The post Seattle Landscaping Tips appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

It might seem that I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, talking about the front gate while still awhile away from completing the wall that sits next to the gate.

But, I was stuck with inspiration over Thanksgiving while visiting our family in Boulder, CO. I came across an incredibly cool footbridge in the town of Nederland, CO, and immediately started taking pictures and sketching later that day.

Here’s what the bridge looked like:

Isn’t that woodworking beautiful?

So, later that day, I did a preliminary sketch on what a front gate version of this might look like:

That drawing still needs some tweaks for certain, but overall I was really happy with the concept.

I posted the draft to our Facebook page to get some feedback, and lo and behold, I woke up the next morning with an email in my inbox from Louis-Charles Pilon, one of Seattle Homestead’s facebook page fans.

Louis-Charles is a landscape architect at Topia (facebook page) in Montreal, Quebec, and took some of his time over the weekend to create a version of my sketch in AutoCAD, complete with some of his own excellent improvements:

My favorite improvement by Louis-Charles is the rounded edge applied to the two right angle brackets supporting the beam at the top.

So, building a variation on this front gate model is in the work plans for 2013. Last year when we had our brick patio and walkway installed, I knew we were going to be installing a gate or arbor of some sort. I also knew it was going to have 4×4 posts that were 8 feet tall, so it needed to be very sturdy.

So, we installed CB44 brackets (like the ones on the right) into concrete posts that went 3 feet deep. The picture below shows where the 4 posts are located (the brackets are covered by black plastic planters for safety).

This photo was taken in August, before we had put up the stucco on either side of the front gate. Currently this section now has the first coat of stucco on both sides.

So, here’s my really rough Microsoft Paint-esque version of what the completed wall would look like with the gate. It should go without saying that it’ll look a bit nicer in real life…

As I look at this mockup, it occurs to me that maybe I should make the pitch of the gate roof match the pitch of our homes roof.

Anyone have any other suggestions or ideas?

The post The Sunburst Front Gate Design appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

Hello everyone! It’s been a very busy summer and fall, and I’m a bit ashamed that this is only my second post since we began the earthbag wall project in June.

For those of you that are new to Seattle Homestead, we do an annual post that reviews the past year’s accomplishments and lays out goals for the year ahead. We moved in to our home in April 2011, so we’re finishing up our 2nd year and heading strongly into our 3rd year with a number of projects completed and in progress, and plenty more to come.

Here’s our goals for year one and goals for year two so you can see where we started and how far we’ve come.

In last year’s goals and year-end-review post, I made a lofty claim about limiting the scale of our projects.

2011 Homestead Things to Improve On: Scale – One permaculture principle involves starting with small-scale systems and building your way up, and frankly it’s one of the hardest principles for me to embrace and obey. We have so much we want to do on the property that it’s difficult to limit ourselves. As a result, not everything gets done as well as it could. Our garden, for example, could have been much more productive with some additional attention. We also lost a few of our fruit plants, such as the tea tree and possibly the raspberry cane. This is part of the growing process of course, both literally and figuratively, but scale is still something we need to keep in mind during our projects.

To put it mildly, the thought of scale went out the window a few shorts months after I wrote that.

Homestead Projects Completed During 2012:

The scope of our 2012 projects was extensive. We spent nearly every weekend from January to early November working on our yard – the main exception being 4 weekends in August that we took off for our wedding and traveling afterwards (it was a much needed break from the homestead, to say the least).

To summarize, we spent 2012 working on the following:

• Completely transforming the hardscaping of our yard by removing the existing chain link fence and hedges.
• Completing the majority of construction on a 120+ foot long earthbag wall (6 feet in height).
• Building a chicken coop and raising 5 hens that have been laying eggs since September.
• Adding a gorgeous brick patio and walkway to make the focal point of the new courtyard.

Here’s a glimpse at my best estimates of the time that was invested in each project:

Interior Home Improvements:

• Home energy audit, followed by:
  • Caulking near baseboards to reduce air transfer from crawlspace into the home
  • The audit was completed by a energy contractor, and the caulking was done by a local handywoman service, along with some other miscellaneous home improvement tasks.
• Subway tile backsplash in kitchen
  • Long afternoon project completed by Kristina and our good friend Bob

Removing things from the yard to make room for homestead projects:

• Sheet mulched remainder of front yard, about 1500 square feet
  • Time: One afternoon with 4 of us – January
• Removed unproductive & overgrown quince
  • Time: 4 weekend afternoons solo – Feb/March
• Removed dead cherry tree and saved the limbs and trunk for hugelkultur beds
  • Time: 45 minutes for Bob with chainsaw during April work party
• Removed 30 overgrown and hideous hedges that surrounded our property
  • This photo illustrates just how ugly these hedges were in the winter. The photo looks worse due to some camera filters, but you still get a feel for how overgrown they had become.
  • Here’s what they looked like in the summer after we moved in.
  • Time: Half afternoon workparty with 6 friends during April work party
• Removed 120+ feet of chain link fence
  • Time: Half afternoon workparty with 6 friends during April work party
• Shredded quince, hedges, and other branches
  • Time: 3-4 weekends for two of us during April and early May

