Time Well Spent

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     I don't think my garden has ever been more important to our family. With Mike out of work, we are going to need all the help we can get. My husband's work would not clear him for 'light duty' like the doctor ordered. He does not go back to the doctor until the end of June. Even if he starts work the following Monday, it will still be mid July before we see a paycheck form his job.
    My paycheck usually goes to groceries, gas in my vehicle and any odds and ends I feel necessary. The less food I have to buy, the more of my paycheck that can go to paying the bills. So far we are doing okay. Thank goodness I prep! We have been using the food I have tucked away for a rainy day. Well, baby, right now it is pouring! ;) Only problem is, my family is more of a 'Fresh' fruit and veggie type of family. We don't eat a lot of process foods. When you prep, you buy a lot of foods that have a longer shelf life. Unfortunately, most of those are processed.
     Until the garden comes in, I am buying a lot of my 'fresh' items from the grocery store and some from a local produce stand. I can't wait till the garden is in full force! 
     Biggest problem we have had is the rain. Good grief I wish some of it would save its self for this summer! By August, I'm sure we will be begging for this weather. For now, we are gardening in between thunderstorms and wading to the garden to get covered in mud. What we have managed to get in the ground is growing well. WE CAN"T WAIT!! Thought I would share a few pictures with you of the garden thus far. 
     

I saw mound gardening somewhere.. Thought it was a really cool idea. Just in case we can not weed fast enough, we can weed only the mounds and then use the weed eater to cut the grass around them. Crossing my fingers on this! 

This was supposed to be full of potatoes, but a sink hole created by the way the yard is leveled and all of the rain took most of the dirt and the potatoes seed plant under ground and washed them away. I planted some tomato plants instead. Regular sized heirlooms and cherry tomatoes. We have no money for tomato cages, so I am hoping these cut saplings help to keep them under control and out of the dirt.

Most of the garden is shown here. It is only about 20x20 feet. On our land, it is mostly clay dirt and this is the best place to put it other than in the very front yard. 

Our green beans and peas. In the background, what looks like tall grass is actually our corn growing. We never have much luck but we love corn on the cob and keep on trying. 

So we planted some cherry tomatoes in here.. but they didn't grow. So Zoey planted some more. Then they ALL came up. Believe it or not.. this is AFTER I have already thinned them out into other parts of the garden and containers. 

Last year we had lettuce, spinach and onions in here. This year I have cabbage and onions. We have almost eaten ALL of the onions already, I think will go get some more onion bulbs to plant. I like home grown onions a lot better than store bought. 

Not sure about tire planting, but we had one and needed another container to plant in. I have heard good and bad things about using old tires.. We will see. More Cherry Tomatoes. 

I have not grown cabbage in YEARS. My amazingly awesome neighbor gave me some plants a while back, so I thought, "Why not?" We do not eat a whole lot of cabbage but it looks like I will be selling the extras and looking for a whole lot of new cabbage recipes. For some reason, they remind me of Harry Potter...

Hard to tell here, but there are four tomato plants and a pumpkin plant here. If you look to the upper right, those are dandelions and other 'weeds' that my rabbits like to munch on. We let the weeds grow up on that side. 

We had to put the bucket Cherry Tomato plant into the ground. It just did not look healthy. We have been getting lots of rain, but the soil always looked dry. Maybe too many drainage holes? I hope we did not kill it, beacause, it is LOADED with cherry tomatoes. 

The new potato bucket is growing strong! At least I hope.. Sure looks pretty though. 

Remember last year? This spot was covered with the 'Mystery Pumpkin' plant. This year we have two tomato plants. We still have 4 more that need to get in the ground. Not sure where I am putting them though. 

     So there you go. A little tour of our garden. I am really loving all the time spent as a family to help grow us food. Even my 'I hate gardening' teenager and my injured husband are pitching in! 

Does your family garden together? We <3 your comments!

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Potato Bucket FAIL

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     Yes, I said, "FAIL." But I am not sure of the reason why. One day my potato plant is growing like a weed. The next it is dying off rapidly. 

From this... To this... 

In just a matter of days.

     So what happened? Like I said, I am not sure. However, I have some suspicions.. The day after I took the first picture, we had some very lovely overcast 70 degree weather. Of course I put my bucket outside so make sure it got some sun, and not just the light from the garage. It was only out for a few hours, but I might have shocked it. THEN, after I brought it inside, I used some left of fertilized water that I was using for my other plants. Maybe the combo of the outside time, and the shock of fertilized water? 
    After it started dying, we continued to keep it indoors in it's usual home and water it. We were hoping it would get over it's shock and continue to grow. After a month, there was still nothing... Time to dump the bucket and look to see what happened. 

     Nothing but some potato shells, unidentified seedlings, and a new wormie friend. FAIL! I don't think it is a 'Bucket In The Garage' fail, but a simple Human Error Fail. Another Ooops! We refuse to be discouraged. We still have a box of red potatoes trying to grow under the kitchen counter. We started over on our Potato Bucket Experiment. 
    This time, it will be left outside as much as possible. We are scheduled for some beautiful 70 degree weather by this weekend and the nice weather should stay until the end of this month. Then another cold spell is expected. We can't wait to start our outdoor garden. I guess prepping the garden area and starting some seeds indoors will have to curb our Spring Fever for now! I have also been looking into buying a Survival Seed Vault like this one, instead of or in addition to this smaller one I have been eyeing! I really like them both. 

