Time Spent Summary - September '09

I can't take credit for the idea of tracking the time and money spent on my garden. That goes to Get Rich Slowly's Garden Project. The idea is this: Does a garden save you money? It's a simple question, but a difficult answer.

Most people who garden will say even if the financial benefit isn't there, the quality improvement over supermarket produce is worth the price. I postulate that if you only look at the money spent vs the value of the produce, that you will come out ahead. If you include the time spent, however, I am pretty certain you will not come out ahead. And that's ok, so long as you look at the time as an investment in an enjoyable, healthful activity.

2009 Summary



September Details



The wet cool summer really showed it's effect in September. What should have been a month filled with tomato harvest, turned into a balancing act of picking what few tomatoes there were while not yet ripe, or leaving them on the vine and hoping they didn't rot. Unfortunately many of them did rot on the vines and even those that were picked rotted on the counter before ripening. Even though the dreaded late blight did not strike our garden, the season still turned out to be a huge let down. Although we planted twice as many tomatoes, we managed to put up less frozen sauce than last year.

The black beans finally finished drying and have been put away for storage. 3-3/4 cup all told. Can't wait to try some beans & rice!

Although not tallied in the summary, some work has been put toward sunflower harvest. Unfortunately, some sort of worm/maggot took hold on the flowers and has rendered a good portion of them useless. Had I known, I would have sprayed with Bt to attempt management of the problem. Some may be salvageable, however and they can still be of some use as bird food.

The watermelon was a mildly pleasant surprise, while at the same time being a letdown yet again. I had given up on getting any watermelon again this year, but at the last minute the plants put out a few very small fruits. They were decent enough, but I may give up on them for next year.

Time Spent Summary - August '09

I can't take credit for the idea of tracking the time and money spent on my garden. That goes to Get Rich Slowly's Garden Project. The idea is this: Does a garden save you money? It's a simple question, but a difficult answer.

Most people who garden will say even if the financial benefit isn't there, the quality improvement over supermarket produce is worth the price. I postulate that if you only look at the money spent vs the value of the produce, that you will come out ahead. If you include the time spent, however, I am pretty certain you will not come out ahead. And that's ok, so long as you look at the time as an investment in an enjoyable, healthful activity.


2009 Summary



August Details




August is harvest time! Makes you wonder why Thanksgiving isn't in August instead of November, other than I suppose the Pilgrims wouldn't have had time to party during the middle of the harvest...

The big hitters are coming in fast and furious. The roma tomatoes are about halfway through the harvest. I don't think they're doing nearly as good as last year, but they're doing alright given the poor growing season. The potato experiment went well and I will likely expand the planting next year.

The onions gave a much improved showing over last year. I'm tempted to plant more, but I want to see how the long term storage in non-ideal conditions goes first. We don't have a root cellar and our basement stays fairly warm in the winter due to the furnace. So I'm not certain how well the onions (or potatoes for that matter) will hold up. I would not want to plant more if they can't be used.

Likewise the black bean experiment went well. Don't know how a better growing year might produce, but I wasn't too disappointed with what I got.

Going forward there isn't much left growing. The peppers are still producing, as are the tomatoes, the beans are pretty much done, the corn never produced anything. There are a few softball sized watermelon, but I'm not sure if they'll be edible.

The pumpkins have died for a second straight year before being able to produce anything. I am strongly considering replacing them with potatoes next year. The community garden harbors whichever disease has been killing the pumpkins (bacterial wilt potentially) perpetually and it just doesn't make sense to fight it.

Black beans are in!

I tried growing black beans for the first time this year. As with most beans they were pretty low maintenance. Perhaps even less than green or wax beans because you only have to harvest once.

For this first year I planted just 8' of twin rows. Unfortunately with a smallish garden I can't afford to dedicate a lot of room to an experiment. Thankfully in this case the experiement went quite well.

I picked about 2 gallons worth of in shell beans last week. With some help from my wife and three year old, we got them all shelled and they've been drying for several days now. Shelling dried beans is not a fun activity, in case you were wondering. I've estimated there should be about 4 cups worth of beans when all is said and done.

Now I just need to get an authentic beans & rice recipe...

