Category Archives: Flowers

Selling our Garden Bounty

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One thing we love to do in Colorado and that we are excited to try in Puerto Rico, is growing things and selling them. I sell our chicken eggs to a friend year round and I have some other people who like to buy them from time to time in the summer months when we get 5-6 eggs a day (or almost 3 dozen a week!). But when all of our plants start coming in, we also like to sell those, or the fruits from them.


At the Greeley Farmer’s Market a few years back (Selling tropical plants, but of course!)

We used to sell some of our plants at the Greeley Farmer’s Market, but now they require all sorts of expensive insurance and crap, so small backyard growers like us have been pushed out. But there is one great marketplace still around: Craigslist! We love Craigslist and use it to buy things we may need and we list our rentals as well as things around our house and from our garden and greenhouse.


One of our comfrey plants


Tomatoes and lots of other plants in the greenhouse this year


We are finishing up with the strawberry season at our house, but had a bumper crop this year!

Just tonight we sold some tomato plants that were overtaking our greenhouse floor. We also have some people interested in buying some of our comfrey plant crowns. We love doing it. I like writing up the descriptions and waiting for people to contact me. Britton is good at digging up plants and making them look good. Selling our garden bounty feels more like fun than work! We would be working in the garden anyway and so when we get paid to do it and we see how happy people are with our plants, it makes us all the more pleased.

For instance, the woman who bought our plants tonight had had all of hers torn apart when we had that hail storm a few days ago, so she was super excited to be able to start her tomato garden up again -and for way less than it would be to replace them with plants from Home Depot or a nursery.

Britton says lately he has been having dreams of planting an acre or so of our land in Rincon with rows of pepper plants. I am not sure how well peppers grow there, but I would imagine fairly good. And in Rincon, we would still be able to sell them -and eggs, palm trees, coconuts, mangoes, etc, etc- at the Farmer’s Market! There’s so much opportunity everywhere you look. We are really excited and summers in Colorado make us all the more ready to live a summer-lifestyle year-round.


At the Rincon Farmer’s Market

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And Fixing Houses and Saving Money

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There seems to be a theme lately. Things break and sometimes we fix them and sometimes we have someone else fix it. I suppose that I like to pick my battles.

We were over at one of the rentals and the current tenants are moving out at the end of the month. The management company we hired suggested that the yard be cleaned up a bit. Mulch, weed removal and turning on the sprinklers. All pretty basic stuff. When we were working over there, we noticed that they had the AC on (compressor outside was running). It wasn’t a very hot day, and we wouldn’t have had our AC on, but we just kept about our yard work and didn’t think much about it.   Cassie was a weed pulling, rose and tree triming machine!

One thing about Colorado is we have tenacious weeds.  They grow even when it’s hot and there is no water.  As a result anytime we put down rocks or mulch the standard operating procedure is to put down some kind of weed barrier.  The landscaping stores sell a fabric that is supposed to keep the weeds down.  And it does…For a while.  Then the fabric starts to break down, or the weeds just start growing in the fabric.  I’ve come to find that it’s worthless as a weed deterrent.


Plastic was used along the fence, landscape fabric on the left

Instead what I have found works really well is the thickest plastic you can find.  It seems to last years and NO weeds come up thru it.   I removed a bunch of rocks, removed the remaining fabric and put down the plastic weed barrier then put the rocks back.  It’s quite a bit of work, but it should be good to go for a number of years now.


After all the rock was moved back in place with plastic instead of the fabric

After we put the mulch down in other areas of the yard,  the fertilizer and replaced the fabric with plastic we noticed that the A/C compressor was still running!  I figured this indicated a problem so we took a closer look.  There was ice forming on the coolant line!  I have no idea how long it had been running for, but it needed closer inspection.


Ice Growing on the Compressor Line!

I found that the blower motor on the furnace wasn’t running!  This caused air to not move across the AC coil which meant that it just iced up both outside and inside! Who know how long that AC had been running and not shutting off! Good thing we just happened to be working at the property. The tenants were clueless!

I looked up some info on the internet and from previous experience I figured it was the run capacitor.   They are prone to failure, but also are the cheapest/easiest part to replace.  I pulled the capacitor and got a replacement at a local store here in Greeley.  Rick’s Appliance.  The guy who works there/owns it, Rick, is super honest and every time I’ve gone in the store he has been very helpful.  So for $6 I got a new capacitor.


Run Capacitor for the Blower Motor

I got to the house the next day and the ice had melted off the AC parts and I threw in the new capacitor.  Turned the furnace on and….fan still wouldn’t kick on.  The blower motor fan just buzzed.  I did get it to start by pushing it by hand once but it never worked on its own.  I figured the next part to replace was the motor.

