So much time has passed since I have posted. I am embarrassed, but there were so many things that have kept my time busy. Now I have at least one kidless day a week to work on whatever I want and this is a continuation in my DIY projects around the home. Things i will be updating are..

-my veggie garden and other garden maintnance and planting.

-cleaning, sorting a basement which has not been cleaned in years.

-arranging my garage sale.

-finishing off a basement for family and entertainment use.

-my efforts in lawn maintnance.

-design and building wood structures for our yard.

-other clean out projects like closets, garage, vehicles, and so on..

and more!

And then there is the main focus of my life right now…. Starting to build my photography Business.  Kusnier Jones Photography.   kjpics.com

I wanted to expand not only the buisness part but the fact that this city needs to be more documented on photo.

 So with that. i will be starting laundry to get ready to clean the basement. 

I am a little behind on this. Bear with me!

The seeds were planted on The 7th of December, 20 days ago from this post.

they germinated within the week of planting.

The Radishes are under a daylight florescent bulb on a shop light spot light.

I used general miracle grow plant mix.

This is growing in a galvanized steel planter approx 14"x4" (i think) and it has about 3 or more inches of soil.  

I have a 19-30 days listed as harvest time but being day 20 I doubt it will meet that. I think it might be the cold Temps in the basement sometimes dropping into the low 50's.

This post will be updated.  

First picture 

Todays picture. (of same radish)

These things are coming faster than I can cook with them.

They make good seasoning for soups and anything I throw into the oven. Good for garnish and wonderful for salads. Right now there is the bundle pictured that will be for dinner tonight an my salad for lunch and now I have not had to buy onions in weeks and probably will not have to buy them for the rest of the winter.

Then I will keep them going for greens until I get my first batch of scallions in the spring (When i get to buying bulbs for planting outdoors)  

This was a total savings!

And yes those are twist ties from the toys. I hate those things when I have to take them off the toys but they sure come in handy when you save them. 

After getting onto the gardening forums all over the net someone has pointed out something interesting that has given me a whole new outlook on winter gardening.

Instead of indoor winter gardening someone said to winter sow my seeds OUTDOORS?!!

I was intrigued..

Check out Wintersown.org 

This is a great instructional read and i have to give lots of credit for doing this on a short budget and recycling!  This might be added to my activities list for january after the holiday mess is over.

But thank you for the helpful information!

The tip came from one of the helpful members on "idigmygarden.com" 

The indoor garden is comming along. Aready i have…..

A bag of the onion greens i have not been able to go through. I have taken approx. 5-6 cuttings of the greens already for dish seasonings. This is a must keep for the kitchen and basement garden. Today is fertalizer friday. I remember it better by saying it that way. I gave all my plants a shot of all purpose liquid fertalizer.

Here is my stuff so far 

14 days after i planted the seeds i got in the mail and 20 days (estimated) after i had planted everything else (the mesculen, the onions, and the potato) 

and then the mesculen i planted (from some loose seeds i found in the drawer from last year

Here is the chicory i pictured last time i wrote and posted pictures.

Then one of the radishes that are showing the start of the adult leaves

And the dandelion that i will need to thin out when bigger

this is chicory bionda i think this one is interesting right now because the leaves look so full and thick and productive already at their small size!

But as to new additions. i am excited.

As i had said i found another neat catalog which will be another post but keep your eyes out for pics that i found in the catalog and also pick that have been chosen by their helpful forum " I Dig My Garden"

Now i have had a real good weekend. In the midst of the holiday stress i have gotten a mild and relaxing taste of gardening (other that the indoor garden that i have going on now)

I Got my Baker Creek seed catalog (found at rareseeds.com)  on friday. So this weekend when i found nothing else to do or when i was waiting for dinner to cook, i curled up with this gem and found myself getting sidetracked, while daydreaming about my garden

I like this seed catalog because it seems to have a down home feel for one. This has been lost in the reproductions of catalogs that people have done to make just dollars.

In the pages i found a very detailed list of veggie (and more) seeds.  Many things i never knew exsisted,  many things i will be trying for the first time.

I will be placing my spring order from here. Especially for the unusual thing i found in there.

Plus i have actually taken the time and read all that they have posted in their catalog about Bakersville historic village. It seems to have lots of family fu, lots of festivals and other events and looks like a good time. see more at Streetsofbakersville.com

Gardening in the winter is fun now that I actually can produce something from my indoor garden.

I am excited because i did actually have my first cutting of onion greens. It has been about three weeks since i planted them and i have had two cuttings from them so far and now that the roots have fully established and are having a nice weekly intake of fertalizer, they already have a second cutting to offer in less than a week!