Non-Wall-Related Yard Improvements:

• Built fence for dog run
  • Time: ~4 weekends solo during March & April
• Built chicken coop (95% complete)
  • Time: 4 weekends with Kris & I during Memorial Day & early June
• Built retaining wall in front yard and backfilled
  • Time: ~3 weekends mostly solo during March & April
• Patio and front walkway installed
  • Time: 3 full workdays for 3 crew members (this project was hired out to our friends at Akina Design in order to have it finished prior to family visiting in early August)

And Finally, Work Completed on The Wall…

• Had property surveyed to make sure we were building wall within city right-of-ways.
• Trenched and filled gravel base for wall
  • Time: One weekend in June
• Held an excellent weekend-long Earthbag Wall Building Workshop to kick off the wall construction.
  • This photo shows some of the progress by the end of that weekend.
  • 18 attendees!
• Bag Construction:
  • This part of the wall is 95% completed
  • Here’s a photo of the bag progress we had made by late July. We’ll have another post within a few months that describes the general building process for the wall with more photos.
  • Time: June, July, September, and October
• Stucco Wire:
  • This part of the wall is 75% completed
  • This was unexpectedly the most tedious task of the wall project. You have to attach chicken wire or another form of lathe to the wall in order for the concrete to stick to the bags. Attaching the chicken wire to the bags has been somewhat miserable, and we haven’t been able to find a decent way to make the process go faster.
  • Time: July, September, and October
• Stucco Scratch Coat:
  • This part of the wall is 60% completed, but it’s only the first coat of stucco.
  • Here’s a photo of the stucco going onto the wall.
  • Time: July, August, September, and October

And best of all, we also spent some time in 2012 on planning our wedding here in West Seattle that took place in August:

And the final cherry on top of an already great year – just this past week, Seattle Homestead was mentioned in Better Homes & Gardens for the January 2013 issue:

So, thanks to all of our new subscribers joining us from BH&G. I can’t promise that you won’t think we’re crazy, but hopefully you’ll pick up something you like along the way.

2013 Projects & Goals:

So, with so much completed last year, it only brings to mind how much is remaining for this next year. Priority #1 is completing the rest of the wall project and getting our yard back into a respectable state.

Currently there is about 40 feet of the wall that is tarped up, since we were unable to complete the entire base coat of stucco. As the temperatures warm up a bit and we get a few dry weekends, I’ll be back out there to complete the bag construction, and then start applying the chicken wire lathe to the bags so we can prepare to apply the first coat of stucco to the remaining section of wall.

From there, we’ll need to apply two more coats of stucco to wall total. The second coat will smooth out the roughness of the base coat (also called the scratch coat). The final coat will be the finish coat.

The final color of the wall will be a deep orange/red terra cotta color. To stain the concrete we’ll be using Copperas, which is a type of Iron Sulfate often used by gardeners to add iron to the soil and add more “green” to yellow plants. On the package of Copperas there’s a warning that says “this product will permanently stain cement.” Which just happens to be our goal ;-). Take a look at some of the amazing colors that have been achieved by other people who have used Copperas to stain their cement floors:

By adding in coffee grounds to the Copperas stain we’ll be able to reach even deeper hues. Beforehand we’ll be testing lots of variations on hidden spots of the wall to figure out the best mixtures. Should have more information on this later in the year, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Aside from that, the remaining work on the wall is a lot of finish work, and finally adding the stone cap to the wall. This section is a bit of an unknown for me, but I think it can be completed in under a month of weekends.

A bulleted list of tasks we’re looking to complete this year:

Finishing the Wall:

• Bag Construction
  • 5% remaining
  • Estimated Time Remaining: 1 weekend remaining for primary structure –
• Completing Garden Beds (the inside of our wall has raised garden beds attached to it):
  • Estimated 2 weekends remaining for bag construction on front of garden beds
  • Estimated 2 days for waterproofing of beds after stucco scratch & brown coat.
• Stucco Wire Application
  • 15% remaining
  • Estimated Time Remaining: 2 weekends with 2 people working both days
• Installation of Porthole Truth Windows
• Stucco Scratch Coat
  • 40% remaining
  • Estimated Time Remaining: 2 weekends with 2 people working both days
• Stucco Brown Coat
  • 0% Completed
  • Estimated Time: 2-3 weekends
• Wall Detailing
  • Installation of Address Numbers
• Tiling on Buttresses
  • Estimated Time: 2 weekends
• Installation of Stone Cap on Top of Wall
  • Estimated Time: 4 weekends?
  • To do:
    • Shopping for stone options and pricing
    • Preparation of wall top for mortar
    • Cutting and placement of stone
    • Mortar of stone
• Stucco Finish Coat
  • Estimated Time: 2 weekends
• Final Wall Stain
  • Estimated Time: 2 weekends

Other Hardscaping Remaining in the Yard:

• Front gate / arbor (check out the diagram that I sketched out for our front gate)
  • Estimated Time: 3 weekends
• Back gate by driveway
  • Estimated Time: 1-2 weekends
• Installation of front steps and removal of front railing
  • Estimated Time: 1 weekend

Plants:

While the wall will take up much of our time during the spring and summer, we do at some point want to get some plants in, seeing as that’s why we started this whole endeavor in the first place. We’ll also need to address some of the remaining ivy, holly, and blackberry in the back portions of the yard.