Finding HVAC parts is I think, intentionally hard to do online.  It’s as if they have their own club and if you’re not in it, you aren’t going to find what you need online.   They want you to pay someone to fix your stuff. I found a motor at a place near work.  It cost $80 and is a universal Mars motor.  I was a bit skeptical about using an aftermarket part; I almost always want to get a direct original equipment manufacturer (OEM) replacement.  This causes less hassle with things that don’t fit correct or that might have small differences.  In this case however it was nearly impossible and would have cost ~$400.


Blower Motor in the Furnace

I put the motor in, wired it up and turned it on.  Worked like a charm!  It did take my time and $86 total (plus tax) but I learned a lot in the process and I had time to do it.  There was no great rush or pressure since the weather here is between seasons and we don’t need AC or Heat. Estimated cost to hire an HVAC person to do what I did: $500!

And it was quite apparent what had caused the motor to burn out: the furnace filter hadn’t been changed in a year! The filter was all bent and sucked inward. Remember to change your filters often, monthly even, if you use your furnace year-round.


Yep, back in the garage on the floor with my blue shirt on..lol

All in all it was a productive few days.  We saved a lot of money by doing things ourselves and we had the time to do it.  I think I want to turn the old motor from the furnace into an electric wind generator.  We’ll see.  As is I am learning all about furnaces and that’s something I won’t need in Rincon…but it never hurts to learn.

The Honda Civic is small but can hold quite a bit! (removing debris from the yard)

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Best Plants to Have with Chickens

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Having chickens in your backyard is not exactly the easiest way to have a beautiful backyard. They love to scratch and peck, make dust bathing areas, and poop on the back porch. They also love to eat new seedlings and anything that has been freshly planted is prime for scratching (and, often, destroying) in the search for some good worms and bugs.

But with a little work, you can still have a nice area to hang out with your roaming little pocket raptors. Just spray the poop with a hose (no need to pick it up as it is free fertilizer), and encourage an area that you wouldn’t mind being a dust bath. There are also a few strong plants that can survive the onslaught of super hot fertilizer (chicken poop), and lots of disruptions. In fact, I would say if these plants can survive with chickens around, they are probably some of the most hardy plants around. And they are pretty too!


Chickens in the iris bed

Irises

Irises are very hardy plants and they look really pretty even when they are not in bloom. The spikes create a sort of tropical background. Then when the flowers bloom, it’s even more beautiful. Because they grow in clumps, it is difficult for the chickens to get in there and destroy them. When they spread and get too overgrown, you can separate the root rhizomes and plant them in new areas. I recommend planting them pretty close together to create the chicken deterrent effect.


The chickens and Schnoodle near the irises

Roses

Roses are both gorgeously fragrant and chicken-hardy. Because of their thorns, they are not messed with by the chickens.We have about 8 rose bushes in the backyard!


Rose bush and chickens

Others

Spreading plants like mint and daisies also do pretty well around chickens. Our comfrey plants are virtually unkillable, so if you like comfrey for its composting benefits and bumblebees, that’s another great choice. Raspberries, strawberries and other spreading plants that provide food also work, but you have to keep the chickens from eating the fruit! And surprisingly enough, regular old grass does remarkably well with chickens as long as you keep the number of chickens to a manageable number.


Daisies are great because they spread so eagerly

So what shouldn’t you plant around chickens? Well, pretty much any tender, sensitive or rare plant that you would hate to see stepped on, pecked at or scratched up. For example, our annuals like petunias and marigolds stay on our front porch in containers. Others that haven’t done too well around the chickens have been tulips, daffodils, mums and salvias. Some plants you can cultivate with the chickens in mind. For example, hostas are a little sensitive, but can be planted next to a house wall or corner where the chickens don’t have quite the access to scratching them. Or if you really want a sensitive-type plant, you can put chicken wire near it when it is young or first transplanted and then remove it once they grow full-size. As long as it’s not tasty to the chickens, they will leave most full size plants and trees alone.


Sensitive plants are kept separate from the chickens (in the front)


We keep the salvia (with bee) out front, but a full-grown plant might be ok

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Tulip Time!

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They’re actually starting to fade now, but last week, the tulips in our yard were absolutely stunning. Rather than attempt to describe them in too much detail, I’ll post a few pics.


I love the stripes in these!


So delicate!


Close up –reminds me of bright red lipstick


Red tulips line the walk up to our house


We also have a few other colors of tulips in the backyard like this one, but most have been trampled by the chickens


There’s also a few super strong daffodils back there with them but not many (the dandelions on the other hand….)

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