Category Archives: Gardening

How to Repair Greenhouse Panels with a Riveter

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We get lots of wind.  Not only do we live on the plains in a desert, but we don’t have any houses behind us to block the wind.  So when it gets windy, we see the brunt of it.

The other day the wind picked up and broke a few panels on our greenhouse.  I wasn’t able to get a hold of the company that made it so I had to come up with my own solution to fixing it.  I tried small screws, I tried glue and a few adhesives but nothing was working to well.   The screws seemed to work about the best but it wasn’t a good fix.


Our Hobby Greenhouse

I figured I’d try a rivet tool.  I found one at the store for ~$10.  It worked great.  Just drill a hole, put the rivet in, squeeze the handles and bam.  Done!


Installed Rivets

I am not sure how much longer this greenhouse will survive, but I figure I can keep it together for at least a few more years.  It serves as a chicken home in the winter and a place to grow fun stuff in the summer.  I bet I can find all kinds of uses for this new tool too!  🙂


Rivet Tool

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Avocados Galore!

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My aunt Laura invited us to an avocado tasting party put on by the Avocado Diva and Vintage Inn in Eaton/Galeton. We had so much fun! The bed and breakfast was a beautiful house and the hostess is a terrific cook. There were all sorts of different foods to try that had a little avocado in them. From chocolate/avocado fudge and avocado salad to delicious guacamole and avocado leaf tea!


A nice spread of avocado and other snacks!

The Avocado Diva brought all of these avocados straight from small-scale farms in California. We learned all about different types of avocados including such varieties as Zutano, Bacon, Pinkerton, and the most famous: Haas. The type we were most impressed by was the Mexicola! According to the Avocado Diva, Brenda, this is the original wild Mexican avocado. It looks sort of like a fig or a plum and the skin is edible! The skin has a sort of nutty flavor to it. This is also the variety that you can use the licorice smelling leaves in iced tea. What’s more, is unlike most of the hybridized varieties, this one you can grow true to form from the seed. So we are going to try and sprout some here and maybe in PR too!


The small black, smooth-skinned Mexicola Avocado in comparison with another variety

We bought a variety box of them and are looking forward to enjoying our gourmet avocados for the next couple of weeks! Yay! We did find two or three avocado trees on our property in Rincon, so this makes us all the more excited to eat off our land! We learned today that there are avocados that mature at different seasons. Some are summer varieties and some are winter while others are year-round producers. We would love to be able to eat these all year round!


Holding a small Mexicola next to our box of goodies

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Greeley Tree Branches Everywhere!

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After the first snow of the season and then a subsequent snowfall only a few days later, all the deciduous trees in our area suffered. Most of the trees still had all their leaves and so the snow just weighed them down like heavy blankets. That first night we could hear snapping and cracking and a lot of people were out of power for days because they had broken on top of power lines, and then those came down too!


The oak tree behind me in this picture lost its top completely

The city of Greeley initially said that they would come around and pick up any broken branches that were piled on the side of the road. Now they are saying to bring them to them as there are a LOT more tree branches than they realized. If you want more info from the city of Greeley about the tree clean up (of which they have already hauled away 16,000 cubic yards!!), including location and hours for drop off and pick up, you can see their press release here.


A LOT of trees!

Most of the hugest piles have been cleaned up, but there are still quite a few piles of trees everywhere in Greeley. It looks like a hurricane or tornado passed through! And the poor remaining trees look really sad and some of them have split straight down the center. I’m sure a good many of them won’t come back next spring unfortunately. Thankfully, we uncovered ours from the snow before they snapped.


You can really see how much Colorado has turned into the cold, dead season

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Coffee Beans in Colorado?!

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Schnoodle with some of the various tropical plants in our house -coffee tree is furthest left

Coffee Tree
A Healthy Coffee Plant has Nice glossy dark green leaves

We have had a small coffee plant for the last few years.  In the summer we put it in the humid greenhouse and it grows well. Then in the winter we bring it inside, where it lives..but doesn’t exactly thrive.   But this year we watered it a little more and… it started to bloom.

Cassie played the role of the honey bee and pollinated some of the blossoms by hand by touching the pollen from flower to flower. We hadn’t thought much of it until just the other day when we saw….Green coffee berry beans!


Colorado Coffee Beans

We will continue to let them grow and I doubt we’d have enough even for a single cup of coffee, but it’s still fun and having tropical plants around us invokes thoughts of Puerto Rico.  Of course the coffee plants in PR are a hundred times more fragrant and bigger!  Perhaps if we have enough beans/seeds we will try to grow another tree or two here in CO.  When we get to PR we might plant a whole acre of them!

Coffee Flowers
Little pom-pom white scented puffs of flowers soon turn into the berries

This is a coffee bush in Puerto Rico (makes our Colorado coffee beans look silly)

UPDATE: Click on links to see the red coffee berries turn into beans and new coffee plant seedlings.

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