Midnight Buffet for the Creepy-crawlies in the Garden

I’ve got some very tasty sunflowers in my garden.  I know this because over the weekend something came by and ate pretty much every single leaf on the stalk of my last good sunflower.  Boy are my chickens going to be disappointed.  I was growing these sunflowers as a special treat for them.  It seems that sunflowers are one of those plants that will just never make it all the way to maturity in my garden no matter how hard I try to coax them along.  It’s not as though they don’t start off growing well in the garden, they just never seem to survive until I can harvest the seeds.

Even my daughter got into the act a few weeks ago.  I came out to the garden and found the other sunflowers had been decapitated.  My daughter thought the flowers were pretty and had picked them.

It’s hard to teach her about patience at times when she’s in the garden and wants to pick everything in sight.  I always lose a few green tomatoes due to my daughter’s exuberance, and I can recall last year when my little apple tree was just starting to grow a few apples on a branch, only to come home one evening to my daughter showing me how she had reached up and broken the branch off the tree so she could eat the apples.

“And your apples were really good daddy!”

I’m guessing they would have been even better if the were bigger than two inches in diameter.  On the positive side though, she’s loving the garden and yesterday we stopped by Lowes and picked up a 6 pack of pink impatiens.  She planted two of them in the flower box of her playhouse, and we planted the other four around our garden gnomes who have had heaps of abuse piled on them by our chickens.

It’s hard to tell from the picture above, but right behind them is where I filled in a big hole the chickens had dug out to use for their daily dust baths.  I’ve been using poultry netting to keep them out of the gardens, but they still seem to be able to find a few chinks in the armor.  However, I’ve refused to let a chicken outsmart me and I will keep at it through trial and error until my garden is chicken-proof.  That being said, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to just spending this year defending the garden and anything I actually get out of it is just a bonus.

At least the solar chicken coop seems to be harvesting power, and it should be rather difficult for the chickens, bugs, or pink tornado to mess that up once it’s fully operational.  I’m testing the best placement for the solar panel and the battery, so I was out there at various times of the day this weekend with my multimeter checking out the amps and volts being generated from the panel and what was being stored in the battery.

I’m hoping that when it’s all set up, I’ll be able to run not only my cooling fans and the extra 120V outlet, but some floodlights as well for when I want to  go out there and find out just what the heck has been eating my sunflowers at midnight.

 

Virtual Gardening Video Games

I’m a big fantasy and sci-fi geek.  Slowly but surely my four year old daughter is becoming one too.  We have a Star Wars piggy bank, she asked for a dragon sword for Christmas last year, and she loves dressing up as a princess.  She’s also becoming very good with the computer.  She plays games like Elmo’s keyboard-o-rama, watches online movies from netflicks, and enjoys crawling into my lap while I’m working on the computer.

We’re also setting up home-schooling lessons for her as she expresses an interest in various things.  This has involved building a chicken coop, getting an ant farm (more about that later – let’s just say it didn’t turn out well), and our most recent purchase was a butterfly farm with 10 baby caterpillars that will hopefully become beautiful butterflies.

So, I recently started my garden seeds for the spring.  I was really excited about going to the store with her and picking out seeds and getting them started in a little seedling greenhouse.  She was excited about getting the seeds – and I also picked up a 72 disk seed starting kit greenhouse for around $7.

The concept is pretty simple – you have bunch of compressed disks of peat in a plastic container.  You pour water in, plant the seeds and put the cover on.  Seeds sprout in a couple of weeks and you put it in sunlight until they are big enough to plant outside.

Unfortunately, her interest in planting seedlings got about as far as opening the seed packets and discovering that the seeds inside looked nothing like the picture on the outside of the packet.

She loves the garden – loves to pick tomatoes straight off the vine in the spring and summer and helps pick peas and beans in the fall.  But I think there was just too much disconnect between the seeds and having them grow into plants for a 4 year old.  So I was left at the kitchen table finishing up the planting while she wandered off.

It got me to thinking about how I could teach her about the planting process and gardening and somehow compress the time-to-gratification into something more manageable for a 4 year old.  And as a computer geek, my mind naturally turned to computers.

