Horse trough planter

I love my planter. The corn is growing, but I don't know how successful it will be at producing an ear. The scarlet runners are showing their beautiful red flowers now. I love the red flowers against the green leaves. I am training the pumpkins to flow out the trough and down the driveway a little bit.

The pumpkin made a huge golden flower yesterday. Brother noticed the flower and pulled me aside to share his discovery. I had noticed it earlier in the day, but I didn't anything since I wanted it to be his discovery. I have also notice that there is already a pumpkin growing from that flower! I'm going to let him discover that as well. :)

Container Gardening

Our yard was not at all ready to make into a garden this spring when it was time to plant. There are so many trees in our area, that I am not sure where we get enough sun for which plants. It really makes me miss my old garden with 4 large raised beds on the south side of the house receiving full sun all day. Plus, I had made the soil myself per the Square Foot Gardener method. It was very easy to be a successful gardener there.

This year we are mainly relying on containers for our gardening. I went to our local nursery where they have a bin full of used containers. When people buy a potted plant, they can return the pot to the pile for people like me to come and borrow for a while. It's a great system. I have eight tomatoes in various parts of our yard. They are all doing well, which is a fabulous surprise.

I also bought our first horse trough to make into a container. It's an investment but I just think they are so pretty, and it should last forever. I invested in a good, organic, potting soil. I can really tell the difference between good soil and the rocky, sandy soil in the front garden bed. These beans are so lovely and strong while the ones out front are yellow!

Sustainability

I'm thinking about it a lot right now. I feel like we have already made some changes to reduce our footprint. My husband works from home and rarely goes to the office. I do drive the kids around, but I try and plan our routes and combine trips. The store we buy most of our produce from tries to provide produce from more local farmers.

A big thing we just did was buy a 1/4 grass fed cow from a local farmer. We don't officially practice "Meatless Monday" but I do try and have at least one vegetarian dinner during the week. Breakfast and Lunch are already vegetarian on most days.

I started making our own laundry detergent using Ivory soap, heavy wash soda and Borax. It is so much cheaper too!

We clean with dish soap and vinegar.

And the kids and I have switched over to "No Poo". I must say that I love it. My hair feels so much softer!

My next item to focus on is water. I got 2 beautiful water barrels from free cycle. I would like to get them hooked up shortly.

I want to reduce how much laundry we are doing. I do at least one load a day, and it seems like it is too much. I did cart the bath water downstairs tonight to put in the washing machine. That was a lot of work! And it took a lot of water to fill the machine. I was really taking it for granted and I know I was throwing things in the laundry that could have been worn again.

Another goal is put up a laundry line.