#space saving garden

[thestudentfarmer]

Hello hello,

Garden update a bit today!

I tried something new in the garden that involves making a thick cornstarch slurry, coolng it complelty and mixing the seeds in.

Take the mix, put it in a piping bag and use the slurry to make even rows of seed.

I did this with carrots, radish and lettuce.

The radish and the carrots are starting to have some sprout pops! :D. (Radish above, carrot below)

The transplanted (bush variety) beans.

Mixed among them seen sprouting, is sunflowers 🌻

The sunflowers popped way sooner than I was expecting and I cannot wait to see their sunny faces :D

As well we got a lil grid set up for the suprise pumpkin plant.

Other lil doings~

I am attempting to make a jacket :)

Got most my base peices cut out (some mild trim work necessary on the cuffs and bottom stretch bit), got to get the inner liner cut out and a zipper gotten

The inner liner I'm going to try and use an old bedsheet that's a soft blue.

The girls are laying pretty good, so far we've gotten 3 flats total :D. With luck we will continue with plentiful flats (and we can started elaminating eggs purchases when I grocer shop 🥳)

And last but not least, a lil seed start update!

Eggplants, these seeds are around 9ish? Years old. I kept them in not ideal seed saving storage but they've suprised me so far with how resilient they've been. I hope we get a few good ones for seed saving.

Broccoli or cabbage (they both look the same at this stage) I'll be transplanting them soon so as to not get them too spindly.

Nasturtium. There will probably be ground planted at the same time as the broccoli.

That's it for now everyone :) I'm off to work on a breakfast cassarole before I get to work on either cutting some boards for another raised bed, working on the above pictured jacket or possibly collect up some more sweet potatoe leaves to blanch and tuck in the freezer for later.

🌻🌱 Happy Homesteading 🌱🌻

9 29 2023

[kellerdavis]

Vertical Garden - Traditional Landscape Picture of traditional mulch landscaping in a small yard with partial sun.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 291

You know what? I’m feelin’ a Prompt with the whole halfa family, all the clones and everything. 

See, Danny? He’s grown up, he’s moved out, started looking at colleges himself after spending a few years travelling and learning about himself without the threat of a ghost attack. 

He’s kept in touch with his friends, both living and dead, and ignores Vlad for the most part now that they’ve reached a truce of sorts, and honestly? He’s just living his life. 

But see, it’s kind of hard to figure out what college to pick, with his admittedly not-great choices. Look, he might have a new-ish ID but he’s still visibly not exactly human (though thankfully doesn’t have to worry about the GIW after a… summer activity that ended with several missing buildings) 

And most people he goes to? Finds him ‘too unsettling’ which excuse him?? How is he unsettling? He’s a twenty-five year old with six kids ranging from one to six! How is that “scary” huh? Ancients, and all this is making him use the cash he’s saved up over time. 

And then- as though all of this isn’t stressful enough and he’s not genuinely worried that he won’t have enough money to feed the kids if he goes to school- a hero nearly trips over Jordan and starts freaking out. He is so fucking done. 

[thegikitiki]

Bedroom Design & Decor, 1982

[nyckie]

crippled by the price of Corn Husks

[squintsintwink]

I’ve decided my community space is going to be based around the different seasons also

[theloyalpin]

visited my kidcore acnh island from 2020 and i could cry omg 😭😭😭

[victorluvsalice]

Hello folks! I feel like I need to start moving to an "every OTHER week" schedule when it comes to posting the Chill Valicer Save updates, just because they always have a LOT of pictures, and it takes me a good long while to get them sorted with everything they need (even WITH the ability to now put like thirty pictures in a post if I so desire). So, this week, you instead get a look at one of my more recent builds -- the Community Conservatory! My first-ever Community Space lot! I actually built this for my potential "Valicer In The Dark" save file, as it's meant to represent the abandoned conservatory that Victor turns into a neighborhood garden during the course of that AU. I thought doing it as a community space and having the building noticeably improve as you took it through the Community Garden, Maker Space, and Marketplace lot subtypes would be a neat idea --

And it was indeed! :D It proved to be a pretty simple build -- I knew pretty much exactly what I wanted it to look like, meaning getting the initial shell down was really easy -- but it was a very fun one too. :) Let me take you through the various stages:

Community Space: The "default" space, this is just the shell of the building, with a little outhouse to the side and the voting board. It's completely empty inside, and I've done a little "moveobjects on" to put some cracks and such on some of the windows to make it look a little more rundown. This is the basic "abandoned conservatory" lot.

Community Garden: This is what it looks like after the Three Pillars have got it cleaned up, started making planters, and word has spread around their neighborhood, Six Towers, about this new free garden. I wanted it to look like the community had revitalized it, so all the various cracks and such are gone and there's a bunch of flowers outside. :) The entrance hall has a few hale bales to sit on and some gardening tools; the main octagon has floor planters, a bee box, and various garden-related decorations (lots of potted plants, a potting bench, and the like); the left wing is all about vertical gardens; and the right wing is all about insect farms! Oh, and the outhouse has been gussied up with a floor rug and a bit of art. :) I wanted it to be fun and inviting, and I think it came out well!

Maker Space: People have decided they want to do some crafting here, so some old beams and tin roof sheeting has been scavenged from an old factory and set up as extra cover around the back so people can set up communal crafting projects -- plus some stuff for their children! :) As I didn't want to mess with the main build (the whole point is that this space is CLEARLY the same building, just being built up more and more as you progress through the various spaces), I ended up having to put the "maker space" stuff outside -- and I wanted to make sure it was protected from the rain, so I did the old "floating roofs" trick and put some columns at each corner to make it look like the beams were holding them up. (I WAS going to do proper awnings/pergolas, but either they didn't look right or I couldn't get the stuff underneath them.) Included is the recycling machine, a fabricator, a woodworking bench, and a candle-making station under one roof, and a juice fizzer, three children's activity tables, and some toys appropriate for all ages under the other! So there should be something for just about everyone.

Marketplace: People have decided as long as they're MAKING stuff, they may as well SELL it too and have dragged some selling tables into the front yard...and if they're doing that, there's this old barrel someone turned into a grill, and these planks could be painted or carved and turned into picnic benches... :) The final upgrade to the space, we have the Jungle Adventures selling tables out front, along with some picnic tables and a grill. I was going to put one of the vendor stalls too, as that's a optional thing the game suggests, but none of them looked right, and this is a small lot with limited room, so I decided to forget it (I mean, the picnic area IS already really close to the outhouse, which is both good and bad XD). This is when the conservatory becomes a true community space for the residents, and I wanted it to look even more happy and colorful. I think I succeeded. :)

So yeah, that's the Community Conservatory build! Now, I haven't put this one up on the Gallery, but I would be open to doing it -- if I knew how putting these types of lot up on the Gallery worked. Since, you know, it's REALLY four lots...do you just upload one lot variant at a time, or do you get all four if you upload one? If it's just one lot variant at a time, that's okay -- I'm thinking I'd put up the base "Community Space" build as the only build of mine that does not require fifty million packs. XD Let me know what you think, and how uploading would work! More store shenanigans with the Chill Valicer trio next week!

[luulapants]

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

[thestudentfarmer]

1.5.2025

A new year!

That means lots of new things and experiences to come, experience and enjoy (or not! It won't always be great)

Resolutions felt weird to set, So this year I figured I'd reword resolutions to goals and things I look forward to or want and aim to do.

This year.....

I want to finish 3 quilts.

I want to try 5 new food recipes.

I aim to extend my garden to make a floral/herbal/"wildgrow" area.

I aim to reduce the trash leaving my home as much as possible this year.

I will at some point have a composter. What style is don't know yet. But I aim to make compost.

I have a goal of all cloth textile brought into the home that is new, being cotton or other compostable material. Secondhand or thrifted for other cloth textiles. (Except socks. and a few other small things for health and safety)

I aim to hatch 12 chicks.

A small update garden update~

The hummingbirds are getting more comfortable with me being around and out while they chill and feed. I believe this is an Anna's hummingbird. (A wiki link below)

2 people have also seen a roadrunner in the neighbourhood! Myself being one, I happened to spot the little guy heading out of the garden into a neighbours yard. I am hoping to catch a picture to share, but am not certain that is a visitor that will be seen regular as their rare to see normally aside from being fully out of the city. No sightings of the hawks in a bit, but there is a pair of the lovebird parrots that hang around the telephone poles regularly now. Caught the woodpecker drinking from the sugar feeder again.

Peas are growing in, hoping for pods soon :D

Carrot seed bed.

Yellow squash

Tomato's.

I put up some heater lamps for the chickens. It's supposed to drop around low 30s (*f) the next few weeks in the early hours (due to that big storm) and I want to make sure they'll be comfortable. Also took some measures to protect our exterior pipes from freezing.

