Try to get past the incredibly catchy names, okay? These are two vertical gardening ideas that I created for my new vertical vegetable book (Title-To-Be-Determined, released in January 2013). Husband-Extraordinaire and I found the spice rack for the Spice Rack Kitchen Garden at a garage sale for $3, which had us jumping up and down before we’d even planted it. Easily entertained, I know.

It was easy-peasy to set up, too.

1. First, I cut 2 burlap strips 91/2″ x 24″ for each container (for double lining), then lined the baskets with the burlap.

2. Added some potting soil.

3. Added the plants.

4. Folded and tucked the corners into the baskets, which makes nice little pockets (instead of straight edges) so the soil wouldn’t fall out.

5. Then I watered.

As far as the concept of the unit:

I fully expect that this is going to be a seasonal planter; the baskets aren’t deep enough for perennial plants nor plants that are deep-rooted. Someone asked me if this was going to be enough room for even the herbs. My answer is yes — for my family. We have a large one and go through a lot of herbs in the kitchen…and chives…and strawberries.

The lettuce here is ‘Red Sails’ and we’ll have to harvest the leaves while they’re young, which isn’t a bad thing. As far as the ‘Quinault’ strawberries go,  they adore our Northern California climate, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if those tenacious little dudes came back next year.

Anyway, I could see alyssum and baby tears spilling over the edges of these baskets, too.  It was a fun little unit to plant and perfect for someone with extremely limited gardening space like an apartment or condo.

My Table Stand Raised Garden couldn’t be any easier to plant. The stand originally held a glass table top (which broke) and the base was sitting on someone’s side yard.

In the rain. Unloved.

We found a Rubbermaid container; drilled holes in the bottom; slid it inside the stand; added soil and plants. The only thing that could have been done better (IMO) is if the container was clear instead of a light blue. Also, there’s no way that this much soil is necessary. So if I could have found a clear and shallower container, I would have chosen it.

The moral of the story is to stop throwing  your crap out and loiter about other people’s garages so you can get some of their crap, too. (That sounded very different in my head.)

Here’s a book that I’ve been meaning to tell you about for months ~ Homegrown & Handmade by Deborah Niemann. This is a smart book for today’s modern homesteader. Deborah Niemann more than delivers on practical guidance for a more sustainable and inspirational lifestyle. From growing and using your own food crops, to starting and managing the home dairy, raising backyard poultry, to harvesting fiber from your own animals, Homegrown & Handmade is a book after my own heart!

Here’s what she says about purchasing chicks for the backyard flock:

“Buying chicks is as easy as turning on your computer. There are hatcheries across the country, and they ship chicks through the mail. The buyer’s phone number is on the shipping label, and postal officials are supposed to call the buyer when the chicks arrive. Unfortunately, it does not always work like this. It is a good idea to talk to your mail carrier and call the post office to let them know you will be receiving an order of chicks. This is especially important in cities where the post offices don’t see a lot of live animals coming through. Give them your phone number and tell them to call you so that you can pick them up immediately and get them home and into the brooder.

Depending upon the weather where you live, there are definitely better and worse times to order chicks. When my daughters decided to start showing chickens in 4-H, they had to order them in January or February so that the chickens would be fully grown in time for the fair in July, and unfortunately many chicks cannot stay warm enough to survive the trip into Illinois during that time of year. I prefer to order birds between April and September, but if you live in a milder climate, you might be able to safely order them year round.

The minimum order can be a challenge with mail-order chicks for people who only want five or six in their backyard flock. Most hatcheries require a minimum order of fifteen to twenty-five chicks because they are shipped in a box and have only each other to stay warm. If you only want a few layers, there are options. First, you can find another chicken keeper or two and split an order with them so that you reach the minimum order. However, you have to make sure that the other people either want the same breeds you do or want breeds where the chicks are easy to tell apart.

There are chick pictures of most breeds on some hatcheries’ websites, so you can get an idea of what they will look like. Keep in mind that young chicks look nothing like their adult counterparts. Color is one of the few distinguishing features on young chicks other than feathered feet and muffs, and there are only five basic colors for young chicks, although a few also have markings. Bantams are easy to distinguish from standard chicks at hatching because they are considerably smaller, but some hatcheries hatch and ship them on different days than standard chickens.

You can also check different hatcheries because policies vary, and some reduce the minimum order during the summer, realizing that environmental temperatures are more chick friendly. There are a couple of hatcheries that have started shipping small orders with the inclusion of a heat pack to keep chicks warm, but shipping is usually much more expensive than if you ordered enough chicks so that a heat pack was not necessary for warmth. A few hatcheries also sell four-month-old pullets, but again, this is a more expensive option than buying day-old chicks. Also, since the chicks were started in a large group, they are not as friendly as they would be if you had raised them from the beginning. These birds are also more likely to be debeaked and vaccinated.