I put these in one of my diet dishes.. Lentil and potatoe soup

-4 cups water

-1/4 cup lentils

-1 potato  cubed

-2-4 (depending on taste) beef flavoring cubes

-4 tbs of non fat dairy creamer 

boil together, season with garlic salt and/ or onion powder.  

when potatoes and lentils are tender then gather a cups worth and mash or puree them and put it back in the pot adding the 4 table spoons of creamer.

simmer for another 5 to 10 min adding salt and pepper to taste..

Then this is when i added the onion and garlic greens that i harvested and then chopped. YUMM!

This recipe for me was ZERO FAT! and then as for calories i had 300 calories into this and it yielded about 6 cups of food. let me tell you, after the second cup i was stuffed!

This can be saved for a base for a roast or stew to add with meat and more veggies.  

But make sure when you make this you have zero fat in all of the things you add.

Just a shot of my winter greens. These have been cut once and are growing another round for me to cut this or next week.

It helps when you have a yogurt addicted son who has lots of those cups for you to use as pots. This is a good way of reusing something that would have gone to the trash.  The yogurt cups are perfectsize for the small onion bulbs. Enough root space for them to grow greens. who cares about a bulb when its winter

I was just going around searching for other blogs because i am sick of forums. It seems like forums have people who either have no clue on what they are talking about or just posting because in the sense they like to see if they can get their scores up with posts of "that is so cool!",

well yeah.. umm thanks people!

  Any who

I have gone to searching for blogs now (because people who have blogs, for the most part, have more time, information and interest invested while writing about their specialties)  

I came upon a blogger (while searching for houseplant blogging) who not only has a wealth of information about houseplant care but has a little bit of information on blogging etiquette, that i am sad to say, i did not know about until i read his entries.  

first off i apologize to anyone i might have offended in the way i have posted in the past when referring to some of the info i have on here. 

Second, if anyone knows of a post that is against any etiquette  standards then please inform me so i could rewrite it or withdraw it from my blog.

Back to this interesting and informative site tho.

I came across Mr. Brown Thumb and he is a must read! I could have spent hours on there this morning finding information on unknown (to me) houseplants and houseplant care.

Things i have learned from his site just this morning…

- what are the most easy houseplants

-succulent prorogations

-a list of low light plants

AND MUCH MORE!

Please check it out if you want some new and interesting lessons from someone who has learned them from experience.

I would have spent more time on there but the site gave me so many ideas that i now have a lot of things to do with my plants today!

THANK YOU MR. Brown Thumb! 

My Package Came !

See what I got!

I ordered from a place called Gourmet Seed International, LLC

SO far i am very impressed. Great shipping, fast, good prices with decent selection of interesting plants.  

I spent $38.18 (with shipping included)

i got the following…

 (one packet of each) 

Lettuce Taglio a Foglia Liscia

Lettuce Green salad bowl

Rampion

Cress-american land

Dandelion zxdio

Chicory da taglio bionda foglie

zucchini tonda piazenza

carrot parmex persian market

tomato italian cherry

radish spring fling mix

radish white breakfast

north holland blood red onion

spinach mustard komatsuna  tokisan

Catalogna chicory brindisina

sword lettuce yu mai tsai

I know these all sound odd but these are going to be the new things i try in our recipe. 

I will be planting most of these today if i can find enough soil and containers Then placing them under the cheap grow lights that i have found to work very well i will see if i can ge a fresh veggie crop. 

but here is what i have invested this year

electricity (probably will be less than 10$ for the entire winter)

then the $38.18  for the seeds. I will have to price out any yields i get from this. 

I am so excited! Can't you tell? 

maintenance of my bamboo is a monthly thing. I try to change the water and wash the rocks monthly. Then once a year (yesterday) i did the whole shebang. 

I have the oldest bamboo in its original pot that my parents gave me for x-mas about 5 years back. It is beautifully tall and i want my whole house to have lots of bamboo so i have been handling it with kid gloves.

so as for the maintenance i did to it last year, well i first took the parent plant out, cut off a few branches to propagate new plants and placed those in just plain water without rocks. well the parent plant now has produced new branches. but i never got around to putting in rocks on last years cuttings. SO i have done this so far

cut off the new branches for propagation

cleaned up the parent plant and washed out the rocks

put rocks into last years cuttings (hopefully they will survive)

then planted the new cutting in rocks and have them in a waterfall in my kitchen.

i started with 5 stalks, now i have 10 and hope to have more next year.