• Remove Ivy
• Remove Holly
  • Replace with Filbert Hedge? $60 for 5 plants at Raintree, covers 15 feet…
• Remove Himalayan Blackberry (lowest priority)
• Spring trees? Will need to wait until garden beds are completed to decide to order these.
• Fall trees? These are more likely than spring ones.

And, unbelievably, I think that’s it. I am seriously looking forward to hanging up my hammock on this finished wall…

The post 2013 Homestead Goals & 2012 Year in Review appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

I give a better look at our earthbag wall, the concrete stucco process, our new patio and walkway, the chicken coop, our hens (and a couple fresh eggs), and what’s left for us during the rest of the year.

If you’d like to get a chance to try your hand at earthbag building, we’d love the help and we promise that we’ll make it fun. We’re in the home stretch of finishing up the wall before the winter rain starts to set in. If you’re interested in stopping by during a September/October weekend just drop us a line!

Links in the Video:

• Akina Designs – Seattle Landscaping Company that did our walkway & patio.
• How to Make Raised Garden Beds with Sod Walls – the garden beds that have been dug up quite a bit and changed since we last wrote about them.

The post September 2012 Video Tour: Earthbag Update and More appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

Note on 07/20/2016: This post was written about 4 years ago, in July 2012. Our project has come a long, long way since then. Yet, this post and a number of others from 2012 through 2015 never got published because I was so busy. I’m going through now that we’ve wrapped up much of our landscaping work and updating the site with this content, and dating it appropriately for when it was written and should have been published.

———————–

Two weekends ago (June 2012) we held an Earthbag Building Workshop with Scott Howard of Earthen Hand. It turned out to be an excellent weekend of work and learning. Over the course of 2 days, 16 workshop attendees including us were able to learn earthbag building basics and complete about 20% of our overall wall project. Despite some nasty rain as we started working on Saturday, we finished roughly 50 feet of wall, 3 feet high (the finished wall will be about 120 feet long, and 6 feet high). Here’s a quick photoset of the weekend with some notes:

Assembling Our Tools

Getting clay-heavy fill dirt delivered before the workshop – this was mixed with 5/8″ Minus gravel to form the earthbag mix.

Screening the Fill Dirt down to 1″ – if we didn’t do this the larger rocks could break our tampers later on, and the bags wouldn’t have as much structural strength. If you make your own screen I highly recommend adding metal corner braces in addition to long screws – it helps a lot!

Mixing the earthbag fill of clay and gravel – Get everything onto the tarp and have one person on each side of the tarp

Mixing the earthbag fill of clay and gravel – At this point we do the Electric Earthbag Slide: “Sliiiide to the left. Sliiide to the right. No hops this time, keep sliding.”

Electric Earthbag Slide Part 2: “Now Charlie Brown!”

Filling Bags on Bagstand – Once the earth fill mix is completed you can get the bag onto a bagstand and begin filling. Partway through each bag we do a vertical tamp to make sure the bag is filled tightly.

Starting an Earthbag Row – When you start a row you place two bags at the same time, with their seams facing each other. After that, all subsequent bags can have their seam facing the prior bag.

Starting an Earthbag Row – The first 2 bags are dropped into place facing each other like this.

Adjusting a row – You want to get all of your bags placed well the first time, but that said there are always mistakes. Fixing them is usually as easy as lifting and replacing the bag, or hitting it with the tamper to move it in another direction

After an entire row of bags is laid into place, we all tamp the bags really hard so that they (A) flatten out and (B) lock into the barbed wire below and to the other bags in that row. After we had finished tamping, Scott Howard would come through to give his “Tamp of Approval”

You’ll want to check for a straight line *before* you lay the second row of bags.

Once the entire row of bags is tamped, it’s time to lay down 4-prong barbed wire on top. The barbed wire acts as a mortar and prevents the bags from moving horizontally. An easy way to roll out the barbed wire is to put it on a pick-axe like in this photo.

Laying Barbed Wire – While it’s not too hard to lay barbed wire with one person, it’s fun to do it with 8 people, too.

When laying barbed wire, we lay two rows down the center of the bags. Each strand of wire is about 1/3 of the way from the edge of the bag.