You will have to decide whether to have the hatchery debeak and vaccinate your chicks before shipping. Not all hatcheries offer these services, but if they offer it, they may imply that both procedures are necessary. Unfortunately, the procedures became necessary when poultry were moved indoors to live in crowded, filthy conditions. I have heard it claimed that people should not force their ideals on chickens, that there is nothing wrong with putting chickens in small cages because, as flock animals, they like to be close to each other. But in nine years of chicken keeping, I have never seen two chickens walking around wing-to-wing, much less a whole flock. And I have never seen two hens get into a fight. Like all animals, a chicken likes to have its space, although they roost next to each other to sleep at night. When given the choice, chickens run around with at least a few feet separating themselves from each other.

By-the-By ~ Leave a comment below about why you love your backyard chickens or why you’d like to raise some & we’ll draw a name and pop this book in the mail to ya!

Like most agricultural vaccines, poultry vaccines were made to solve problems that are caused by confinement. When chickens are not crowded, they tend to be the healthiest animals on a homestead. A free-range situation is ideal, but if you live in a subdivision, it is not difficult to give your chickens enough space in a chicken tractor or an urban backyard, if you realize your space limitation and don’t get more chickens than your yard or chicken coop can comfortably hold.”

Deborah Niemann is a homesteader, writer, and self-sufficiency expert. In 2002, she relocated her family from the suburbs of Chicago to a 32 acre parcel on a creek “in the middle of nowhere”. Together, they built their own home and began growing the majority of their own food. Sheep, pigs, cattle, goats, chickens, and turkeys supply meat, eggs and dairy products, while an organic garden and orchard provides fruit and vegetables. A highly sought-after speaker and workshop leader, Deborah presents extensively on topics including soapmaking, breadbaking, cheesemaking, composting and homeschooling. You can visit her online at www.homegrownandhandmadethebook.com.

Like it or not, my birthday is rolling around in twelve days and I can’t think of a better time to give some stuff away. But how? What’s new? What’s fun? When my brilliant friend, Pamela Price (Red, White, & Grew), suggested that I might use Pinterest, I thought that sounded like a perfectly plausible reason to hang around the social media crack that is my latest addiction.

So here’s the deal. Ya’ll create an “I’m a Suburban Farmer in (your state, your country)” on your Pinterest page and then post your new pinboard link to my FB page,  or just tweet it out and copy me so that I see it (@Suburban_Farmer). Then start pinning your best small-space gardening pictures and ideas! If you want to message me on Pinterest I’m Chris McLaughlin there.

I’m talking about anything and everything that you grow in your little corner of the world: flowers, succulents, veggies, herbs, shrubs, trees, grasses, water gardens, whatever you’ve got — I wanna see it. Hint: I’m especially enthusiastic about creative vertical gardening ideas. The pics don’t have to be of your own gardens, but hopefully, you’ll find some that are surprising, fun, and fabulous anyway. So, if you don’t have pics of your own — go find them! They’re all over the place.

Here’s an example: “I’m a Suburban Farmer in…” demo board

The winner will receive “Get Growing Instant Garden Basket” that holds three of my gardening books The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Composting, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Heirloom Vegetables, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Small-Space Gardening…

…an awesome little pop-up raised garden bed,  The Little Acre, for that new garden you wanted instantly…

PLUS, Authentic Haven Brand Natural Soil Conditioning Tea Bag gift set so you can feed your plants naturally and organically…

and some delicious heirloom vegetable seeds from the wonderful people at BBB Seed Heirloom Vegetables and Wildflower Seeds.

This basket holds just about everything you need to get growing this season!

On my 29th (*snicker*) birthday, March 3rd 2012, I’ll have someone who doesn’t know ya’ll choose the winner with the most badass pinboard.

Thank you, my friends, for playing along!

***The Winner of the Get Growing Instant Garden Basket is Evelyn Vincent — I’m a Suburban Farmer in Murphy, NC!*** Email me, Evelyn! We’ll get your basket mailed out right away!

I think that winter is misunderstood.

One of the best things about the changing seasons is that you get the opportunity to plan for new things in the garden. Surprising things. Beautiful things. Or yummy things. The fact is that we need the down months of winter. Our gardens are always growing, moving, producing, and evolving in one way or another no matter what type or style.

At one point last year you may have hit a wall or two and found that it was it impossible to keep up with the weeds, or deadheading, or overgrowth, or the harvest. Did you really find enough people to take all that zucchini? Or maybe the armloads of flowers you brought into the house didn’t leave any blooms to dress up the garden.