With all the simulation games out there – maybe there was something I could use to help teach her the fun and exciting world of essentially watching grass grow.  I vaguely recalled a SimFarm game from years ago.  With a little digging, I even found a site where abandoned titles go to have a second life.  You can download the game here.  Unfortunately, it’s probably a bit much for a 4 year old to handle screens like these…

 

 

So – What else is out there?  I have to say that it was a little difficult to find kid friendly games about gardening, composting, and plants.  Guess there’s not that much money in making things you can’t blow up.  However, here’s a short list of games I thought were interesting and kid-friendly:

• Compost 4 Fun : Bravekidgames.com is a great website for kid friendly games.  This particular game is a bit hard to control with the mouse (the screen sort of bounces around) but it’s a great way to start a dialogue about what can be composted.
• Garden Dreams : Well, I wasn’t able to get the online version to work for me because I’m behind a firewall – but it looks like fun.
• Alice Greenfingers: Graphics aren’t great and you only get an hour of free play before you have to purchase it, but what it lacks in graphics it makes up for in playability.
• Garden War: Ok, it is a war/strategy game – but it’s with garden gnomes.  Doesn’t use timers and teaches strategy so kids can probably get the hang of it pretty quickly.  Don’t know how kid-friendly tanks are though.

I’m going to have to try a couple of these over the weekend with my daughter and see if they’re really as kid friendly and interesting as I think they are.  I liked them and I thought they were fun, but as they say the proof is in the pudding…

 

Gnomes back in the Garden Thanks to J-B Weld

For some time, I’ve always loved gnomes. Growing up I had a book that described gnomes in detail. It wasn’t really a children’s book per say, but I enjoyed it none the less.

Gnomes 30th Anniversary Edition by Wil HuygenRead more about this title…

I thought this was one of the greatest books ever, and so naturally, when I started my own garden, I wanted gnomes as well.

The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus. It is often claimed to descend from the Greek gnosis, “knowledge”, but more likely comes from genomos “earth-dweller”.

In the Harry Potter series, gnomes are considered garden pests and appear to be more akin to animals than intelligent beings, and there is a scene in the movies where they are busy “de-gnoming” the garden.

So, knowing my love of gnomes, and in an effort to head off the invasion of plastic pink flamingo lawn ornaments, my lovely wife bought me some gnomes a while ago. The first one I received was of a gnome sleeping, with his but sticking up in the air.

[Insert picture here]

This particular gnome was named “Lucky Butt” and has wandered throughout my backyard, from the back slope, to my daughter’s Barbie play house (bought used off of eBay), and finally to the garden just below the kitchen window.

Earlier this year for father’s day, he got a friend and some more landscape in the form of a couple of mushroom statues.

All was well with this happy little band until tragedy struck last month. A roof tile fell from about 20 feet, right on top of my happy gnome. Splitting the cast iron gnome from head to toe (and shattering the roof tile of course).

I’m happy to say that last night I was finally able to get out the JB Weld and put my little guy back together and he’ll be installed in his place of honor again tonight.

For those of you not familiar with JB Weld, let’s just say that it is almost as useful as duct tape. The stuff is described on their site as:

Our flagship product, J-B WELD is the world’s finest cold-weld compound. It’s a remarkably easy, convenient, and inexpensive alternative to welding, soldering, and brazing. J-B WELD is the smart way to repair something … and for literally pennies per use. When welding or soldering is out of the question due to cost, down time for repairs, or technical/environmental considerations, J-B WELD is the answer.

Like metal, J-B WELD can be formed, drilled, ground, tapped, machined, filled, sanded, and painted. It stays pliable for about 30 minutes after mixing, sets in 4-6 hours, and cures fully in 15-24 hours. It’s water-proof; petroleum-, chemical-, and acid-resistant; resists shock, vibration, and extreme temperature fluctuations, and withstands temperatures up to 500° F. J-B WELD is super strong, non-toxic, and safe to use. Before it sets, you can clean up with soap and water.

And I have yet to disagree with this statement. I would heartily recommend the use of this product above and beyond any other bonding agent out there.

Lucky Butt is happy to have our newly repaired gnome back in the garden tonight and maybe in the future he’ll have a few more friends as well…