More info on critters~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna's_hummingbird

That's it for today's post. :)

🌱🐦Happy Urban Homesteading 🐦🌱

[usgardening]

Space Saving vertical cucumber gardening Idea - Outdoor

Growing cucumbers vertically is an efficient and space-saving method that enhances plant health and productivity. The image above showcases a well-structured vertical cucumber garden using a bamboo trellis system. This method offers several advantages, including better air circulation, easier harvesting, and reduced risk of pests and diseases.

Benefits of Vertical Cucumber Gardening

Maximizes Space:

Ideal for small gardens, balconies, or rooftop farming.

Uses vertical space effectively, allowing multiple plants in a small area.

Healthier Plants:

Improved airflow reduces fungal infections and pests.

Cucumbers grow cleaner, avoiding soil contamination.

Higher Yield and Better Quality:

Proper exposure to sunlight promotes even growth and better fruit development.

Hanging cucumbers tend to be straighter and less prone to rot.

Ease of Maintenance and Harvesting:

Easier to monitor plant growth and remove unwanted pests.

Harvesting is more convenient, as fruits are at eye level.

How to Set Up a Vertical Cucumber Garden

Choose the Right Variety:

Opt for vining cucumber varieties like ‘Marketmore,’ ‘Straight Eight,’ or ‘Boston Pickling.’

Build a Strong Trellis:

Use bamboo, wooden stakes, or metal frames for support.

Secure the structure firmly to withstand the weight of growing cucumbers.

Use Proper Containers or Ground Planting:

Grow cucumbers in large pots or directly in soil with proper drainage.

Ensure rich, well-draining soil with compost for optimal growth.

Train the Vines:

Gently tie or guide vines to the trellis as they grow.

Prune excess leaves to focus energy on fruit production.

Provide Proper Care:

Water regularly, keeping soil moist but not soggy.

Use organic fertilizers to boost growth and fruit production.

Monitor for pests and apply natural solutions if needed.

Conclusion

Vertical cucumber gardening is an excellent method for growing healthy, high-yield plants in limited spaces. Whether in urban or rural settings, this technique promotes efficient gardening while making harvesting easier. By adopting this method, gardeners can enjoy fresh cucumbers with minimal effort and maximum benefits.

[phoenixwatchesmovies]

What I'm Watching: Speedrun Edition

*shrug* I kinda forgot. I was kinda overwhelmed. Here's everything I watched in August and September with my thoughts on it in three sentences or less.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

I was not disappointed. I fucked up by not seeing this in a theater setting. It will have its own post when I get around to watching it again.

House On Haunted Hill (the original)

Silly, goofy, completely unserious, and a total banger. I've been meaning to watch more classic movies in general, and you can't go wrong with Vincent Price.

Saved!

This aged a lot better than I would have assumed, based on the terse description on Prime, and thus proved the old adage.

The Birds

Ok, I know I just said I wanted to watch more classics and you don't get more classic than Hitchcock, but how did this manage to feel slower and more uneventful than movies that are longer and have less action?

Suck It Up

Quiet but emotional indie flick about grief and regret that felt like what a non-horror Mike Flanagan project might look like. So obviously, I liked it.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space

Garish, fluorescent, live-action cartoon acid trip of a movie. I love the vibe and the aesthetic, and I want to watch this with a group of friends. It seems like that type of movie.

Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

You know I love this one. Moving on.

House of 1000 Corpses

Easiest way to describe this is, if Texas Chain Saw Massacre was less serious and more horny. As I put it to my sister, I feel like if you put this movie under a black light, you might not like what you saw.

Overboard (the remake)

If you didn't even know there was a remake, that makes two of us. The gender swap threw me off and I don't know if it was meant to be different for the sake of it or to make the premise a little less :/ but if it's that last one, it didn't work. Regardless, it did what a rom com is supposed to do and gave all the fun and fluffy feels.

Over The Garden Wall

Mandatory seasonal viewing. It looks the way I wish fall still felt. How does a show that came out in 2014 and I've only seen twice feel so nostalgic?

And of course, hours upon hours upon h o u r s of Sailor Moon. Will I do better about keeping up with these posts next month? Who knows. We'll find out together.

[rowanjasper]

I dont think this is real but if it is its a really bad idea! You're not even supposed to grow tomatoes and potatoes in the same bed bc they pull the same nutrients from the soil and are really susceptible to the same exact types of blights and pests.

Like. If you look up companion planting for either of these you will be specifically told NOT TO DO THIS.

There’s a plant called the “TomTato” which is a cherry tomato plant with potatoes as roots. It yields large quantities of both tomatoes and spuds.

[squintsintwink]

I don’t know why I get so unreasonably excited about community lot builds

[therealbutterflyqueen]