The garden isn’t the only thing that needs the quiet time of the cold months. Winter offers the clean slate that we need to take a look at the bare bones and reassess. It gives us the rest that we need to collect our dreams and ideas and bind them together with some tangible planning. We need time to think and time to make plans.

I’ve got some killer plans.

1. Our first project is a brand-spanking new veggie garden — no small feat, I assure you. The bazillion deer alone are a force to be reckoned with. Since we just moved to hawk Hill last June, we weren’t able to wrap our minds around a proper vegetable garden. I just drug some over-grown, root-bound tomato plants and peppers with me popped them into the rock-hard soil. I refused to plant them back at our old place because probably a non-gardener would move in and waste my darlings. Heathens.

2. The hill-tiered garden that we stuck the scraggly veggie plants in last year will be a lovely (and my largest) herb garden. I refer to this garden as “the potager”, pronounced “POT-u-jer”. Which is, by the way, completely incorrect pronunciation of this word. It’s more French than that. But hey, my garden; my rules.

3. I saved my coolest plan for last. If you don’t like fiber or fabric, you can move on now. Cuz’ this will bore you to death. But if you’re a crafter…oh yeah, you’re going to be so pleased. I’m planting a dyer’s garden. What is a dyer’s garden? It’s badass, awesome, and totally on the cutting edge — that’s what it is. It’ll be a garden of plants whose flowers, stems, or roots can be used to dye fabrics, yarns, and other goodies.

This is not a sheep.

Plus, Betty White lets me spin her fiber, so there’s that.

Top those plans. Go on, I’ll wait.

*Oh, and for those who are still saying “potager” over and over, here’s the correct pronunciation of “potager”

(You have no idea how hard it was to resist adding “Dude” to that post title)

~ Dead plant photo by Yours truly, Chris McLaughlin
~ Calendula photo by Audreyjm529
~ Betty White (Angora goat) photo was taken by Hollis McLaughlin

This looks like a simple fall flower pot. But, this pansy-planted container has a deeply buried secret.

Here’s a fast and rewarding way to plant a container with cool-weather annuals that naturally make way for spring daffodils. We made these with the kids in our ornamental horticulture 4H project and I think the kids are going to be pleasantly surprised when what they planted underneath their pansies show up in the spring!

What You’ll Need:

• Medium sized pot or container
• Potting soil
• Coffee filter (Optional)
• Organic fertilizer (Optional)
• 7 Daffodil (Narcissus) bulbs
• 6 pack of cool-weather annuals such as pansies (Viola) or snapdragons (Antirrhinum)

Plant Your Double Planted Flower Pot

1. If you have a coffee filter, you can place it at the bottom of your flower pot. The filter isn’t a necessity by any means, but it helps keep the soil in while letting the water drain out. Now, fill the container with about 3″ of potting soil.

2. Place the bulbs into the pot, doing your best to keep the bulb sides from touching each other. It’s not a deal-breaker if they do touch but it’s better to have a little soil in-between the bulbs.

3. Now fill the rest of the container with potting soil. At this point, if you’d like to sprinkle some organic bulb fertilizer into the soil, you can do that now — but again, it isn’t a big deal if you don’t.

4. Gently plant your cool-weather annuals into the pot. When you’re making the hole into the soil with your fingers, feel for a spot that’s in-between the daffodil bulbs. Plant as many in there as you’d like (or as many as you can fit), tap down the soil & water.

Enjoy your fall flowers and as they die back or stop blooming, your daffodil leaves will be waking up for the spring. Don’t be surprised if your pansies remain alive & re-bloom again, too.

Yes, I actually spun the wool on this spindle. Swear.

I learned to spin today. I’d been waiting for this for years.

More specifically, I learned the first part of spinning wool. Apparently there’s a few more steps and the next one involves “plying”. Plying basically goes like this: after you stress out and finagle everything into spinning a couple of bobbins, you let a couple of yarns twist together (or a single back onto itself to add the plies), effectively cutting your progress in half. Go figure.

Anyway, I’m trying hard not to think that far ahead. My teachers run a small business called All About Ewe and are some of the nicest ladies I’ve met since we moved up here. They kindly cheered me on saying that my spinning looked great (no doubt “for a beginner”, but ya’ll know I’m easy and I’ll catch any bone tossed my way).

I think I did okay.

I had my first spinning lesson inside a charming barn filled with all things warm, colorful, and handmade. This place where the sheep ladies teach doubles as a handcraft boutique that I didn’t get nearly enough time to peruse.