If I decide they are worth doing again next year, I might break from the twin row planting and pack in 3 or more rows together to maximize the space. Since you don't have to get in to pick them more than once (I just waited for the plants to begin dying off), there is no need to allow for easy picking. The second half of this year's picking I yanked the plants clean out of the ground so I could strip the beans in a standing posture (anything to save my back a little). Seemed to work pretty well and gets me one step closer to a cleaned up garden for the winter.

Time Spent Summary - July '09

I can't take credit for the idea of tracking the time and money spent on my garden. That goes to Get Rich Slowly's Garden Project. The idea is this: Does a garden save you money? It's a simple question, but a difficult answer.

Most people who garden will say even if the financial benefit isn't there, the quality improvement over supermarket produce is worth the price. I postulate that if you only look at the money spent vs the value of the produce, that you will come out ahead. If you include the time spent, however, I am pretty certain you will not come out ahead. And that's ok, so long as you look at the time as an investment in an enjoyable, healthful activity.


2009 Summary



June Details



I didn't really think it was possible, but July brought even more rain and cool weather to New England. As a result, many of the warm weather vegetables are way behind where they would normally be. The harvest value is not looking very good compared to the amount spent on equipment and supplies at this point. There's still the majority of the harvest to come, but I am a bit concerned that breaking even may not be possible for this year.

One of the biggest concerns is the potential for late blight to ruin the tomato harvest. If there's any chance at all of breaking even, it would come with the large amount of green tomatoes hanging on the vines currently. If late blight finds my garden, it will take out the fruit as well as the vines. Unfortunately, I've still got a few weeks before the tomatoes are ready.

I do not have store values for several of the vegetables at this time. We don't go shopping very often so I have not been able to search out values. In the meantime I have substituted similar items from grocery store weekly circulars.

Late Blight Watch

Thanks to those big box home improvement stores (you know who, one orange and one blue), those of us in the Northeast have an additional threat to our Potatoes and Tomatoes, late blight. Not familiar with late blight? Ever heard of the Irish Potato Famine? Yep, caused by late blight.

By all accounts it is pretty nefarious stuff, not only does it attack the plant, but it ruins the fruit/tuber as well. It spreads like wildfire too. The only upside is that unlike many other fungi, this one does not live in the soil and, assuming you do not create cull piles of ruined potatoes, should not survive the winter to resurface next spring.

The disease has been spotted all over CT in commercial farms. I'm sure there are many backyard gardeners who are losing their tomatoes (tomato seedlings imported from the south spread the disease initially) and have no idea why. The cool wet weather this summer has been a boon to spreading all sorts of fungi.

Being in a community garden I am quite fearful that we will not escape this disease. I am keeping a close watch on the my plants, so far I believe all I have is some early blight and septoria leaf spot. I am taking an agressive stance on all fungi in my tomatoes. Clipping out any diseased leaves and spraying regularly with Chlorothalonil, which the only fungicide I've found that helps battle this disease. It should be noted that Chlorothalonil does not treat an infection, but will help slow down the spread. Commercial farmers have fungicides available that will treat an infection, however these chemicals are not available to backyard gardeners.

UCONN IPM Info Page

Another info page

Cornell Potato Late Blight Photos

Cornell Tomato Late Blight Photos


Good luck out there!!

Garden Status

Since our laptop died in May, making updates has been difficult. We now have a brand new Asus Eee-1000HA. It's one of those cute little netbooks. I'm loving it so far, the battery life is incredible compared to our bottom of the barrel laptop.

Life in New England has been about as cool and wet as I've ever seen. Needless to say the garden has been slow growing. The cool weather veggies are doing great, but the warm weather ones are pokey.

The snow peas produced nearly a 4 pound harvest. Not bad for a 6', double row planting. I've also managed to harvest 6 heads of broccoli. They look to be similar in size to those in the grocery store. It is unfortunate they all came at once, but they produced a lot better than last year's crop. Granted, last year I planted them just a week before Memorial Day, so they just didn't have enough time before the warm weather set in.

When I planted the onions I also threw some leaf lettuce seed in the between row areas. Not much came up, but what did come up has been producing a few sandwiches worth of lettuce each week. Not enough to track hardly, but a nice addition to my daily lunch sandwich.

The corn is still only knee high. I did some thinning over the July 4th weekend. To avoid wasting the thinned plants I dug up an area in a fallow plot next to mine and transplanted the extra plants there. They aren't looking too healthy right now, but they would have been composted otherwise so it is worth a shot.

