Freedom 2011

Well, my Facebook page is deactivated. It felt good. It felt really good! You should try it!

If you need me, please call me or email me at damonmcdaniels@sbcglobal.net

Let me Grow Wild or I'll Blister in the Sun...

Sooooo maybe this post has nothing to do with the title... MAYBEEEE I just really love the Violent Femmes.... Maybe this song was playing in my head while I was watering them this morning and I thought it might be a catchy title for this blog post...

Or maybe not.

There's a reason I was singing it in my head while I was watering them, and it goes right along with this lesson.

It is very important if you buy your plants in 'baby' form to let them adjust to outdoor sunlight. They have probably been sitting in a greenhouse since they were just seeds. Prolonged direct outdoor sunlight can burn your baby plants.

Last year, I didn't give my baby plants a chance to adjust. I brought them home from the nursery and directly inserted them into my garden. This shocked them. I didn't see growth for weeks. I even considered digging them up and starting over again. They eventually did 'ok'. But they never grew to their potential nor produced the fruit they were capable of growing. I blamed it on my watering system at first - but after further research and questioning of my local growing friends - I found that I had shocked my poor babies to near death, and they never properly recovered.

The following pictures will show you the amount of growth I've seen over just a few days of gradual exposure to outdoor direct sunlight:

First day home:


Three days later:


As you can see, especially with the small cucumber plants, there is substantial growth for such a short period of time.

Each morning when I get up, I let Roxy and Abbey out and bring my plants out as well. I water them first thing in the morning. In the evening, when I'm closing down the house, I bring them in the house to 'rest'.

Watch for my early planting day soon. In the meantime, enjoy some Violent Femmes:

The 'Other' Compost

So I just had someone ask me about outdoor composting.


Not really, no one asked... I just like to feel significant.


Here's the outdoor compost for leaves, the left over oat straw that didn't decompose over the Fall and Winter season and probably any snakes that need a cool place to hid - so this area will be off limits to the girls. Though telling the girls something is off limits - I may as well tie some candy to it while I'm at it.

But here it is - that lattice won't stay there, it's just weighing it down since I just put the straw out and it's flying off. But the lattice is for my cucumbers.

Oh and why the garbage bags out there? Well, I'm doing a scientific experiment on whether the oat straw decomposes quicker in a hot, black garbage bag instead of out in the elements.

Not really.

I just didn't want that much straw touching my expensive privacy fence, so I packed some of the straw into those bags to keep it from decomposing the wood.

But the other reason sounds way cooler.

Squirmie Wormies

Here's the result! Back in April 2010 a friend of mine turned me on to Vermicomposting. You can see the start in my post titled "Vermicomposting" and "Who Says Worms are for Boys?" back in April 2010. This is 11 months into diligent hard work. Ok, not really, all I did was save my vegetable/vegetation and fruit scraps, freeze them, and weekly bury a handful in the bin for the worms to eat.

Maybe you don't know what you're looking at. Every particle in this bin is a substance called 'castings' that's nice for 'worm poop'. But I might would have called it 'garden gold'. I have been in the process of harvesting the worms out of this bin for about 3 weeks now and I'm so close to completion I can taste it. Once the worms have been harvested (that's a post for another day) I will take about 1/3 of the castings and mix it into the soil I use to plant my baby plants into my garden. The second 1/3 will be used to line the hole area of the planting. The final 1/3 will be used periodically as compost tea in the week to week month to month treatment of my spring/summer garden.

Now, don't be sad! I have another bin cooking for next year!


As you can see in this picture, as I harvest my worms from my 2010 bin, I am placing them into my new bin. Now, if you have done your homework - AND I'M SURE YOU HAVE - you'll know these little workers reproduce every 27 days. So I'm thinking I may have to split them into 2 bins this year.

Damon is going to shit.

He LOVES to tell people where I keep my worms - in my bathroom shower stall. Hell, I never use it (I mean, I do shower, just not in THAT stall) may as well use that space productively. But here's the pickle. These worms used to be in the kitchen. Damon, over a lovely dinner one night, told me that even though the definitely DO NOT smell, the thought of those worms slithering around in the kitchen made him not so hungry.

I agreed - cause that's marriage.

So now, with 2 bins and 1 shower stall. I'll be in a pinch...

Unless a friend volunteers....

Just a Taste...

When planting some strawberries (that didn't do jack poo but die...) and broccoli (which did well...) this past fall, I covered my garden completely in oat straw.

Two reasons:
a. To kill the weeds that were already growing and to keep new weeds from showing up.
b. To let the oat straw decompose and fertilize my soil.

To prepare for this season, I took a few days to rake back the straw. The result is what you see in the picture above.






I had my brother, Dan, till the garden up while my Dad spread the compost and fertilizer:









Same fertilizer and compost as usual. Thank you Mrs. Erika from Erika's Nursery in Orange, Texas.















The Result, a beautiful patch of potential!

First Garden Meal!

Well, we did it, we have tomatoes! Very big juicy beautiful tomatoes!


On the 19th we had a big meal with our tomatoes, my Dad's cucumbers, squash and zucchini! Fresh from our gardens! Of course, we had to have a little meat with it, so I made a few Tyson Chicken Nuggets:


Damon usually chews with his mouth closed, but he may be the most unphotogenic person I know. In the history of history. So just ignore his open mouth!




It was delish!!!

Jaycee's Pants

I have been knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting....

These NEWBORN/SMALL pants are taking forever. Perhaps it's because they are light worsted weight yarn.... maybe it's the fact that they are light worsted and the correct gauge was made with size 6 dpns.... maybe it's because I'm re-reading the Sookie Stackhouse Novels since the new book will be out tomorrow... I don't know. But I have 1/3 of a pant leg left to finish and I CAN NOT make myself do it.

SO

I'm posting a picture of my shame so that I may look at it and realize that this is ridiculous and quite a reflection of my life. Why can't I finish what I start? What shortcoming in my personality make me unable to finish the easiest of task? Why do I give up and get lazy? I know I do it. But why?

I've asked myself this very question many times in the past 10 years. I haven't found an answer yet. So here is my shame: