Timothy hay

Taylor and I are hoping to raise rabbits in the near future for several reasons:


They breed like... well, rabbits.
They're a great source of lean meat
They have a really high ratio of input(food) to output(meat)
They're quiet, don't make a huge mess, and are relatively low-maintenance.
They're a great source of high-nitrogen fertilizer.


After looking into this quite a bit, we've decided it could prove economical and efficient to grow our own food for these rabbits. In addition to giving them leftover greens from the garden, we also plan on growing timothy hay (and eventually wheat straw) to feed them.

This brings me to the second package I was expecting in the mail: timothy hay seeds!


We ordered one ounce of seeds for about five bucks with free shipping. We're hoping this will fill about 100 square feet of area, which should be plenty to feed four rabbits.

Timothy hay is a perennial, so hopefully we can harvest this in a manner that lets it continue to grow without having to reorder more seeds. For five bucks though, I think this might be a great investment. One ten-pound bag of commercial rabbit feed runs about $8, and consists mostly of timothy and alfalfa. With some extra veggies thrown in for more vitamins, I think these rabbits should do just fine.

Radish seeds

Earlier this week I mentioned that I was expecting a few things in the mail, and I'd post about them when I got them. One of the three packages I was expecting came today.


We now have over 700 Cherry Belle radish seeds.

This is my first experience buying seeds from somewhere other than SeedSavers.org or Home Depot. They were pretty cheap ($1.49 and free shipping), and I got them on Ebay, so I'm definitely unsure about how this will turn out. I can't really plant them yet, because I think these radishes will be better of sown directly into the garden in Sarasota, but I did plant six to see what kind of a germination rate I'm working with.

The great thing about radishes is that they're so quick to mature. This particular variety should be ready to pick 21 days past planting. I don't know any other kind of vegetable that moves from seed packet to table that quickly.

Our hopes for these radishes? Maybe making some "potato" chips by slicing them thinly and baking, or putting them in salad.

Heirloom Tomatoes

People are so eager to give away heirloom vegetable seeds. Big, modern, hybrid, GMO companies (Monsanto comes to mind) never ever want to give away their seeds--- in fact, they've sued many farmers for growing their crops accidentally without paying to possess Monsanto's intellectual property.
But, back to the original point: Heirlooms are often up for grabs. Garden enthusiasts are eager to preserve these historic varieties, and often set up seed exchanges. In these exchanges, fellow gardeners can swap some of their heirloom saved seeds in exchange for other varieties. Wintersown.org has been highlighted on plenty of other gardening blogs for their wonderful seed exchange. For nothing more than the cost of a self-addressed envelope, they will send you six varieties of heirlooms, and there's dozens to choose from.

We decided to ship off for some seeds, and see what kind of awesome tomatoes we could grow. It's not going to be tomato season for quite some time, but we were too excited to wait to get our seeds.
Wintersown gives you the option to pick six varieties you'd like, and four backups. What were our choices?

Cherokee Purple
Black Cherry
Gartenperle
Green Zebra
Luther Burbank's WonderBerries
Tomatillo, Purple

Backups: Wildcard, Oxheart, Goji Faranji


We should get our seeds back in three weeks, and we plan on sending back some of our own saved seeds once we get a chance.

Super-cute sun protection

I'm normally pretty awful about shielding myself from the sun. Taylor swears I'm going to get skin cancer unless I get better about sunscreen, etc. After spending this week using up my fabric stash, I came up with this cute Sun Protection Device (otherwise known as a hat).


It's made from a thick canvas material, so it should hold up pretty well.
I used a pattern from Craft Magazine, which I altered pretty extensively. I doubled the brim, made the sides of the hat shorter, and made the top wider. The ribbon was also my own personal touch.


Now I can work in the garden without burning my poor little nose.

A great fertilizer

Our pet bunny, Atom, is more than just a cute face.

Isn't she adorable?

She is a poop machine. If you feed her a carrot, you can actually watch it go straight through her. She takes a bite, and out comes a perfectly round pellet of poo. I might be exaggerating, but she must drop a turd every five minutes. Lucky for us, this rabbit poo makes a great fertilizer.

I normally wind up making a "tea" from her teeny turds. I just throw them in an old Gatorade bottle, add some warm water, and let it sit for a day or two (it helps to shake it every once in a while).


Be forewarned--- things can get a little smelly. The good thing is, you can store the dry pellets in a ziploc bag until you're ready to mix it, and that doesn't smell at all.

Rabbit poop is very high in nitrogen (it has more than chicken manure). Also, it contains plenty of phosphorous, which is great for fruit formation. Try putting some of this in your corn bed before you plant, and it should work out great. Just be warned--- too much of this can easily burn young plants.

One of many gardening projects.

I absolutely love avocado. It's so creamy and mushy. It's great on salads, guacamole, with salmon, in place of mayo on a sandwich. It's completely versatile. After purchasing one of these lovely fruits for dinner last night, I decided to try to grow a tree from the pit. After bouncing around on the internet for a while, and using a variety of sources, I settled on this method:

1.) Take an avocado pit, wash it gently to remove all pulp.
2.) With the round part of the pit facing the bottom, place four toothpicks evenly spaced around the widest part of the pit. Insert the toothpicks about 1/4".
3.) Suspend the pit in a glass of full water, so that the pointed half of the pit is above the water line.


The toothpicks will keep the pit from sinking into the water.


The water level should be just even with the toothpicks, and make sure the pointed part of the pit is poking up. I absolutely love the crackled texture on the bottom part of the pit.

Supposedly the pit should start to crack in anywhere between three and six weeks, and roots and shoots should emerge. Then I just need to transplant it to potting soil.

A new seedling tray

For some reason, I haven't been able to find seedling trays anywhere around here. I tried a local nursery, Home Depot, Lowes... and nothing. I finally went to a local Ace Hardware, and lo and behold! A seedling tray. It even came with one of those super-duper plastic covers to keep in moisture. I also picked up a new hose attachment to gently water new seedlings.


Some of our seeds in the new seedling tray. The butternut seeds normally come up pretty quick, right along with the beans and peas.

Anyways, we planted a seedling tray with six cells each of peas, eggplant, limas, lettuce, butternut squash, red cabbage, melons, and Seminole Pumpkin.
The Seminole Pumpkin seeds I received at a small local lecture kind of thing about native plants. The lecture was okay, but the seeds were definitely the highlight. Supposedly it's a native species of climbing pumpkin grown by the Seminoles that was trained to grow up oak trees to keep the fruits from rotting on the wet ground. Because it originally grew under trees, it's pretty shade tolerant, and supposedly it's a delicious cooking pumpkin. The seeds are a little old, but I'm hoping for at least one of the seven I received to give me a pumpkin plant.


I'm normally pretty bad about labeling my seeds, but seedling trays make it a lot easier. I used some Popsicle sticks and a sharpie, so hopefully I'll know what comes up (and perhaps be able to identify some of our other confused seedlings by how these look).


I've never had a seedling tray with a cover before, so I'm hoping for good things. I always have problems with my seeds being over or under watered, so maybe this will fix that kink. I think the tray cost $4.99, which is a little pricy, but worth it.

Oh, and last night I ordered two really cool things online for the garden. More on that when they show up in the mail.