Gardening advice from Triathlon participants

My husband, my hero, completed a sprint Triathlon this weekend!   The reason I am telling you this is because I am super proud of him, but also I was eavesdropping on another conversation while waiting for him to complete the bike leg of the event.

Two guys were talking about gardening and I heard 2 great pieces of advice:

1) You know those pesky weeds that are in your garden, especially the grass that just doesn't disappear by pulling it out by the roots?  Well, a suggestion for that was to get a PVC pipe, about 8" wide and cut it down to about 6" high.  Put the PVC pipe over the weeds/grass you want to disappear and spray it with weed/grass killer.  WE are not into using chemicals in our garden, so be careful of the kind you use.  Make sure when you are using the PVC pipe it is not close to your veggies. And of course there are other ways of taking care of your weed situation, but this is just a piece of advice.

2) If you decide to grow melons next spring/summer, put hay down all around the plants.  That way you will keep the weed situation at a minimum and when the melons set down shoots you don't have to weed around the plant as it is getting bigger.

We want chickens!

We want chickens.  We want them for a few reasons:
1) add egg shells to our compost
2) eat the eggs
3) maybe eat the roosters
4) they are cute
5) entertainment for our dog

The last two are just silly.

We moved our garden this fall to a sunnier area so where we had the garden before is still fenced in and perfect to just add a chicken coop and some chicks.  This is our plan for the springtime.  I have been peeking around online for the best chicken coop and so far this one is my favorite.

http://www.kippenhouse.com/index.html



Not only it is chicken coop but it is also a green roof.  The roof is the perfect place to grow some nutrious food for the chickens and the family. 

If you have chickens, what kind of coop do you have?  We would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Have a fun weekend y'all!

not quite a year .....

I think that the time we stopped blogging, we were in high wedding water... meaning that we were almost drowning in favors, dresses and flowers. We took a break and got to marry our best friend (each other : )) in April.  Then a few days after we got married we found out we were pregnant. And Baby Leff is due to be born sometime this winter. This has been quite a year with many beautiful changes. 
Aaron and I decided today that we need to stay on top of our Facebook and blog postings.  So for now, expect that we will be putting a post in both places at least once a week.

As for Harvest in the City business, we are steadily selling our compost in three stores in North Carolina:
1) Durham - Barnes Supply Co.
2) Raleigh - Homewood Nursery
3) Greensboro - Ace Hardware at 419 Pisgah Church Road

Please check out all three locations if you are in that area, because each store has a feel of its own. Barnes is known for its diverse pet food and treats, Homewood for it incredible plant selection and Ace has an all around supply of everything you need, but locally owned by a couple of great guys!  And each place sells the incredible system for returning your Harvest in the City Compost pails. 
We are happy that we are back and we hope you are too!!!
Let us know how your garden grows this fall, we would love to hear from you too.