End of Day 1 – We made it 3 rows up! (Don’t worry, progress definitely accelerates after that first day)

View from across the street after day 1 – Doesn’t seem like much

The corner of our growing courtyard

The view from our driveway (looking North) – eventually the wall will continue all the way down the gravel trench in the photo. Because we have decided to do that section of the wall later in the summer, the next photo shows how we’ll connect the two sections.

Step Pyramid to Continue the wall later – We leave the barbed wire handing out a couple feet so we can continue the wall here at a later point.

Group Tamping! This was the final height of the wall after the workshop was over – right around 3 feet high.

End of Day 2 Wrap Up

Applying Cob to Earthbags – At the end of the weekend Scott gave a quick demonstration on how to apply cob to earthbags. We won’t be applying cob to our wall, but we’ll be applying a cement stucco in a similar fashion (we’ll just need to add a lathe like chicken wire).

Troweling Cob onto Earthbags – The cob gets troweled smooth just like stucco would be.

The post Earthbag Building Workshop Recap appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

I’ve mentioned our upcoming wall project a few times on this site. Above is the mockup and overhead drawing of what we’re going to be building in 3 weeks. All of the terracotta-colored wall in that diagram is specifically what we’ll be building. You can click here to take a look at the full-size wall diagram.

We’ll be hosting a workshop here at the homestead on June 23rd & 24th. Find more details about the workshop on our events page. Also, don’t forget to check out our contest:

The contest is now closed, thanks to everyone who signed up!

To register for the wall workshop email Scott@EarthenHand.com.

Please feel free to share our contest flyer on Facebook or Pinterest!

What Our Wall Will Look Like:

We’re planning on using concrete stucco for our walls. While I like cob as a material, I want to have raised beds up against our wall, which means wet soil touching the surface of the wall. To do that, I have to be sure that the wall won’t decompose, so concrete is the best option for this situation. Here’s some photos I have accumulated from around the internet that give you an idea of what our wall will look like once completed:

This stucco privacy wall is very similar to what we're going for. We probably won't have a bare roof to the wall - ours will likely be a stone or paver to shed water away from the wall. Ours also won't have the little windows, since we're trying to block out noise. Photo by http://dangergarden.blogspot.com

This stucco planter isn't the height of our wall, but has a great capstone and saturated terracotta color. This is very similar to how our planters will look that will attach to the completed wall, since we want those to be about 2-3 feet high and 2-3 feet away from the wall. Photo by Blue Wheelbarrow Landscapes in North Seattle.

This garden wall on the right of the photo is a similar height and color, and gives you an idea of the courtyard look that we're seeking. The lion heads and suns on the wall are also a nice touch that we might do. Photo from FilmNorthFlorida.com

Why On Earth We’re Building a Wall:

We live on a busy arterial road, with lots of road noise. Our home blocks out the noise well, but a large part of why we bought our home was to be able to garden and enjoy our yard, and that’s difficult to do with cars zipping by throughout the day. Yes, we should have  accounted for that a little better before we moved in, but nevertheless, here we are with a noisy yard.

Options for Blocking Road Noise:

I spent a lot of time researching methods to block road noise. Near highways where the noise is exceptionally bad, it tends to be either a concrete wall or a berm. After lots of research, the summary is that plants won’t block road noise, wood fences won’t block much road noise, but a wall or barrier built with soil, water (like a cistern), or stone can block road noise well.

Berms work incredibly well, that probably would have been our first choice on a larger property. But, berms take up a wide space that we don’t have, and visually… let’s just say they’re an acquired taste in an urban setting.

So basically we were left with the option to build a wall. We could have just built a tall cement wall and been done with it, but we wanted to do something more sustainable that required less cement, which isn’t very environmentally-friendly.

Over the course of 6 months I considered a variety of natural building options including a straw bale wall, a cob wall, and a ferrocement wall that would double as a cistern. The final wall option that felt right was using earthbags. Using a cement stucco over the earthbags will use about 15% of the total concrete, and achieve the same visual look.

What the Heck Are Earthbags?

Earthbags are just normal polypropelene sand bags, but they’re filled with dirt instead of sand. They get stacked on top of one another like bricks to form a structure, and they stick together with 4-prong barbed wire placed between them. After the structure is built with the earthbags, it is typically covered in a stucco or plaster made of cement, cob, or lime.

Here’s a photo of an entire home being built with earthbags:

Earthbag Home in Progress - Photo by John Fuhrman - Click for Large Version

Here are photos of the same home after it was finished being covered with cob:

Earthbag Cob Cabin - Photo from EarthenHand.com - Click for more

As you can see, once it’s finished it doesn’t look too different from any other natural building.

Finding Materials:

I thought that it would be difficult for us to find enough clay nearby for an entirely cob wall. Earthbags, however, don’t require a clay to sand mix ratio as specific as what’s required by cob. Because of that, it seemed to be the easier project in terms of acquiring the materials necessary to complete it.