The tomato, watermelon, summer squash, pumpkin & cucumber plants are similarly stunted by the cool weather. The peppers are actually holding their own, which is a little surprising given the cool weather. They transplanted much better than the tomatoes, however, so that has given them a head start of sorts.

Hopefully we will break out of this wet & cool weather pattern and get some good warm growing weather soon! Otherwise this may turn out to be a disappointing year.

Time Spent Summary - June '09

I can't take credit for the idea of tracking the time and money spent on my garden. That goes to Get Rich Slowly's Garden Project. The idea is this: Does a garden save you money? It's a simple question, but a difficult answer.

Most people who garden will say even if the financial benefit isn't there, the quality improvement over supermarket produce is worth the price. I postulate that if you only look at the money spent vs the value of the produce, that you will come out ahead. If you include the time spent, however, I am pretty certain you will not come out ahead. And that's ok, so long as you look at the time as an investment in an enjoyable, healthful activity.


2009 Summary




June Details



June brings weeds. Weeds bring lots of time spent in the garden. It also brings the first crop, snow peas. This is my first time planting snow peas, I've been pleasantly surprised by their growth and production. Although that said, this year is a bit of an anomaly given the cooler and wetter than normal conditions. Still, from a 6' long twin row planting, I've yielded 3 3/4lb of snow peas thus far.

The peas are about done now, however and I'll soon be pulling them to make way for more beans (yellow most likely).

The fungicide is being put to good use attempting to limit the spread of early blight among the tomatoes. This is the downside of wet weather. Although I do try to limit the application of pesticides and such, I am also not ready to lose complete crops as I did last year.

Time Spent Summary - May '09

I can't take credit for the idea of tracking the time and money spent on my garden. That goes to Get Rich Slowly's Garden Project. The idea is this: Does a garden save you money? It's a simple question, but a difficult answer.

Most people who garden will say even if the financial benefit isn't there, the quality improvement over supermarket produce is worth the price. I postulate that if you only look at the money spent vs the value of the produce, that you will come out ahead. If you include the time spent, however, I am pretty certain you will not come out ahead. And that's ok, so long as you look at the time as an investment in an enjoyable, healthful activity.

April Details


2009 Summary



Not having the plot tilled this year has allowed me to get a much earlier start than last year. Of course it also means more hours hand digging the garden. But, it will save me from a repeat of last year where I spent two or three weekends in a row spending all day both days working on garden prep and planting. So, hopefully the labor will all average out in the end.

Peas and Onions and Compost Oh My!

This past weekend I spent a few hours planting peas and onions in the garden. I also spent some more time preparing the soil for the new plantings.

My compost pile from last season is only about half finished. I did not spend the time or effort needed to properly turn the pile through the season. As a result, the bottom of the pile was well seasoned, the top portion, however, was not. So I dug out the portion that was ready and worked it into the beds that I have dug up to date.

The soil in the community garden is pretty well shot, to put it mildly. There is little to no organic material left in the soil after years of abuse. Needless to say, it is very easy to see the difference between the areas where I had added some store bought compost last year and everywhere else. I am aiming to do a better job with my compost pile this year so there will be a greater quantity ready for next year.

While cultivating last year's onion/carrot/broccoli patch a couple weeks ago, I noticed a few volunteer onions had come up. When my onions died off early last year I pulled them in a bit of a huff and apparently missed a few.

Since I am rotating as many of the crops as I can, the volunteers had to move. They, along with the left over bulbs from last year, have been moved to their new home just a few feet away. I just have to hope now that the sun we got over the last couple days didn't cook the new transplants.

I planted the peas just like the package said, 2 rows 6" apart. This worked quite well for my beans last year (although the beans were closer to 12" apart) and in fact I am digging up a special area to allow a full 25' long two row planting (for the beans, the peas are in the bean patch, but will hopefully be done in time to replant with beans for a late harvest).

Although in general I do not believe in row planting, it works for beans and peas because it makes picking them much easier. I had a small section last year of 3 rows for beans, and it just didn't work. Finding the beans while picking was too hard and I missed quite a few.

So now we wait and see. We're in for a good amount of rain this week, followed by some hot days. Hopefully this will give the onions and peas a good start.

Perennials From Seed

For some reason I've never thought about starting perennials from seed. To me, perennials always seemed be something you got from a friend after their plant got too big. Unfortunately I don't know anyone currently with overgrown perennial beds.