There couldn’t have been a better classroom.

Like every fiber craft I’ve ever learned, I knew I would enjoy it. I felt comfortable right away while drawing the wool from the roving and letting the wheel twist the fiber onto the bobbin. I’m learning on a smoky-brown wool called Rambouillet (pronounced ram-boo-lay) and while I don’t know much about the sheep breed itself, rambouillet is about as romantic and exotic sounding as it gets — so there’s that.

You’ll recognize this sheep breed from the back of your expensive wool sweaters — Merino.

When my lesson was over, I got to meet the sheep behind the wool, so to speak. I say “so to speak” because these sheep weren’t actually those behind the wool that I was spinning — but they very well could have been. The fiber I was using came from a sheep named Victor who is now grazing on that big pasture in the sky. Although, I’ll never meet him I silently thanked him for donating his lovely wool so that this first-timer could learn this ancient and classic art.

I tried to sneak this one into the back of the car…

I did get the chance to chat with a black sheep that had some seriously big doll eyes framed in long lashes that let me ruffle his wooly head — like a story book come to life. I kid you not. There was also a curious Llama who came right up to me and wasn’t unfriendly, but would rather you kept your hands to yourself thank-you-very-much…I felt I should respect that.

I got the feeling that she ran the place.

As I drove away with both spinning wheel and fluffy roving, I thought about the fact that after completing the basic spinning steps and the necessary hours of practice, I’ll be able to create something warm and wonderful for my efforts.

Then that it dawned on me that I don’t know how to knit.

By now you may have heard that the suburban farm has moved to the country. Even on 5 acres, I would still define it as a micro or hobby farm. In fact, I still do a lot of suburban-type farming such as planting in containers on my back deck and growing in raised beds. That may surprise people considering the “space” that I have now. But the fact is that I share that space with a lot of deer and other wildlife — not to mention that I have horses and goats. So, to utilize my land I have to cross-fence with TALL fencing if I want to grow on the acreage.

At one time many years ago, we lived in this same vicinity, but I’m having to re-learn some of the skills I acquired back then. We tried many things on out little farm at that time but some of the things we’re doing in the country now are new to us. One thing I do remember is to listen to the folk that have been there and done that. Amazingly, just before we made the big move, The Joy of Hobby Farming: Grow Food, Raise Animals, and Enjoy a Sustainable Life by Michael and Audrey Levatino showed up at my door.

With their friendly voices and can-do tone, Michael and Audrey Levatino have not only written this book from hands-on hobby farming experience, but the passion that they have for the country lifestyle comes through loud and clear. It’s this type of voice in a book that excites me. For example, take a look at this passage:

“Hobby farming embraces the idea that smaller is better. Better tasting foods, both plant and animal, come from small farms that don’t use intensive cultivation methods to increase profits. Hobby farming profits come mostly from the reddest heirloom tomatoes, grown with personal attention and careful handling; the freshest eggs with firm, orange yolks, made by chickens who have fresh air and room to roam; and the hardiest, most gorgeous flowers that retain their brilliance for weeks in a vase. The profits aren’t always monetary — you’ll have a stronger body and mind gained from hours of personal fulfillment working on the land.”

And if that wasn’t enough to make me devour this book — this was the closer:

“Unless you’re independently wealthy or have inherited your farm, you’re probably going to keep or find a job outside of the farm to pay your mortgage or rent. That’s why it’s called hobby farming. It doesn’t mean that you’re not taking it seriously; it means that you’re realistic and practical. After all, diving headlong into this particular economic situation (surviving on farming alone) has ruined countless well-intentioned people.”

The bold type is mine. I kept thinking, ” I have found my people.”

From finding your farm (and asking all the right questions), to growing food, flowers and raising animals. The Joy of Hobby Farming is an excellent introduction to the reality of hobby farming the truth about the work involved. The last section goes into running your farm as a business and once again gives you some tools that you may not have been equipped with before picking up this book in the form of the right questions that need answering to become successful.

There are lovely pictures and excellent side bars throughout the book that only served to egg my hobby farming passion forward. In fact, they’ve given me some better ideas than I originally had for our place here at Hawk Hill.

Basically, they’re my kind of people that wrote my kind of book.

The Joy of Hobby Farming: Grow Food, Raise Animals, and Enjoy a Sustainable Life
Authors: Michael and Audrey Levatino
Softcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (April 2011)
ISBN: 978-1-61608-228-4

Check out what else the Levatino’s are up to at Ted’s Last Stand.com.

A copy of “The Joy of Hobby Farming” was sent to me for the purpose of review. That said, all of the views and comments in this article are honest and all mine.