Our Wall Workshop with Earthen Hand:

After deciding earthbags was the method I wanted to use, I reached out to Scott Howard of Earthen Hand Natural Building in Portland, OR. Scott is the builder of the cob/earthbag home pictured above, as well as a bunch of other projects in the Pacific Northwest and abroad.

We decided the wall would be a good opportunity for a workshop here at Seattle Homestead, and set a date of June 23rd & 24th (3 weekends from now!). The workshop will feature 2 days of learning about how earthbag building works and what it can be used for, and then getting outside and getting hands on experience with wall construction.

The cost of the workshop is $180 and includes lunch both days. Registration and signup info can be found on our events page. There is a discount for participants who bring a friend or sign up for another one of Earthen Hand’s natural building workshops.

To register, email Scott@earthenhand.com and let him know you’re interested in the Earthbag Building Basics Workshop on June 23/24 in Seattle.

Getting Ready for the Wall Workshop:

Over the last few months we’ve removed all of the ugly privets that used to surround the yard, taken out the 130 foot chain-link fence, and just had the property lines surveyed so we can dig the trench for the wall footing and be ready for the workshop in a couple weeks.

We’re looking forward to showing you all what the finished product looks like!

The post Our Earthbag Wall Workshop & Contest appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

I mentioned in our 2012 Homestead Goals that we were planning to get chickens this year. About 4 weeks ago we picked up 2 Barred Rocks and 3 Rhode Island Reds from Jason at Shoreline Farm Supply – who graciously gave them to us for free since he had extra from a customer who decided they didn’t want all 10 that they ordered.

Our baby chicks at home, shortly after getting their brooder set up

Baby chicks in the brooder. The two plastic containers had a pen between them for the chicks to roost on. It worked for about a week before I built them a bigger one with a branch.

Moving the Pullets to a Temporary Chicken Coop:

I went and picked up a used coop that I found on Craigslist. It cost more than it was worth, and it’s not big enough for 5 full-grown hens, but I needed to get something premade to buy me some time while we finish a proper home for the chickens. We’ll resell the coop on Craigslist once we’re finished with it.

Our chicks turned 4 weeks old last Wednesday, and we moved them into the temporary coop last Friday.

Our dog Ben inspecting the temporary chicken coop, looking for a way in.

Pullets running around the chicken coop - getting used to their new surroundings and the great outdoors

Our chickens are at the awkward teenage stage where they look gangly. I'm sure there's acne under those new feathers.

"What are you looking at?"

Construction Begins on the New Chicken Coop:

Rather than spending a ton of time designing a coop, I decided to just purchase plans for a coop from TheGardenCoop.com. I’ve had my eye on the style for awhile, and at first I thought about just using it as a rough template without buying the guide. As the three day weekend approached last week, I decided that spending $20 on the downloadable plans would save me many hours of headaches and trial and error.

We spent this weekend building the chicken coop – it’s 70% complete and I’ll have more photos once it’s done. Here’s an example that’s similar to how ours will look:

Ours will look fairly similar to this example once it's completed - we'll be using similar recycled fencing as siding on the henhouse (top left), and we also chose to use galvanized metal as the roofing. Our wood won't look quite so light, though.

It measures 5 feet deep by 9 feet 6 inches wide, and the top of the door sits slightly over 6 feet high. We also chose to use galvanized roofing and rustic recycled-cedar fencing as the siding for the henhouse. More pictures coming in the next two weeks as we finish the construction.

Currently, we have the coop frame built, rafter and roofing installed, hen house framed, and hardware cloth (the wire mesh) is mostly installed. We still have to finish the walls and siding on the henhouse, build the door, install hardware cloth on two of the ceiling sections, and finish some other “tweaks.”

The post The Chicks Have Arrived and Chicken Coop Construction Begins appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

Photo: Front yard is coming together as the retaining wall takes shape, and most of the yard is sheet-mulched. The bushes are on their way out and so is the chain-link fence, in order to make way for the garden wall.

The new year is here and we’re approaching one year of living here at the homestead. We got plenty done from our 2011 homestead goals but there were a few things left off that we’d like to tackle this year. Here’s a summary of what we accomplished, and what we’re looking forward to doing in 2012:

2011 Homestead Successes:

• Getting 500 sq feet of garden beds in place.
• Getting our home interior in shape – painting, decorating, fixing, crown molding, and more.
• Planting 4 apple trees, 5 blueberries, plenty of strawberries, and 450 sq ft of garden space.
• I (Kane) finished my permaculture training with Toby Hemenway in October – that took 6 full weekends between May and Oct 2011 but was well worth my time.
• Acquired tons of free wood chips (6 yards in my truck and 20 yards delivered by the folks at Burien Tree Service) and sheet mulching most of the front and side yard – over 2000 sq ft of lawn removed when you include the garden beds.

