw  a little girl, maybe 8-9 years old was hiding behind a parked car watching us in the garden. When I spotted her she scampered inside her house. Obviously since we are new here she was curious. OR it could have been this she was looking at. I am guessing it was the latter. No boy should be that pretty…there should be a law.

Pretty soon my youngest found some worms and you couldn’t drag him away from the garden at that point. Every single morning now he wakes up and grabs my hand and says “Mom, let’s go get a worm!”

And our garden adventures and food freedom quest continue even though we are in a new place. Stay tuned for more!

Here is a video I shot yesterday morning. Hear all the birds chirping?? The garden is coming along beautifully. Last year we let the lettuce go to seed at the end of summer so I found lots of places where heads of lettuce greens are sprouting all on their own. I think we are going to have a TON of lettuce this year.

This week we plant some cilantro and some herbs.