Summer
I have a summer project list with more line items than I really have ambition for, but the first one was to refinish the back porch and build a gutter/rain barrel system to water the strawberry garden. Forgot to take (or accidentally erased?) a Before picture, as usual, but here's how it came out (the porch was a redwood-ish color before, but I went with the brown to match the windows...):
The rabbit-preventing enclosure over the strawberries is at lower right; a hose from the bottom of the barrel snakes around all the plants I have back there (irises, yarrow, black-eyed susans, and some veggies) and into the strawberries, and 1/8" holes are poked in it near each plant--a simple-but-effective targeted watering system. I think it cost about $25 to make--the gutters were leftovers my dad had; the barrel was $15 from a recycling place here in Syracuse (it contained Organic Apple Essence, whatever that is, in its previous life...) and I painted it green; the spigot and the fitting for the overflow hose were cheapie ones from Home Depot. I say those people who buy $200 rain barrel kits from garden catalogs are suckas.
It's been unusually warm here, so all the fruit seems way ahead of schedule. I picked the first strawberries last night:
and the rhubarb patch has been going nuts since mid-April. For reference, the taller fence behind the stalks is six feet high. Yeah. And I've already taken 15 cups-worth of rhubarb out of there for pie and bread.
The rabbit-preventing enclosure over the strawberries is at lower right; a hose from the bottom of the barrel snakes around all the plants I have back there (irises, yarrow, black-eyed susans, and some veggies) and into the strawberries, and 1/8" holes are poked in it near each plant--a simple-but-effective targeted watering system. I think it cost about $25 to make--the gutters were leftovers my dad had; the barrel was $15 from a recycling place here in Syracuse (it contained Organic Apple Essence, whatever that is, in its previous life...) and I painted it green; the spigot and the fitting for the overflow hose were cheapie ones from Home Depot. I say those people who buy $200 rain barrel kits from garden catalogs are suckas.
It's been unusually warm here, so all the fruit seems way ahead of schedule. I picked the first strawberries last night:
and the rhubarb patch has been going nuts since mid-April. For reference, the taller fence behind the stalks is six feet high. Yeah. And I've already taken 15 cups-worth of rhubarb out of there for pie and bread.