2011 Homestead Things to Improve On:

• Scale – One permaculture principle involves starting with small-scale systems and building your way up, and frankly it’s one of the hardest principles for me to embrace and obey.  We have so much we want to do on the property that it’s difficult to limit ourselves. As a result, not everything gets done as well as it could.  Our garden, for example, could have been much more productive with some additional attention.  We also lost a few of our fruit plants, such as the tea tree and possibly the raspberry cane. This is part of the growing process of course, both literally and figuratively, but scale is still something we need to keep in mind during our projects.
• More blog posts! – I’ve got at least 4 or 5 updates from the fall that aren’t finished, so I’m going to try to sum those up soon. 2012 is going to be extremely busy, but I’d like to get at least one or two posts per month posted here.

2012 Goals:

• Build the Wall: We’ve got the ball rolling on building our wall this summer, and we’re planning to host a wall-building workshop around June. More details on that soon!
• Chickens: We acquired half of the materials for a chicken coop last year, but never got around to starting that project. We’d like to get that built this spring, perhaps if we finish the prep work for the wall early.
• Hardscaping: We’re hoping to finish at least the firepit area of the yard after the wall is completed, and hopefully a few other summer landscaping projects. We’re hoping to host some guests in August for our wedding, so we’ve got a deadline to hit!
• Clean Up: We’ve already removed the dead quince, a ton of Himalayan blackberries that have overstayed their welcome, and taken down a dead tree.  But, there’s still quite a bit of branches to prune, and ivy, holly, and blackberries to remove. The tricky part is removing them well and immediately filling the space, since nature abhors a vacuum and all three of those plants tend to come back as strong as ever.
• Blog Goal – More Interviews: We’ll be publishing an awesome solar electricity interview on Tuesday, and we’d love to interview some other experts as well as homesteaders. Every person I know in the permaculture & urban homesteading community has some awesome projects going on, and I’d like to get a few of those people interviewed here on the site, and even feature some guest posts. If you know someone like that, let us know using the contact form!

So, what 2012 garden & homestead goals do you have to share?

The post 2012 Homestead Goals & 2011 Year in Review appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

Click on any image to see the larger version:

Water droplets on spinach from the night's rain.

This is a snap pea shoot, which has been in the ground about 10 days. The pole on the left is from a small tripod teepee that will support a number of peas growing in the same spot. This variety is Super Sugar Snap from Territorial.

Chive Flowers blooming - I just ate my first one for the season yesterday. I planted quite a few chive seeds around the base of my apple trees, I'm hoping they germinate soon...

A shoot of corn coming up - we planted a super early variety called Early Sunglow Hybrid that only takes 63 days to mature.

I left town for 3 days, and our mustard plants (which had been overwintered) had skyrocketed about 2 feet in the time I was gone.

Pole Beans coming up - this variety is Red Noodle Yard Long Bean - which produces 18-inch long beans in 90 days. These pole beans will grow up the large teepee that we made. The stuff that we can reach will be harvested as soon as we can, and the higher up stuff we'll pull down at the end of the season.

Our clover again, about 1 month after it was planted. You can see that it's doing best in the cracks of the soil and other areas that allowed the seeds to germinate without drying out. There is also some grass growing up from the sod that we flipped over. We've been pulling that out by hand.

One last shot of the beautiful spinach, since it's the biggest thing in the garden right now aside from the globe artichoke.

These are my milk jub cloches. They are intended to protect tomatoes and a few warmer loving crops - but I don't necessarily recommend them. After testing them out, I think they might block light from the plant and I don't think they retain any heat. Next year I will be testing out clear plastic containers (I still can't justify using those expensive glass ones sold in the catalogue, but of course I think they work best)

The leaves on our dwarf apple trees are starting to emerge.

All photos by Kane Jamison, please feel free to reuse them under the Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons License with a link back to this post.

The post Early June Homestead Photos appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

One of my goals for year one was to have some basic fruit in place.  Most will not bear fruit this year, but giving them a full season to set roots and grow will mean a decent crop in 2012.  So, I just put in a last minute fruit order at Raintree Nursery, thinking I might still have a chance to get a few things in the ground before it gets too hot out.  It’s mid-May, however, so I may have to baby them a little unless we have an exceptionally cool May & June.  Here’s what I ordered:

Three Four Dwarf Apple Trees:

The Melrose apple trees are on mini-dwarf M27 rootstocks, so they’ll be ideal as container plants.  The Golden Sentinel and Famuese are on semi-dwarf M7 rootstock, so they will hopefully do OK in containers.  The columnar will grow tall and compact like the one in the picture.  All might have some fruit this year, but especially because of how late they’ll be planted, we’ll be removing the fruit and allowing the trees to focus their energy on healthy roots and growth.

