Man in Overalls

Grand Opening:  Tallahassee  ABSolute Food Garden Gym Regular cardio exercises can help keep you fit, but food gardening is an essential, age-defying activity that should be a consistent part of your weekly routine. Food gardening not only will help chisel your body into a bathing-suit-worthy physique — it will make other activities like holding your kids, climbing stairs and carrying your groceries much easier down the line. " Food gardening should be one of the central components of your entire existence ," says the Man in Overalls, a personal trainer at the Tallahassee ABSolute Food Gardening Gym . "When you food garden, your whole life is going to be easier. It will even make everyday activities more fun." Food gardening also improves cognitive functioning and helps prevent bone and muscle weakening — not to mention that it will give you a confidence-boosting midsection that looks good in (and out of) your clothes.   Food Garden with the Man in Overall...

Last week, I put together this raised bed for Andreas, Sandra and Ted.  It's made of cedar construction treated with linseed-oil.  Take a look.  Also note the micro-irrigation tubing sticking out in preparation for filling with soil and compost The bed is 8x4x2.5ft.  If you multiply that out you get 32ft x 2.5ft or 80 cubic feet.  My truck bed holds a cubic yard, i.e., 27 cubic feet, so you could reasonably calculate that it would take less than three truck loads of substance to fill the raised bed  (72/27 = 2.9).  Such was my calculation when I began filling the raised bed. However, the soil I filled the bed with was magic soil, or so it seems because in order to fill the bed, I had to shovel in four truckloads of soil and compost.  That's approximately 108 cubic feet.   Try to wrap your mind around that.  And in the meantime, you can rid your mind of the notion that mathematics adequately describes the world around us.

What a gorgeous day to work on a food garden!  I hear it'd gonna rain again, and some coolness will follow.  But for the time being, we get to bask in the glory of early March warmth.  Didn't even have to burn the woodstove tonight. A new Square Foot Garden for Candie and Don.  Per their requests: Tomatoes (Better Boy, Early Girl, Heritage), bell peppers, banana peppers, eggplant, green (snap) beans, arugula, basil, cilantro, two kinds of parsley, garlic chives, dill, romaine and butter crunch lettuces and nasturtiums. Micro-Irrigation If you look real close, you can see the micro irrigation at work.  There are three mini-sprinklers spaced down the center of the bed.  Each mini-sprinkler is individually (and easily) adjustable to water a circle sized from one to five or six feet in diameter.  The whole system is on a user-friendly timer, so no worrying about not watering seeds enough or accidentally killing your starts because you ran out of tim...