I’ve use the cheap tomato cages before, and I’m always less then impressed. Tomatoes get too big for the cages quickly and I don’t find them extremely easy to use. Other tomato staking devices require too much money or too much work, like having to actually prune a tomato plant.

I grow 15+ tomato plants a year, and it requires an easy inexpensive staking solution. I’ve been doing this system for several years after seeing it on organic farm, and I love it. It’s easy and inexpensive. Here’s a look at my tomatoes, all staked up.

It’s simple. There are six foot tall t-posts on the end, with tape in between. I used two t-post for about 6-8 plants. After pounding in the t-posts, I tied off the tape and weaved it in between the tomatoes. In the past, I used twine but I’m liking the flexibility of the marking tape this year. (It’s not actually sticky tape and is found in the hardware story with other supplies like marking flags.) It does stretch a bit, so when the kiddie pool fell on top of my tomatoes I had to re-tighten the tape but it wasn’t a big deal.

As the season progresses, I’ll continue to add more levels of tape. If any tomato is especially floppy, I can use a small section of tape to tie it directly on to the bigger tape section. Since the tape is stretchy and soft, it’s not going to girdle my plants. I will have to monitor it because if it isn’t kept tight the tomatoes start to flop.

Material cost is very low, and the main materials (t-posts) will last for a long time. This year I had to upgrade/re-do the system, and the entire cost to stake 14 tomatoes was under $20. It’s easy to put in initially. It does take some work during the growing season, but I don’t find it excessive.

Shared in the HomeAcre hop.

The chickens were evicted from the brooder box. They stunk and were creating a huge amount of dust. The landlords were a bit nice and let them stay an extra week while their new home was being constructed.

We Joe has been working on the coop a lot trying to get it ready for the quickly growing chickens. Anytime we had any amount of free time, we would be out working on the coop. Because we were using reclaimed wood from the torn down shed, it took longer than it might have otherwise. Using reclaimed wood sounds great from an ecological and budget standpoint, but it also increases the time spent doing wonderful tasks like pulling out nails, discarding yet another board that split, and occasionally playing mini games of tetris to fill in a hole.

To make our coop we used plywood, a few two by fours, and side planking from the old shed. We also had an old door  two old cupboard doors, tar paper and a few other wood pieces lying around. We did buy all the hardware, extra two by fours, the run fencing, paint and shingles for a total coop price of $175. Not bad for a coop that is six feet by four feet.

Both Joe and I designed the coop, a lot of it just as we went. That did means at least one time of pulling off a whole side and re-doing it so it actually functioned. (You can notice the change in the door side in the pictures.) It also meant hastily installing a rain gutter before another rain storm after the freak snow storm revealed that the coop was far from water tight. Now we can collect rain water off of the roof, so the gutter was worth it.

The coop is very roomy for our small flock of four. (And we almost certainly have a rooster. Right now, he is the nicest chicken of the bunch and I wouldn’t mind if one of the hens went broody and I ended up with some free chicks.) We want to get more chickens in the future. I don’t want them so much for the eggs, but for their excellent soil preparation. I have a lot of weeds to get tilled up and I would rather the chickens did it than me.

We still aren’t quite done. We want to make the run more secure, and are almost done with a new feeder and chicken fountain. We also want to make the coop more mobile, which will require wheels. Here’s the chickens enjoying their new home.

Our backyard has never looked great. When we bought the house, I was fully aware the yard was a fixer upper. It has sat unchanged and only minimally maintained for decades. In contrast, the inside of the house was in pretty good shape, and had a lot of improvements done recently. I preferred this. I’m not a big fan or expert in flooring, but I do love a good and personalized garden. I wanted a yard where instead of ripping out decent landscaping to get what I wanted, I could just start from scratch.

One of the eyesores in our yard (besides the meatball shrubs that were promptly removed), was an old shed in the back. It had a bit of rustic charm to it, expect for the fact that it was filled with thirty year old garbage and leaning about twenty degrees to the west. At first, I couldn’t even comfortably get in the shed because the lean prevented the door from opening all the way.

Doors are easily removed, so I popped off the door and started sorting things. There were some cool finds in the shed–the most interesting was a set of vintage bikes. A lot of it was simply old garbage that should have just been taken to the dump rather than stored in a shed for decades. There were blanket and other fabric things covered in cat urine, old motors, air conditioning units, cardboard, jars (and not cool ones), torn up flooring, and even a sink. Everything in the shed was placed outside the shed for eventual disposal, free-cycling. or re-purposing.

Joe spent a Saturday ripping off old boards, and finally, knocking the shed over. No more shed. Happy day. Except…

We are now living in a junk yard. At least before all the garbage was cheerfully disguised as a rustic shed. Now it just looks like garbage.

Our city does spring clean-up with dumpsters and double garbage days in a month, and we are planning to dispose of much of the junk then. We also want to re-use some of the wood for the chicken coop, which is why we torn it down now and not later. I’ve already free-cycled some items (I had about 5 people in a half hour clamoring for an old window and screen door), and we will spend the next month sorting garbage.

I thought I was a gardener not a garbage sorter, but sometimes the jobs just overlap.

Our first real project in the yard was building a sandbox. I’m still waiting and observing before I tackle a lot of other projects, but I knew a sandbox would get immediate and prolonged use. I still remember playing in our large sandbox while I was growing up. My siblings and I would build volcanoes and elaborate landscapes. and then fill it up with water from the hose.

I choose a spot that wasn’t too close to the house, so that the there was a lower chance of tracking sand in. It had to be easily observed from inside, so the kids could go out and play and I wouldn’t have to come with them. And it also had to be away from anything prickly (and we have a variety of prickly things throughout the yard).

After choosing a spot, I just stared digging a bit to get an idea of what I wanted. To make the sandbox, I wanted to use material we had on hand. So I gathered some of the various items we have been saving for such projects and formed a good idea of what I what we were going to do.

And it kinda sat in a big pile for a week, because I can drag my feet when it comes to heavy digging. Luckily my husband is a harder worker than me, and in just a short amount of time he had it dug out and ready for sand.

We use logs for the sides (found on site), and sheet piles for the rear retaining wall. The sheet piles were from a construction job my brother-in-law was working on. (Construction garbage can be very useful for landscape projects.) The logs were secured with stakes and screws.

Then we dumped in a truckload of sand. We had a bit too much sand for the box, so we might have to adjust later on, but it works for now.

Like I anticipated, this did get immediate and frequent use. My oldest son had hardly ever asked to go outside; I’m always pushing him to go out and play. But he asks me to go outside all the time now, and he and his little brother sit and the sandbox and do what little boys do for hours.