The small area behind our deck used to be our mini-vegetable plot. Now that we are part of our community garden, we no longer need this area. In fact, last year the weeds choked out the few extra pepper and tomato plants I had stuck in the ground.

I've decided it is time to do something different.

To that end I have started a bunch of seeds to turn the small stretch of dirt into a perennial bed. I am definitely not a landscape designer, so my choices may be somewhat suspect, but here they are: Foxglove, to provide a tall backdrop; Black-Eyed Susans, Purple Coneflowers and Shasta Daisies; to form a relational middle ground and Forget-Me-Nots for the foreground.

It works in my mind, we will see how well it works when I go to transplant them.

Tilling the Garden

This year I have decided not to have the garden plot harrowed. My thinking is to maintain the same planting areas as last year. This will conserve the soil improvements made last year as well as the garden layout. There are some drawbacks to this plan, but overall I hope it will save some time and effort. This is especially important given the slope of our plot.

Today I put in an hour and a half worth of hoeing. That equates to around a third of the job done. It would probably go a lot quicker and easier if I was in better shape! :(

When I setup the garden layout last year I pulled some soil out of the growing areas to create raised paths through the garden. This created a defined set of walking areas that shed rain into the growing areas and not the other way around. During the course of the year the definition between path and growing area declined due to erosion and foot traffic. Part of the hoeing process is to re-define the edge between path and growing area.

Being New England, the winter has grown a good crop of rocks. I pulled out a 5 gallon bucket full of rocks today. And that was without being very meticulous about picking them up. Although it would be easy to leave the rocks there, I do believe that by pulling them out, slowly the growing areas will become less and less rocky. Each year this should make the hoeing a little bit easier.

Finally, Some Peppers are Up!

It took 2 plantings and 5 weeks, but I finally have some pepper plants starting to come up. Just barely though as they aren't much more than poking up through the dirt. I don't remember having this much trouble getting them to sprout last year. Keeping them alive, yes, sprouting, no.

I only have 3 or 4 out of 2 dozen up. The rest should come along shortly, at least I hope so. Timing wise I should still be ok for a late May planting. If the spring stays as cold as it has been the last week or so, they'll WANT to be delayed to let the soil warm up.

Looking forward to getting some flowers started this weekend!

My Grow Light Setup

Starting seeds indoors requires some form of artificial light. The easiest and cheapest way to accomplish this is through the use of 40 watt flourescent 'worklight' style lamps. These can be found quite cheaply ($10-15 for a 2 tube light) at your local big box home improvement stores. In my case, while renovating our condo's bathrooms, I salvaged the old worklight style lighting fixtures and rewired them to have normal wall plugs.

It is difficult to see in the pictures, but I have two light fixtures connected with pieces of scrap wood. The wood pieces have one eye bolt each with an 'S' shaped piece of coat hanger wire to allow easy adjustment on the chain.

For chain, I am using a purpose bought dog chain. For $4 for a 15 or 20' length, it was far cheaper than any hardware store chain would have been. The chain makes it easy to change the height of the lights as the plants grow.

The picture looks clutter because I have added reflection panels to maximize the amount of light available to the seedlings. The panels are nothing more than cardboard cut to size and wrapped in aluminum foil. The aluminum foil bounces the light around the enclosed area increasing the light density. Without the reflective panels the light would spill out into the room and not be available to the plants.

An additional benefit of the panels is they help keep the plants warmer than the surrounding basement. Although flourescent lights are fairly efficient, they do produce some heat, in my case the ballast that drives the flourescent tubes also produces a good amount of heat. Although I haven't measured it, this heat definitely keeps the plants warmer than without. In fact, after the 14 hour on-time, you can feel that the basement is warmer than it started.

Some people use heating pads to warm their seedlings. I am counting on the lights to provide enough heat. I found out the hard way that this is not good enough for germinating peppers. It seems to be enough for everything else, however.

Seedling Update

Three weeks into my seed starting exercise and as with most gardening exploits, the results are mixed.

All varieties of tomatoes are up and growing extremely well. Shortly, I will start applying periodic wind (via a fan) to help promote strength of the young seedlings.

The broccoli and onions are also growing quite well. I had a bit of an issues with the onions, however. I am using the bottom of gallon milk jugs for my 'pots'. I did not put any drain holes in the bottom and managed to overwater them a couple times. Unfortunately that has led to one of the four pots losing almost all of it's seedlings. Another pot lost about half its seedlings. Lesson learned, be certain to include drain holes in all seedling pots. Be careful not to overwater your seedlings, they are very sensitive to 'drowning'.