• Melrose M27 (2 of these)– “This flavorful red apple is top rated for reliability and keeping. Properly stored in the garage, it can keep until May. A heavy crop of tart apples, great for cooking or eating fresh, ripens in late October. Melrose is the official Ohio state apple.” As an added bonus, Raintree threw in an extra one of these with my order.
• Golden Sentinel Columnar Apple on M7 Rootstock – “A large flavorful yellow fruit that ripens in early October. 2-3′ tree.” This tree is a columnar variety, and cross pollinates with other mid-season pollinators such as the Famuese below.
• Famuese Apple M7 – “This small orange-red apple has been an American favorite for more than 250 years. It is also called the snow apple because of its white flesh which is sometimes streaked with red. The apples ripen in September, are tender and juicy with a great sweet/tart flavor. They are prized for fresh eating and cooking and make an aromatic bitter/sweet cider. It is a mid season bloomer.“

Tea Breeze Tea Plant

One Tea Tree:

• Tea Breeze Tea Plant – This one seemed to cool to pass up, and Kristina will be very pleased that she can make tea with it.  I still need to research whether this will make a good container tree, but they’re supposed to be easy to keep pruned and prefer part-shade.  Raintree’s site describes them as a “beautiful white-flowered ornamental variety that is also used to make delicious tea.”

Shuksan Strawberry

Seascape Strawberry

Two Strawberry Varieties:

I have no clue where I’m going to put these yet, but strawberries do great around here and at $5 for 25, I couldn’t resist picking up a couple bundles of them.

• Shuksan Strawberry (bundle of 25) – Good freezing and fresh eating, this is a reliable performer in the Northwest.  “Large crops of medium to large, firm, dark red berries in late June every year.”
• Seascape Strawberry (bundle of 25) – “Highly productive, day neutral variety produces an impressive center berry that is ideal for dipping in chocolate. All up and down the West Coast, backyard strawberry aficionados are raving about its excellent flavor, large size and disease resistance. Plants don’t need much chill to set fruit, so berries ripen early and continue to appear non-stop over a long season, from June to October. Proven successful in California and the Pacific Northwest, it is sure to entice gardeners in other parts of the nation too.”

Two Blueberry Varieties:

I have the perfect container in mind for our blueberry plants, I just need to get it filled up with soil.  It should be able to fit 2 blueberries side by side, as well as some companion plants alongside of it.

• Bluegold Blueberry – “Bluegold produces very heavy crops of sweet, flavorful fruit during mid-season. The beautiful, compact, rounded bush grows only four feet tall but bears large clusters of easy-to-pick berries. Unusual yellow fall foliage and yellow winter wood followed by bright white spring flowers make Bluegold a year round beauty. It is among the more winter hardy varieties.”
• 

  Reveille Blueberry

  Reveille Blueberry (3′ size) – “The unique crisp, almost crunchy texture and the outstanding popping flavor make this a must for your blueberry patch.Its upright, narrow easy to grow habit, to 5 feet tall, make it a great hedge plant. Heavy pink spring bloom yields loads of medium size light blue berries. Hardy to 0 deg. F, it thrives in hot climates or in the cool Pacific Northwest. Needs at least 600 chilling hours for best production.”

One Lingonberry:

For orders over $50 they’re throwing in a free Lingonberry or Raspberry:

• 

  Red Pearl Lingonberry

  Red Pearl Lingonberry – “Heavily productive, easy to grow! Selected from the wild in Holland for its tasty fruit, vigorous growth and brilliant green foliage. It grows to 16 inches and spreads rapidly.”

Everything I ordered was from their Spring Clearance listing.  The ordered totaled $87.50 before shipping, which was about $22.  I also found a $10 coupon, so altogether, just under $110.  While this order won’t have a huge payoff this year, most of the plants we ordered should be bearing some fruit by next year, and should easily pay for themselves early into their 3rd year.

Photo Credit: All images in the post are from Raintree Nursery’s website.

The post Our Year 1 Fruit Tree Order appeared first on Seattle Homestead.

We have a huge list of things we’d like to accomplish here at the homestead, but to keep things in perspective I’m creating a list of project goals for 2011.

Take Care of Zone Zero – I’m going to have more information on the permaculture concept of zones soon, but for now a quick link to zones on wikipedia will do.  We just moved into our home in April and taking care of zone zero (the house and everything inside of it) is a big priority for us.  Because we spent the first 14 days painting just about every wall in the house, we still have a lot of work to do in terms of household repairs, cleaning, organizing, and decorating our living space.  Luckily, after finishing all of the interior painting, Kristina plans to set me loose upon the garden while she takes care of much of the organizing and decorating, enabling me to catch up with my garden daydreams from the past 4 months.

Raised Beds & Garden – My long term plans for the entire yard include a border of decorative concrete raised beds about 24 to 36 inches in height.  But, that’s a lot of work, and a ton of soil.  This year’s priority for raised beds involves removing sod / lawn from a large square area on the East side of the house (probably about 300 to 400 square feet initially), and building up that bed to at least 12 inches in height. My plan, in order to use as much free resources as possible for this temporary raised bed, is to dig out 12 inch wide strips of grass from the bed area, and lay them down on the edge of the bed to build a 12 inch high sod wall around the bed.