Will you be growing a garden this year? 

We love your comments!

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Update: Growing Tators In Buckets

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     Growing Tators In Buckets was first published on December 29th. Just 2 days before I published Our Top 10 Posts of 2014. In just 2 short weeks, the post is now #3 on my top 10 views of all time. AMAZING! Thank you to everyone that has shared, commented, tweeted, pinned and loved our Tators post. However, it was not just the views that has grown at an alarming rate, the tators have as well! 

     Now if you remember, our potatoes started out like this. They were just in a box, under my kitchen cabinet, waiting to be planted in the spring. Or so I thought... I guess they had a different idea of when they should be planted. 

     January 8th was when we first noticed we were getting stems growing up. Previous to that, we would uncover the potatoes just to make sure they were still in there. It seemed to take forever for the little stems to show up. Then, they started to grow fast! 

     Due to weather and my job hours, we were unable to cover them up on. It was a few days later that we added 3 inches of compost soil. They were already starting to form leaves. I'm sure after we watered them, the depth was not still 3 inches, but they were still covered.  

That following Monday, we looked again. One side of the bucket was already growing from up out of the soil. The other side was still growing, just not as fast. We decided not to add any more soil to the lower side of the bucket. Zoey added 3 more inches of soil to the higher side. 

     Now here it is January 14th, and they have already grown out of the new soil. It is so amazing to watch them grow! The lower side is starting to catch up, but the high side still towers over them. Unfortunately, we have to wait till Saturday to cover them again. I work from sun up to sundown at my job, but just the 2 days a week. 

   Honestly, I did not think the potatoes plants would grow this big, this fast. I thought it would at least take until spring to get to the top of the bucket. At this rate, I think we are looking at another 2-3 weeks. That might be a problem. While I have said all along, plants under the soil only need the sun for warmth, once they get to the top, they will definitely need the suns rays to survive. It is the dead of winter and I do not think they will survive indoors. At this time, we do not have any indoor growing lights and I am afraid they will not grow well in the garage with just the florescent lights over head. I may need to invest in a grow light soon... Not really wanting to grow using electricity in winter, but man, this is so exciting! 

     Zoey has been keeping up with the growth in her Science Journal. Every few days she gets out her spiral notebook and draws what she sees in the bucket. Then, she writes a small paragraph about what it is doing, or what we have done. This brings science and writing together. (AND a bit of art! ;) ) If I had really thought about it, we could have created a little chart to keep up with how fast it has grown in so many days. Also, I think it would have been a really good idea to have written an inch line from the bottom of the bucket to the top of it in a Sharpie Marker or some other permanent marking tool. That would of been fantastic! I just was not expecting this to go this well! 

Want to see the original post?

    

So what do you think? 

Will they actually grow some spuds?   

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Growing Tators In Buckets

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     You know that amazingly awesome neighbor I have? Well, last summer, we helped her pull up her red potatoes and harvest them. When we were finished, she sent us home with a big box of home-grown red potatoes. We ate most of them but there were a few little ones that I stored under the cabinet in the kitchen. As you can see by the photo, they are crazy covered in eyes! So we thought, why wait for spring? Why not try planting them in a 5 gallon bucket now? 
     Zoey got on the computer and googled 'How to grow potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket.' She found an awesome site called Five Gallon Ideas.com. There was a lot of great information on this site. We made notes in her Scientific Discoveries Notebook as we read and watched the videos. We are going to do more research later on and add that to her notebook as well. The hubby brought us in a bucket from the shed and I drilled holes in it while Zoey looked at me terrified. No, I am not as quick and efficient as Daddy, but I got it done by myself by golly! She insists Daddy needs to help next time. I told her we didn't need a man for anything. She just shook her head and laughed at me. 

    Above,  you can see her Scientific Discoveries Notebook and our computer. Also in the background is the radish we picked from the garden today. We washed it up and added it to our dinner salad. We even added the stems and leaves. Did you know radishes leaves are more nutritious than the radish it's self? They have a little kick to them, and need to be ate a little younger than what we picked it at. Some of the leaves were a bit of a tougher texture than we like in our salad. We like the flavor though and radishes are super easy to grow. 

     
    Finally, we went outside. There is a spot in our front yard where we put fresh tree mulch, many many years ago. It has broke down into a very good growing medium. Zoey put the composted mulch into the bucket about 3 inches deep. Then she placed 4 of the potatoes she chose into the bucket and just barely covered the pototoes with more soil. 

     When tops start to form and peek out, we will cover them up with a little more soil, repeating until the bucket is full. We talked about the 5 elements that plants need and decided with this project the sun would not be needed since we will be covering the tops as it grows. We did place the bucket closer to the stove than the window in our garage. We think the warmth of the fire will help it to grow. We will make sure it does not get too hot though. 

      We found our 5 gallon bucket on the side of the road. It was food grade so we decided it would be a good bucket to grow in. How can you tell if your bucket is food grade? Wiki How says to check the number within the arrows on the bottom of your bucket. #s 1,2,4, and 5 are all safe for food, with the best being #2 for food grade. Check out that link. Lots of good info there! You can buy food grade buckets online HERE or check out your local bakery. A lot of times they will give you their buckets for free or sell them to you for a low cost. 

Well, wish us luck! :D

We will update you soon! 

Have you ever grown potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket? How did it do? We LOVE your comments!  

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.