I've had mixed success with herbs this year. Most of them have come up, however, I managed to kill off quite a few seedlings with careless watering. Today, I tossed in some additional seed to make up for the losses. In the end I am not as concerned about the herbs as I am the vegetables. We use some oregano and basil in our tomato sauce, but the remaining herbs (cilantro, parsley & chives) have not found a regular use yet.

Lastly, are our poor pepper seeds. I thought my light setup would warm the plantings enough to enable all the varieties of seed to germinate. It seems however, that it was not sufficient for the peppers. After 2-1/2 weeks they still showed no sign of germination (I dug up a few seeds to verify). I have replanted them and moved the trays out of the basement grow area to the solarium. There's still plenty of time for the pepper plants to grow sufficiently for a May transplantation. But it is disappointing that they weren't successful the first time around.

My Community Garden Plot

I had never heard of a community garden until a few years ago. A cube mate at work was gardening a couple small plots in Hartford and would give me the daily updates on his trials and tribulations. The idea was intriguing but I just didn't have the time to invest.

After a couple successful years of squeezing in as many vegetables as I could in the 2' x 15' strip of dirt behind my deck, I decided last year was the year to give the local community garden a try.

Our community garden is located on the side of a gently sloping hill. It receives good sun throughout the day, but the slope definitely creates some problems. The plots are big at 25' X 25'. For the 8 months or so of rental, $20 certainly seems like a decent price.

The town's park and rec department runs the program. If you are looking for a community garden in your area that might be a place to start, however I do not know how common it is for the park & rec departments to be the administrators. Looking around on the web it appears a number of community and private groups run similar programs.

The town disc's (aka harrow, aka cultivate) the land in the middle of May. Although this worked out ok last year, it really is later than I would prefer. My plot had been fallow the prior year (or more) and was covered in meadow-like grasses. Unfortunately this meant the remaining straw was half buried under 6" of soil after the harrowing and required a fair amount of work to rake off and prepare the plot for planting.

Needless to say, I am planning to request my plot not be cultivated this year to allow me to plant a few things early. In addition, I would like to maintain my planting areas to reduce the amount of prep work required.

Besides the slope, the other negative to our community garden is the lack of nearby water. You have to truck in all the water you use. From a conservation point of view, this certainly cuts down on waste. But it isn't easy carting in enough water for a 25' X 25' plot. Needless to say, there is a tendency to rely on nature for as much of the watering as possible. Last year wasn't too bad as it was a very wet summer in New England, however, I heard stories from nearby plot owners that the prior year was a real hassle. We will see what this year shall brings.

Cornell Cooperative Extension

Being somewhat of a novice gardener, I'm always on the lookout for helpful information. One site that has been invaluable to me is the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Part of me can't stand the thought of using anything from Cornell given the hockey rivalry with my alma mater, but sometimes you have to overlook such things.

Although the CCE is providing information for upstate NY, I am considering it close enough for southern New England. If anything I think I should have a couple weeks longer growing season in CT. That includes a week or two earlier planting time and maybe a couple weeks longer into the fall.

Within the CCE site I have found the Vegetable Growing Guide to be invaluable. It contains a fairly detailed overview of what is required to grow all the major vegetable types. From germination & planting times to diseases and pests, this is the best overview I have found. The only thing lacking are good pictures of diseased plants and bug infestations to help in identifying which problem you are having.

Many cooperative extensions will have similar information. Those folks located south and/or west should look for a site located closer to them to ensure applicability. In the end though, a bean is a bean and will sprout in the same amount of time regardless of where it is located.

My Amaryllis is in Bloom

Three years ago I picked up an amaryllis bulb at an after Christmas clearance sale. Amaryllis' are great presents for younger kids and people who are less than plant friendly. Typically they come in a kit with a bulb, pot & soil. All you have to do is put the bulb in the pot with the dirt, water well, and in a few weeks you'll have a nice big flower.

Over the years I have tried a few times to get one to bloom a second time, always to no avail. Until this one!

This month's bloom marks the third time this bulb has bloomed for me. This year's bloom is even more spectacular than the last couple years as it has a double stalk, each of which has a full set of four blossoms.