The remainder of the project will involve heavy composting of grass clippings, twigs and branches from the yard, some food scraps and rabbit poop donations from friends nearby, and whatever other free materials I can find in the area.  I’ll likely end up bringing in a few yards of ready-to-go compost & top soil to cover over all of the composted items, as well as some mulch on top of that.  After the bed is built up, hopefully by the end of May, we should be able to plant seeds & seedlings that were started in early May.  You can see the plans for the raised bed in the photo below.  The red/orange area is where the beds will go.  The yellow is the fenceline of the property.  Click for larger photo.

Build a Chicken Tractor and Raise Hens – We went back and forth on whether to keep chickens for a few months.  In the end, we’ve decided to get some chicks in the next couple weeks for a couple reasons. (1) Chickens are very productive, and we’d love to have the eggs not only for our own use, but to sell and barter and gift as well.  Another chicken yield that I look forward to is plenty of manure, which will be needed for soil building in the next couple of years. (2) I have a ton of free salvaged lumber on hand, and big wheels from a broken lawn mower, and extra hinges, etc.  Basically all I need to purchase for the tractor I plan to build (more on that later) is 3 pressure treated board for the base, and 1/4″ metal hardware cloth (since chicken wire ironically is not suitable for protecting chickens). (3) We’re excited just to have them.  Not much to be said here, they’re great creatures to have around an urban homestead.

Here’s a photo from the Country Living Expo of a chicken tractor that was being raffled off.  The chicken tractor will be 4 ft wide by 10 ft long, 8 feet tall at the peak of the roof, and will have 40 square feet of grass space and 12 square feet of coop space, plus vertical space as well.  I think that the tractor will be able to comfortably accommodate 4 hens, and a maximum of 6 hens based upon the square footage limitations that I’m comfortable with.

Plant Fruit – While my budget doesn’t currently allow me to go on a $600 shopping spree at Raintree Nursery like I’d like to, I still want to get some basic fruit trees, bushes, and vines started.  Specifically I’d like to have a couple dwarf apple trees, a few blueberry bushes, some grape and kiwi vines, and possibly some more exotic species. We already have unidentified cane berries of some sort blackberries growing on one side of the property, so I’m holding off on those at the moment.  Some of these I still might try to get planted during spring, but there will also be an opportunity to plant some items in the fall after we’ve settled in.

• Fruit Update 1: According to the neighbor I just met, we also have a very old plum tree in one corner of the property.  Apparently the fruit isn’t very good, but there’s a chance the tree could be improved through pruning until the fruit was good enough to can or brew.  Plum wine, anyone?
• Fruit Update 2: Here’s our fruit order for year 1.

The Fence – This is the biggest priority wild card in the projects for the year.  Currently the homestead has a metal chain-link fence around 90% of the yard.  However, we live on a fairly busy arterial street and the fence does nothing to keep out noise from cars.  Also, we’re located on a corner with a bus stop, which is great if we want to head downtown, but it also means we can occasionally hear those loud bus brakes throughout the day.  The solution? A new fence wall. My rough fence plan is to have a 1 to 3 ft high concrete wall around the North and East perimeters of the yard, which will double in function as the back of our raised beds in the future.  On top of the concrete wall I plan to have a cedar fence connected to the cement via post anchors of some sort.  This is the largest project I’d like to tackle this year and I don’t have experience in pouring concrete for walls, only for footings, so there will be plenty of discussion about the fence in coming months.  Update Fall 2011: This project has become more focused since I wrote this post originally. At this point, we’re looking to make this a cob wall, which will be much more effective at blocking noise than the wood fence. More information soon.

Improve Home(stead) Efficiency – As the summer winds down and the heaters start to come back on in the home, it will be time to start tackling some home efficiency projects.  Seattle City Light (the city electric company for those of you outside the area) offers discounted home energy audits to customers, so this will likely be one of our first steps.  They have a number of other assistance options available as well, for things like appliances and larger home improvements, so we’ll likely be looking into each one of those as well.  Our home has some other efficiency-related projects as well, including insulating the crawl space and installing some water-saving devices in the bathroom and kitchen.  Our home is 100% electric, so I’m motivated to get some of these things done before we attempt to keep the house fully heated with baseboard heaters.

Update 5/2: Mushroom Logs – Can’t believe I nearly forgot to mention mushroom logs…  In a shady & moist environment like Seattle, Mushrooms can be an amazing way to boost the productivity of full shade areas that most gardeners typically give up on.  I’d like to get these going early, because the first flush (another word for each harvest of mushrooms) can take 6 to 12 months or longer depending on the mushroom strain and the conditions they’re grown under.  I plan to start out with a few of the more common strains, like Oyster &  Shitake.

There’s plenty more things that I’d like to get done this year, including a patio & firepit area using some salvaged bricks, but we’ve got plenty on our plate for the year already, so writing these primary goals down is the first step towards getting them all completed.

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