Rooster photo by Dunngodung
Honey photo by The Food Gift Hunter
Calf photo by fklv
Strawberry photo by Geekpulp

In the middle of June, as we packed our entire home and yards for the big move to Hawk Hill, it dawned on us that most of the gardens would have to stay. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the vegetable gardens that I worked on every year that got to me. It was Phil.

“Phil”, our beloved philodendron that we placed into a HUGE pot out back had sunk his roots well beyond his pot. To attempt to take him with us would more than likely end up in disaster for Phil. So he was to stay behind at the mercy of the next family who moved into our home. He’d been with us for about fifteen years and five homes.

The ‘Weeping China Doll’ standard rose tree that husband-extraordinaire had given to me as an anniversary gift many, many years previously had been planted into the ground at this house, so she would stay behind, too. It was the same for the eight Japanese maples that husband-extraordinaire had coddled as little saplings and then found the perfect spot for them to live out their lives. They had grown large and were happy exactly where they were.

Actually, he wanted to hire some big digging something or other to come lift them out like with a crane or something — he’d really lost it by that time.

In fact, no matter how often I told him he was going to kill them digging them up while they were actively growing, it took a total stranger (okay, he was a Japanese maple nurseryman) at the SF Flower and Garden show to convince him not to do it and that dude managed it with a simple firm shake of the head.

Whatever.

So, there’s the sadness of letting many things go when you up-root your entire life. Yet on the very same day that we were coming to terms, a big box was delivered to our door. Proven Winners had sent us some brand-new baby plants to coo over and coddle. These plants were the first of our new beginning and I immediately potted every one of them into containers so that they could make the move with us. Granted, some of them would never see years in those pots — but they represented the exciting new things that were coming our way in our new home and I was thrilled at their timely arrival.

I placed the Hosta ‘Autumn Frost’ in a fat, glazed pot with Moneywort (Lysimachia) and Baby’s tears (Soleirolia) surrounding it.

In a rectangle terra cotta container I placed Hemerocallis ‘Going Bananas’, with two Superbells ‘Grape Punch’ (Calibrachoa) on either side of it.

Echinacea ‘Little Annie’ is living in a gorgeous little glazed container surrounded bu some ‘Elfin’ thyme.

And Spirea ‘Double Play Artist’ was flanked by a few Superbells ‘Cherry Star’ plants.

All of the beautiful Proven Winner plants have filled in and blossomed beautifully despite heatwave after heatwave.

There was more. And it almost made me forget for a moment what I was leaving behind. Almost. I did end up planting a darling, creamy-green philodendron in a half-barrel in the potager that we’ve dubbed “Little Phil”. He has a lot to live up to.

The view of the Coloma valley from our back deck — I’ve died and gone to heaven…

So where the hell have I been?? Certainly not writing on my, poor, neglected blog. Okay, so while I finished The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Small-Space Gardening, I was also working on the edits for Hobby Farms: Small-Scale Rabbit Raising…and packing and moving to one of my favorite places in California — Gold Country (Sierra Nevada Foothills)! We’re now living on our little micro-farm at Hawk Hill.

Here’s part of the terraced potager. I can SO work with this, muahahahahaha.

Thirteen to fourteen years ago we lived out here and it’s been “home” ever since. So we were tickled pink to be moving back. We’re now out of the suburbs and have 5 acres of land to mess around with…can you even imagine what’s going on inside my head? The funny thing is that you’d be amazed at how much small-space gardening is still involved. I have a small, hillside-terraced potager which will be the first garden I’ll tend because it’s fenced and hot-wired to keep the deer out. Yup, we’re gonna have a face-off with the deer now. I also have containers on my back deck because it’s safe from the deer, as well.

Hydrangeas at the top of the potager.

Out front at this point, we have to carefully select ornamentals and veggies alike and plant those that are deer-resistant. Notice I said deer-resistant as there really isn’t any such thing as deer-proof. But I’m having a run of good luck do far. Not only is it gorgeous, historical, and right above the American River (white-water river rafting!), but I once again have my horses home.

Ya gotta love my mare’s fly mask…

If you’re a horse person, you’ re smiling right about now ‘cuz you get it. Right after we moved (about 3 weeks ago) the book edits came back for Small-Space and of course, I had online articles to work on in-between. Did I mention that in the middle of everything my kids and grand kids came to visit us from Tennessee for two weeks? No time for breathing — or eating. And I dropped 5 pounds off somewhere.

Yeah, so that’s where I’ve been: in Crazyville. But, a good kind of Crazyville.

I hope you guys will hang around because I can’t wait to share my gardening escapades as I start my gardens all over again!