French Drain

Last year in the spring, we noticed in my art room in the basement there was some moisture coming in after a big rain storm. After it happened a few more times we knew we needed to remedy the problem. Thankfully there is no sign of mold and we didn't want anything to start! After lots of research it looked like a french drain would do the trick. They can be as uncomplicated as just gravel to pull water away or just a pipe. We did a combination.

Digging down hill

The arrow is pointing to where all the damage is and the highest point of the drain. 

The builders of this house did a poor job grading the yard and one of the low points is that corner of the house. So after digging it out, we found the seam of the footer outside had a portion of the concrete chipped away from years of water damage. 

Can you see it on the right of this picture?

We filled it all in with a foundation repair concrete patch. It's still wet in this photo.

 

 The trench ends behind the retaining wall. We laid a small layer of gravel first, then a socked perforated pipe, then covered it all with more gravel.

Once our recent snow melts and the ground thaws we will finish grading the soil so it drains away from the foundation.

The digging was pretty much the only hard part. It was just time consuming. We probably could have gone a little deeper with the trench where the grass is because we didn't have much room for the sod after we filled it all in. Whoops! I'm hoping the grass will still grow over it :)

 

 

Sod back in place.

Soil blocker = the bomb!

When you get excited about a soil blocker, you know you are a gardening geek. I have no shame about that :) I thought I posted about my new tool last year but when I looked through my archives I realized I didn't.

The benefit of the soil blocker is little to no transplant shock since it you don't put it in a container. I love this thing. It takes some technique to get it right. I will share the big secret to getting the blocks to stay together... lots of water! You have to make sure the soil is really pretty wet and of course packed in there. There are many tutorials on you tube about how to use it.

Here the blocks are all formed. They don't have to be perfect (as you can see mine aren't!). I put in 4 broccoli seeds and the rest spinach. When I direct seed spinach in the garden it never works that great for me. So hopefully this will be better.

 After putting in the seeds, I covered the dimples? or holes or whatever you call them with vermiculite. Then watered it just a tiny bit where the vermiculite is.

Homemade seed mix

At the beginning of February, I did some research and decided to make my own seed mix this year. I normally use a soil blocker. The soil blocker takes a ton of soil since it compacts it into squares. I plan on making some this week since I need to start my broccoli and spinach seeds. So having my own mix will save lots of money.

However, for the onion seeds, I didn't bother with the soil blocker and put them into a tray. The soil will be dumped later on and they will be individually planted so no need to mess with the blocker for them. The onions were a good test to see if the mix worked.

I stayed with a sterile mixture, no compost or soil.
3 gallons peat moss (bought in a big square at lowes)
about a half gallon of vermiculite
2 Tablespoons limestone

So far so good!

I think I may need to add some kind of fertilizer once they get bigger.

Goodbye Purple Walls

We finally finished the walls and ceiling in the boys room. It's so much nicer in their room. Pictures don't really do it justice. Their walls were dirrtty!

Ahh nice smooth ceiling and clean walls.

Garden winter harvest

I've never grown parsnips before until this year and have been really surprised at how hardy they are. I dug up the last few today. Just like all other veggies from a home garden the taste is so much better than the store! I would love to do cold frames someday, winter gardening is kind of fun!

Garden plans 2015

Winter is the perfect time to plan out the garden! I'll be ordering seeds I need soon so I had to figure out what is going where. I also took an inventory of seeds I already have. I'm trying to focus on growing things we eat a lot of this year.

I will also be experimenting with growing winter squash up a trellis since space is limited.

Living Room Updates

 Let's play the spot the differences game! My kids love that one.

Did you guess it? :) We added some woven shades on the windows a few months ago. And over the break I finally filled in those last empty picture frames. I will tell you, if you want people to talk about what's on your wall just leave some empty picture frames up. I think 90% of the people who come in our house commented on them.  

 Here's where I'm happy I have a little drawing experience. I took some old paper from a drawing class and drew a botanical print from a book I have (see below) with some permanent marker. The book is 11x14 and the image size I needed was 12x16- otherwise I probably would have just cut out the print.

 image from here.

The other frame was filled with a Sacred Grove print. It's hard to find good LDS art for little money. But I do like this print and it was inexpensive. Maybe I'll have to paint some of my own someday...