The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Make your own cheap butterfly feeder

16.5 years ago butterfly, butterfly feeder, butterfly garden

As the days are getting longer (happy first day of summer) it is actually starting to get a little warmer even here in the Pacific Northwest so decided it would be a good time to add our homemade butterfly feeder to our butterfly garden, but first we actually had to make it.

If you want to make your own here is all you need:

– Plastic/glass container (baby jar, water bottle, etc)

– Nail

– Pliers

– Lighter (not pictured)

– Cotton or sponge

Steps to have your own buttery feeder in your garden:

1. Heat up nail with lighter (or candle) using pliers to avoid pain on your fingers.

2. Use hot nail to burn a hole through the plastic.

3. Stuff some cotton (swab, ball, shirt) or a piece of sponge in the hole and tight as possible.

4. Decorate with markers (make sure to have some red) plastic flowers etc (Optional but funnier for the kids)

5. Fill with some butterfly nectar (recipe below) and hang by some of your colorful flowers

Butterfly/Hummingbird Nectar
Ingredients:
¼ cup of sugar
1 cup of water
3 drops of red food coloring [optional]

Directions:
Add sugar and water to water bottle and shake. If you are using raw organic sugar bring water to boil and mix in sugar. Butterfly nectar is good for 2-3 weeks and water in feeder should be replaced a 3-4 days.

Does this all seem like too much work? Well you can also simply place over ripened fruit (bananas, apples, peaches, orange slices, etc) on a plate and your butterflies will love it.
Read Other Butterfly Garden Posts

Tags: butterfly garden, cheap, organic vegetables, vegetables

Attracting birds in your garden/yard

16.6 years ago birds

There are many benefits of having birds in your garden.  The most obvious being the songs they sing in the morning and throughout the day. Now if you are not a morning person this may be a negative, but there are definitely more obtrusive ways to be woken up.

Birds can directly help your garden by eating weed seeds they find throughout your lawn and garden. Like singing, this can be a blessing and a frustration due to the fact they have not learned the difference between those peas you carefully planted and the weed seeds that you really want them to be consuming. Given that I take care of my weeds organically I can definitely appreciate the help of the birds.

Birds also like to snack on insects, like seeds the birds are not indifferent to the pests and the beneficial insects, so they may gobble up some of your spiders, ants, beetles, and worms (ok not an insect) but they are also are nice enough to eat aphids, grubs, Japanese beetles. Some birds such as swallows can eat 100s of bugs in a morning snack.

If you have decided that you want to attract more birds to your garden, what are your options? Like most creatures they have three simple necessities: food, water, and shelter.

Food: Feeding your birds is pretty easy, above I mentioned some of the benefits of the insects and weed seeds that your birds can feast from. There is the obvious bird feeder and given the seeds/food you choose can help determine the species birds you will have visiting. For example most songbirds prefer black oil sunflower seeds, while white millet is preferred by most ground feeding birds. Now of course the more food your birds are eating from your feeders the less pests and weed seeds they are eating from your lawn and garden, but the feeder should attract more birds to your lawn/garden so best to keep those feeders full.

Water: Birds need water to drink but also bathe in, now you can invest in something aesthetically pleasing like this one (click below):

If you are on a budget you can always make your own, basic requirements is needs to be less than 3 inches deep and have a comfortable surface for the birds to perch on. Some ideas are metal garbage can lid, circular planter, or even larger pot drip pan. Simply place on the ground of on top of some shrubbery, rough up the bottom of the surface with some steel wool and water. You will want to clean your bird bath about once a week with a diluted bleach solution (3/4 cup bleach to 1 gal water) since unfortunately the birds may use their bath occasionally as a bathroom.

Shelter: Shelters give animals a place to nest and/or hide from predators. Now there are two types of shelters natural and man-made. If you have some well established trees and/or shrubbery you probably have some birds already living with (whether you know it or not) Like many people I live in a relatively new development (< 5 years old) so most of the trees in my neighborhood are still developing so I opted to supplement with an man-made solution, the classic birdhouse. I couldn’t find the instructions I actually used but here are some free instructions to create a similar birdhouse from a single cedar fence picket. Not sure if you can tell from the picture but everything did not line up exactly as it should but it should keep some birds dry and safe and the girls had a great time “decorating” it.
 
Whether you just want to attract more birds to hear singing in your backyard or you want to put them to work getting rid of pests and weeds in your lawn and garden doing the steps above should give you plenty of both.

Tags: birds, cheap, garden seeds, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, vegetables, worms

Make your Garden/Lawn into a gigantic worm bin

16.7 years ago alfalfa pellets, vermicomposting, worms

My soil is consisted of a high percentage of clay, as a result I am required to aerate my lawn twice a year to avoid my soil getting too compacted. I am cheap so I purchased a $10 aerator from Home Depot which I walk around the lawn giving it a nice look of a goose bathroom until the next good rain or mowing. Of course nature has an answer which is the garden earthworm. As a finished limping behind my aerator I thought how can I get more earthworms to do some of this work for me, which brought me to the conclusion to turn my lawn and garden to a gigantic worm bin.

As worms wiggle through the ground they break up the soil and provide pathways for water and air to flow and while they are at it drop their nutrient castings along their way. Now looking at my tips on how to care for a worm bin, the same principles apply to doing the same on a larger scale. Our course my wife and HOA would appreciate me just throwing our kitchen waste out in our front yard so I have to be a little more creative. For organic matter to feed the worms (and the lawn) I will be using alfalfa pellets and grass clippings (mulch) As for moisture, given I live in the Seattle, WA area our frequent rains take care of this until mid summer where short frequent watering will keep the grass and the worms happy. I will avoid chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides using organic options to control weeds and pests and occasional application of alfalfa pellets to fertilize the lawn.

