We’ve been in our home two years. I don’t feel like I’ve been there that long. Here’s what we’ve done in two years:

Garden

• Removed old, awful shrubs
• Figured out how to use flood irrigation
• Added a couple of swales to the backyard
• Raised a flock of chickens
• Tore down an old shed and sorted through two sheds worth of very old stuff
• Built an herb spiral
• Gardened two seasons with a lot of tomatoes
• Planted asparagus, strawberries, rhubarb
• Planted a few perennials
• Removed the lawn in the front yard
• Developed a landscape design

Inside

• Tore up icky stick on tile
• Painted the dining room (that’s now a family room)
• Moved furniture around A TON!
• Dropped the stairs down
• Started remodeling the basement
• Finished a new master bedroom

I’m pretty happy with everything we’ve done, but we have tons to do still. I think I might live here for a long time, just because it will take me that long to finish everything I want to in the home. Hopefully we will finish our re-model project downstairs by next spring, and then we can start working on improving the garden. I want to construct some raised beds and start filling everything out with more plants.

After a bit of a late start, the tomatoes caught up. I’ve done more than 10 quarts of salsa, 12 quarts of tomato juice, crushed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and I still have counters full of tomatoes! I didn’t cage or trellis my tomatoes this year, so they are just lying on the ground. The slugs love that. I’m not too sad about it though, because they’ve let plenty for me.

Here’s the swales:

Really, I’ve been happy about how they turned out. Last year I planted some squash out here and it all died by mid-summer for various reasons. This year everything has done just great. And the irrigation system is amazing. Flood irrigation is often difficult to work with, but the swales are a perfect match. I just have to turn the gate twice a week, and it fills ups nicely. I never have to adjust it, worry about low or high water volume, and nothing has dried out.

The fennel in the herb spiral has flowered, and the seeds are almost ready to pick. I might have enough fennel seed to last the next 20 years, it’s not a herb I use frequently. Well, actually, I don’t really use any herb that frequently. Something to work on.

Where does science belong in the home garden? Horticulture is a branch of science, and it is filled with information. With pinterest and Facebook, it’s pretty easy to come across gardening recomendations. The information can come from actual research, anecdotal trials or observations, or people just plain making up things.

Turning to professionals can also be a gamble. In the field, there is a huge range of expertise out there: from the mow and blow guys who probably don’t even understand what type of lawn you have, to professors who spend careers researching just what exactly is the best mulch to put down. I’ve been thinking about good horticulturists who are trying to give the best information out there: What advice should they give?

Some home remedies and recommendations are plain untrue; others are extremely misunderstood. Here’s a false one I see all the time: male and female peppers. A good one that is usually misunderstood is vinegar as a weed killer, often portrayed as a safer round-up (an oversimplification and not very accurate). You could go into organic gardening and GMO’s, that have so much misinformation and emotion attached that it’s often hard to get a rational discussion going. There are also recommendations that have loads of research behind them, and are just plain good ideas, like mulching. Getting the right information on things like this is important.

But how about techniques that are not necessarily against science, but just lack research? A lot of permaculture techniques fall into this category, like hugelkultur, and legume support species. Ideally, everything could have extensive, multiple research studies, but it’s not going to happen. Without good concrete information should something that is based on anecdotal trials or observation be recommended? And if something is recommended based on purely anecdotal evidence, is it wrong?

For Extension agents, Master Gardeners, and anyone portraying themselves as a horticulturist they should stick to the science. But I don’t think they have to disregard anecdotal recommendations (unless they are just wrong), just portray them as anecdotal: something to try, not a sure-fire solution.

If you are trying something out to see if it’s working, why not make a mini-research project out of it? Compare it against a control. I love to experiment in my garden and try out new things, and home gardens are the perfect place for this. Our gardens are small and we aren’t trying (usually) to get a profit out of it. What I do often neglect, is to not only experiment, but include controls and ways to measure so I can actually know if something I’m trying is working or not.

I love getting the right information, but I also don’t like it when I see anecdotal or pseudoscience put down, not because it’s wrong, but because there isn’t any research. We don’t stay away from the unknown in science. We embrace it and experiment on it until we know if it’s right or not.

Science belongs in the home garden. And it’s not by following tried and true, already proven recommendations. It’s by trying new, radical, and unknown options in a controlled way so we can gain more information.

I believe that right now that there is a huge rift in the information we can get. On one side we have the scientist telling us to do what has been proven to be scientifically correct. On the other hand are people who disregard science and simply tell us what sounds good. What we need is people to inform us what is proven, what is wrong, and what is experimental. And then not only provide us that information, but provide the means necessary to test out experimental information, if desired, in a controlled way so we know if it actually works or not.

Fall is busy. I once again failed to plant fall crops. Well, actually I did plant some, but let them dry out and they are dead now. It’s hard to want to plant more vegetables when I have shelves full of produce to process.

The tomatoes this year were a bit slow. Usually I’ll start getting small, early varieties in July. I don’t think I got a tomato until mid August. But they are making up for it now. The heirloom tomatoes in the huglekultur/swale beds are going crazy. I’ve made batch after batch of salsa (I’ve got an hefty supply of tomatillos too), ratatouille, and frozen crushed tomatoes.

The kids and I made a tomato stand and sold a few tomatoes. They were mainly Cherokee Purple tomato, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. They do not can well because they are too juicy. I figured it out with a happy accident.

My grandmother gave me a juicer on a recent visit. It was sitting on the counter and needed to be cleaned up before I put it away. While we were cleaning it up, I decided to juice a few tomatoes to see how it worked.

And I ended up with six quarts of tomato juice, canned and ready for storage. The pulp was put in the freezer for soup and such. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get the motivation to can anything: I enjoyed just kind of slipping into it after my first idea to juice a few tomatoes grew big rather quick. It’s really good tomato juice too.

I bought plain white roman blinds from Ikea. I never intended to keep them white, I had spray paint waiting for me at home.

I’ve been working on decorating my bedroom. I wanted a chair or loveseat in there, but the room is small and then we put a king bed in there, so I just didn’t have enough room. And then I found this at our local thrift store:

This small loveseat rocker was perfect. Small, but still big enough for two people and it fit in the space I had for it. The first thing I did was throw away the awful cushions that had too many reminders of cats. And the ruffle had to go.

After that was all gone, it had very nice bones. I thought of painting it (everyone paints furniture nowdays), but there was really no reason for it.

The cushions were a bit tricky to replace. The size was weird and didn’t fit anything ready made I could find. I didn’t want to get caught up trying to make them myself. I guess I could have saved the old ones and reupholstered them, but I think if it smells like cats, even a little bit, it should go into the garage. So I just didn’t get cushions that fit as well as before. Instead I found a lounge cushion in the as-is department of Ikea that was about the right size to use on the bottom, and put normal cushions on the top. Here is my rocker now:

It was a fun little find. Total cost (if you care, I always like to know how much stuff costs) was $25 for the rocker and $30 for the cushions. Time wise, a couple shopping trips and a few minutes just cleaning.