So what do I do to make it re-bloom? After it blooms I keep it well watered (well, as well watered as I can manage to remember) through the year. I add some fertilizer in the early summer to give it a good boost at rebuilding the bulb. I don't get fancy with lots of miracle-grow, I often just use the same granular type that I use in the garden.

In late October/early November I cut the leaves back to the top of the bulb and taper off the watering. I try not to let it go completely dry, but I also don't want to encourage leaf growth just yet. This combination puts the bulb into the same dormant state they are sold in. Beginning in January I increase the amount of water I give it to a normal, almost saturated amount. That's it, by the end of February the blossom starts pushing up.

The only trick I may have is that the solarium where the plants are located stays a couple degrees cooler than the rest of the house. Are those couple degrees enough to convince the bulb to flower? Not sure, but this is the only location I've had luck with. As a side note, my Christmas cactus' also seem to really like the solarium.

After the first flowering of the bulb, it formed a 'daughter bulb'. I planted it in it's own pot and have been growing it the last few years. Thus far it has refused to flower. Maybe next year!

Seedlings are up!

In just over a week's time about 70% of my seedlings are up. Almost all the tomatoes, onions, broccoli and basil have sprouted. The peppers, both green and jalapeno varieties are lagging. But that is to be expected. What is unknown is if the green peppers will come up at all.

I had a bunch of seeds given to me that dated as old as 2002. So I planted several of them in each cell, we'll see how many actually come up. A year or two isn't a big deal, but 7 is asking a lot. I probably should have done a germination test in some wet paper towel, but I didn't think of it in time.

If they aren't up by next weekend I'll throw in some of the seeds from last year that I had left over.

I had also started some lettuce that is beginning to pop up. Lettuce and I have a long and tortured relationship. I had one awesome crop 3 years ago, I've tried every year since, sometimes both spring and fall to repeat that success. I might have succeeded last year but I seeded the window planter too heavily and never thinned them so they crowded each other out and died off.

I'm not exactly doing myself any favors this year. I threw the seeds into a window planter full of garden dirt from last year. Needless to say I have about as many weeds coming up as lettuce. But, I didn't want to waste a lot of effort on something that will probably fail once again.

Time to Start the Veggies!

The time to plant is upon us!

At least in my part of the world, (Connecticuit) that is. Last year I started my seedlings the first weekend of April. Unfortunately, only the onions thrived and the rest weren't ready when I wanted to transplant them. So this year I decided to move them up to the second weekend of March.

It might be a little early, but I'm willing to take that chance. The worst that can happen is I buy plants, again.

That adds nearly 3 weeks of growing time to the peppers and tomatoes. I snuck the onions in even a few days earlier. They can use all the time I can give them and more in our cold climate.

Some day I will try store bought sets. For this year I had some left over onions from last year, some of which had started sprouting, that I am giving a shot as stand in sets. My onions got cut short last year, I think due to thrips. They stopped growing between dime and quarter size. They tasted good, but were small. So some of them *should* work as sets, we will see. I suspect many of them will bolt, but they were inedible anyways.

For now I have planted them in a window planter to give them an early start. I am hoping they can provide an early harvest. If so, maybe I'll give intentional sets a try in the fall.

I'm also giving broccoli from seed a start for the first time. We did plants last year and they did ok, although we got mini-heads instead of nice big heads.

Plant counts:

Green Peppers - 12
Jalapeno Peppers - 12
Roma Tomatoes - 12
Orange Tomatoes - 3
Cherry Tomatoes - 3
Broccoli - 6

Herbs:
Oregano
Chives
Cilantro
Parsley
Basil

Red Burgundy Onions - one package

Welcome!

Some people have green thumbs. Some people have black thumbs. Everyone else has what I call a green pinky. They don't kill plants, usually, but they aren't winning first place at the local agricultural fair either.

So here I am to share the little bit I know about gardening and indoor plants. My garden consists of a 25' by 25' plot in the local community garden. It certainly has it's challenges, but it gives us fresh vegetables with only as much pesticide as I feel I must use.

At home we have a solarium that I keep full of houseplants. They're not all healthy house plants, but they are at least alive. They would probably be a lot more healthy if I could find the time to give them the TLC they need and deserve.

I also use a narrow strip of dirt behind our deck to grow a little something. It has varied from flowers to 'full garden' to almost nothing last year.

So, welcome to my little green spot on the web. Hope to see you back here soon!