At this time the results look good the lawn looks great and I have definitely seen an increased number of worms in my garden and yard. The birds have also noticed and are taking advantage of my increased population and taking care of some of the excess in my lawn (guess it is better than them eating my seeds planted in the garden)

Just as a warning like everything in life too much of anything is normally not a good idea which can apply to worms as well. Worms can move enough soil and leave piles of castings on the surface which can create a lumpy lawn, which as long as you don’t have a putting green for a lawn this will probably not be unsightly and on the next rain will give some extra nutrients to your soil/lawn. Given the current state of my soil I have quite a while until I am burdened with having too loamy soil and need to be concerned on how to drive the worms away.

Tags: alfalfa pellets, birds, cheap, compost, garden seeds, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, vegetables, worms

How to grow garlic in your garden

16.7 years ago garlic bulbs, growing challenge

My experiment of planting organic garlic which I bought from my local produce section of my grocery store seems to be working well. If you want to try this yourself here are some hopefully easy to follow steps:

1. Buy some good looking garlic at your grocery store (I chose organic since I made an assumption there was a decreased chance that it was treated to prevent growth)
2. When you are ready to plant, carefully break open the garlic and separate the tear shaped cloves.
3. Take the largest cloves and plant in well cultivated soil 2 inches deep and 4 inches apart with pointed end up, these will be for your full garlic bulbs.
4. Take the smaller cloves and either use in some spaghetti sauce or plant them in your garden 1-2 inches apart to harvest as baby garlic (think green onions, but strong garlic flavor)
5. Fertilize with a balanced fertilizer (or bone meal) during planting but avoid fertilizing after that point since you don’t want to encourage too much foliage growth by having an abundance of nitrogen in the soil and allow the plant to use its energy to grow a big bulb.
6. When the foliage on the “scapes” began to completely uncurl you can cut them off and use them on salads, scrambled eggs, or even garlic scape pesto. I would recommend leaving a couple of your garlic plants with scape attached since it also works a natural indicator of when your garlic is ready to harvest. When the lower third of the scape is light brown (the color your expect for garlic) it is ready to dig out.
7. Take any cracked bulbs and use them immediately, take the remaining bulbs and wash off any dirt and let them dry for 2-3 weeks depending on how dry your climate is.
8. Once cured hang in a mesh bag or braid the garlic and given proper airflow and temperature (50-70 degrees) your garlic should last for 6 months (if not eaten by then)

As you can see growing garlic is pretty low maintenance and I am definitely looking forward to using it to my salsa this fall.

Tags: cheap, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, led, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, salsa garden, vegetables

Vermicomposting – How get your worm bin ready

16.8 years ago vermicomposting, worms

Now you have created your own worm bin now you need to get it ready for your worms. The worms need some bedding, which you can buy some coir worm bedding online or you can make some yourself by taking confidential documents from your shredder and soaking in water until it has the consistency of a wrung out sponge. Now not only shredding your documents but having worms eat them and then spreading their castings in your garden, talk about organic security. Simply add this wet paper with a handful of compost for grit (worm fiber) to your worm bin and you are ready for the worms.

The best worms you can get for vermicomposting are red wriggler (Eisenia Fetida) because they digest nearly their weight per day, creating lots of precious castings. They also enjoy eating close to the surface so they will happily eat food you place at or just under the surface. You can purchase these red wiggler worms online or at your local worm farm. I could not get myself to pay $20 for worms, so I went the cheap route and with my daughters took some worms from our garden. They do not have as big an appetite, if I get a population more than my bin can support (yes they multiply quickly) I can simply add them to my garden without worries of effecting the native worm ecosystem.

Now you should have a happy worm habitat which can provide rich nutrients to your garden.

Tags: cheap, compost, organic vegetables, vegetables, worms

Using alfalfa pellets as cheap organic fertilizer for your lawn and garden

16.8 years ago alfalfa pellets, cheap, fertilizer, organic

We all know if you walk into a grocery store the organic produce is always more expensive than produce grown using non-organic methods. Using deductive reasoning it seems easy to determine that this would mean growing vegetables organically will cost me more than if I used non-organic methods. What is a cheap vegetable gardener to do?

One disadvantage (and advantage) to organic fertilizer is that it is not as potent as chemical fertilizers. So my 2 lbs of organic will not nearly go as far (at least short term) as the same amount of chemical fertilizer. One trick to being cheap is to purchase products that are not being marketed for your planned purpose. So to solve my expensive fertilizer issue I used this same logic to solve the problem of finding a location to buy organic fertilizer that was not marketed as “fertilizer.” After some research I determined a source from my local feed store. For $10 I was able to get 25 lbs of alfalfa pellets compared to 2 lbs of alfalfa meal at my local nursery for around the same price.

One great thing about using organic fertilizer is my kids can help spread it around, unlike chemical fertilizers. It also contains triacontanol which is a root growth stimulant along with plenty of organic matter to help boost some extra microbial activity. This not only helps the grass but also improves your soil at the same time. By taking a few cups of alfalfa pellets and mixing with water you can also make alfalfa tea, which I am planning on doing later but will sure to let you know how it works out. One more tip, make sure you distribute the alfalfa pellets before a big rain or watering, currently my lawn looks like some geese are using it as their bathroom.

Tags: alfalfa pellets, cheap, organic vegetables, vegetables