Plants and gardening happiness

[Dragon Lady]

So, between this site on things you can grow in pots (apples? bananas? Who knew?) and this site on espaliered fruit trees I have been in heaven all day. I'm so excited for my new house to be built and to start planting. I just need to use this time to get a good plan.

squeal!!!!

[Whistler]

yeah, those espaliered trees look pre-tty awesome

[Marduk]

DL, let me know when it is and when you do. I want to share in your planting joys.

[Dragon Lady]

DL, let me know when it is and when you do. I want to share in your planting joys.

Will you really?! Because this makes me very happy. Planting won't actually happen till spring, since we won't move into our new place till this fall. But it will happen this coming spring. And planning will be happening all the time before that. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with my veggie garden. I don't have a lot of yard space, so I want to utilize space as much as possible. I figure I'll do square foot gardening. Quite possibly raised beds. But even then I have options as to how to lay it out. And I'll probably do more vertical growing so I don't have tons of space taken up by squash and melons and such. But there are still so many decisions to be made! I'd really like enough space to grow enough food to do some canning. I have this fear that it might not happen, though. :S Unless I can figure out some way to turn my unfinished basement into a greenhouse.

So... uhhh... did that answer your question?

[Wisteria]

Oooh! Oooh! Talk to me about turning your unfinished basement into a greenhouse-nursery for starting plants in!! And quite possibly continuing to grow them all summer!
I'm with Marduk. I'm such a plant nerd it's not even funny. But I guess you'd expect that from someone who majored in plant biology . . .

[Dragon Lady]

WHY ARE WE NOT FRIENDS?! Let's definitely talk. I've been looking at growing things like banana trees in pots, then moving them inside during the winter. If I could make my basement useful in growing plants and such, i'd be in heaven. It's even a south and west (and a little east)-facing daylight basement, so it gets a fair bit of sun.

[Wisteria]

Talking will ensue for sure!! Right now I must away to bed though, so I can be awake for work tomorrow.

[Dragon Lady]

So, apparently, the three of us need to set up a talk somehow... somewhere...

[Tao]

So, I'd caught on that you were getting a new home, didn't realize it was to be a new build. Are you going owner-builder?

[Dragon Lady]

No. Richmond American is building for us. So it's not so much a custom build. Sadly. But… we weren't even in the market for building, really. We just wanted to buy. Until we discovered that we didn't love any house we looked at to buy. And then we accidentally stumbled into a house for sell, but by a builder and that got us on that road. Then I fell in love with a house by RA, and convinced Yellow he loved it too (ok, there was no convincing. He loved it, too) and then I convinced myself that I loved it enough to justify only .2 acres [sigh] and now it's being built! So it's not really all that sad that it's not custom. (Is that what you meant by owner-builder?)

After this one is paid for and we have some savings built up, my hope is that we can build a custom home with a much bigger plot of land where I can have all my dream features. Like secret rooms hidden behind bookcases. And a library. And a canning kitchen (or maybe a kitchen built outside for canning?) and lots of room for fruit trees and garden and a flower garden that you can walk through with benches, and a yard (read: grass) big enough for croquet. And a greenhouse. Big enough for a banana tree. And, of course, it'll all be paid for in cash (once we sell our house we'll be living in. I have no delusions that we'll be able to save up THAT much cash while also paying a mortgage). Oh, and it has recently been brought to my attention that I also need a rooftop garden there. Oh! And a waterfall. And all this will be done in time to host all our kids' wedding receptions in our gorgeously landscaped backyard. Clearly I have very, very realistic dreams. (But I'm serious about making this happen. [crosses fingers])

[Tao]

Ah, I see. I worked under a general contractor building houses for a while and was rather impressed with the cost-effectiveness of the owner-builder programs in Idaho. Basically it is where the owner is a second general overseeing each step of the building process. I think that the loans are a bit tougher to get, but the bottom dollar is much lower. (ie. we were building custom houses when finished and fully appliance-d came in under 100$ per square foot.) Granted, that was staying cheap, no granite countertops for example, (though they did splurge on a georgous cultured marble shower... ver' nice.) also it was in Idaho where things are cheaper in general. I was wondering if it'd be a viable option down here in Utah.

[Dragon Lady]

Yeah, we're definitely not doing that. But in good news, I just figured it out and our house is at $83/square foot. (Though, 1/3 of the house isn't finished, so that'll probably be higher when we're all done… assuming we finish the basement.) And we stayed pretty cheap, too. No granite or tile for us. Though, I did get a deluxe kitchen with two ovens. (It was a promotion, so we got it for free.)

[Tao]

Hmmm. I wonder if this would work...

nope. Anyway I can attach excel spreadsheets to a post?

[Digit]

You could create a spreadsheet in Google docs, give it wide open privacy (could create account just for this to separate yourself from it), and paste the link. I didn't say it's a smooth idea.

/lurk

[Whistler]

http://xkcd.com/949/ file transfer still in the stone age of the internet

[Tao]

maybe as an image?
Weird the details that get lost... odd. Well, that was a nice way to avoid doing homework for a bit.

[Digit]

That works. I didn't know if you wanted to allow others to actually download the spreadsheet for them to have and use. If you want that image to show up here, you could enclose the url between [ i m g ] tags. I interspersed spaces to make sure that showed up.

[Tao]

aye, it was a bit large for that. I tried to make it accessable, but gdocs and excel don't mesh that well when it comes to pseudo-CADing it seems, it kept the shading and the cell size, and that's about it. Meh, this works. I just was fiddling around to see what kind of acreage it would take, as well as what kind of layout I'd throw together if I was planning such a yard.

[Dragon Lady]

wait… was that planning my yard? Cuz it's definitely not that big. Sure, it's .2 acres, but that also has a house sitting on it.

[Whistler]

I think, given that it includes and gazebo and greenhouse with a kitchen, it is some kind of dream house with a focus on gardening?