Mia Gets an EarthBox® !

Less than two days after I posted about the EarthBox® giveaway, we have a winner! Congratulations to Mia, of San Francisco, who won the EarthBox® earlier today.  You should be receiving it soon, and I'd love it if you'd let me know what you are planning to grow in it.  I'll be planting mine very soon!

Even though the free EarthBox® has been given away, let me remind you that you can still enter to get the coupon good for 10% off anything in my OpenSky store until Monday, April 12, 2010.  That makes the EarthBox® just $41.40! But there are 30 other items for sale right now too, and I'll be adding a few more items in the next several days.

Thank you for entering the giveaway and for looking at my OpenSky shop. And congratulations once again to Mia! 

Happy gardening!

Didn't Get an EarthBox® the Last Time? WIN ONE!

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the EarthBox® that my mom gave me and at that time, I offered a 15% discount on it when it was purchased through my OpenSky shop. Several of you took great advantage of that awesome discount, but some of you may have missed it.  Generally, any discounts only run for one week.

Well, here's your chance to get one for FREE!  I'm not kidding.  One lucky reader will WIN an EarthBox®.  The winner is generated at random and will find out within five minutes of entering.  Everyone else who enters will receive a coupon good for 10% off any purchase in my OpenSky shop.  The coupon will expire on Monday, April 12, 2010 at midnight, EDT, so be sure to use it right away.

If you're not familiar with the EarthBox®, it's a compact growing system that allows you to grow a fair volume of herbs, vegetable, fruits or flowers in a relatively small space. For more information about it, please see my post about it here.

I've not yet planted mine, but the time is getting near when I will be.  I've decided to grow cucumbers in it, since I can't seem to grow them in the garden very well.  Everyone I've ever talked to that has an EarthBox® loves it, so I'm looking forward to having great cucumbers later this summer!

So how do you enter?  Click through this link and enter your e-mail address. It's that simple.  Even if you don't win one (a $46 value), you'll get the coupon for 10% off anything in the shop, through next Monday, April 12, 2010.

To visit my OpenSky shop to see what else I have, click the OpenSky logo below.

I've got other awesome gardening items there, such as the Cobrahead Cultivator and Weeder,  Fiskars Bypass Lopper PowerGear, Kangaroo Gardening Container, WheelEasy LE Garden Cart, Kombi Pro-Series Garden Shovel, and a Mason Bee House.  In all, there are 31 items that I personally chose, and for one week, you'll be able to get 10% off any and all of them, when you enter the giveaway.

GOOD LUCK to all who enter! If you have any questions, please leave them in a comment to this post and I'll do my best to answer them!

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Tweet by Jennah, who ordered an EarthBox through my shop last month:

"Came home to a message from OpenSky thanking me and making sure my order went OK. Great customer service!"

Thank YOU, Jennah!

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EarthBox® - It's Not Just For Tomatoes!

A few years ago, my mom bought an EarthBox®. I'd heard about them, but I thought, "Why spend the money when I could just grow the same things in the garden?"  She wanted to grow tomatoes in it and I didn't really like tomatoes anyway.

Then she grew tomatoes. I mean...

She.

Grew.

Tomatoes.

I grow tomatoes successfully every summer, but I only purposely put a couple of plants out in addition to allowing a few volunteers to remain, since Romie is the only one who eats them.  Last year, I grew one 'Cherokee Purple' and one 'Brandywine,' both heirlooms. The volunteers are almost always the cherry type.

But the size and amount of tomatoes my mom grew in her EarthBox® were nothing short of amazing. She'd show them off every time I visited her.  How on "Earth" she managed to get those plants to perform like that can only be attributed to their tried and true method of growing.  I suddenly looked at her EarthBox® through new eyes.

She liked her EarthBox® for several reasons.  Using their planting system, she set the plants in (only two!), added the fertilizer, filled the reservoir with water, and she was done.  She can start the plants earlier in the spring, because it's on casters which allows her to move the EarthBox® inside on cold nights and back outside during the day. She waters again when the reservoir indicates it's needed. That's it until she starts enjoying the fruits of the EarthBox®'s labor.

Last week, she asked me if I wanted to have her EarthBox®. What do you think I said? "Why yes, I'd be happy to take that off your hands!" Because tomatoes aren't the only things you can grow well in the EarthBox®. Pretty much anything you can grow in a garden, you can grow in the EarthBox®, only better!

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Beginning Thursday, March 4th, the EarthBox® is discounted by 15% when purchased through my OpenSky Shop.  Just use the code EARTHBOX15 when checking out. The 15% discount is good through next Thursday, March 11th.  This means you can get one for yourself for an incredible price just in time for spring planting!

In addition, you can get 10% off any of the products featured in OpenSky's Spring is Coming! promotion.  Visit the page at: http://promo.theopenskyproject.com/springiscoming.html to see which products you can purchase for 10% less from March 4-11, 2010.  When you enter your e-mail address, you will receive a special code that will allow you to receive the discount.

(You'll notice the EarthBox® offered on this promotional page as well. But you can buy it for a 15% discount by using the code EARTH15 when checking out.)

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Photo of EarthBox® from earthbox.com

What Birds Did You See Last Weekend?

The Great Backyard Bird Count 2010 is now one for the books and I'm happy to have been a part of it.  While I always love watching the birds and their antics, focused attention on them always brings about new insights to their behavior.

For example, I found that Black-capped Chickadees are flitty little things, difficult to photograph without blurring. They feed by grabbing a seed (sunflower seeds were a favorite) and taking it to a tree, where they peck at it to crack it open so they can eat the meaty insides. 

 Black-capped Chickadee

Again and again, they visited the feeder just long enough to get another seed, then quickly retreated to their branch. I wonder if they do this so they won't have to compete with other birds and can enjoy their meal in private.

Cardinals and Blue Jays are usually common visitors to our yard, preferring the berries of the Washington Hawthorn trees here.  But throughout three days of official counting, not a single Blue Jay and only two Cardinals were seen.  There are still plenty of berries for them, so I'm not sure where they were.

House Finch - male and female

GBBC wants to know which species of bird you saw the most of at one time, and here, it was the House Finch.  Once, I counted seven of their red heads chowing down, oblivious to the other birds around them and to me, watching at the window.
 
The most fun to watch were the White-breasted Nuthatches, because they insisted on eating upside-down, even when they had a handy perch to rest upon. I think they're an especially beautiful bird and never tire of watching them or hearing their staccato calls. They alternated between the songbird mix and the sunflower seed, wanting little to do with the nyjer seed.

 White-breasted Nuthatch

I had three feeders situated just outside the three side-by-side windows overlooking the patio.  It's a fairly well protected area on the east side of the house, out of our most common west winds.  The birds have learned that this is the place to come for a snack, so I had them filled to the top in preparation for the count.

Most of the usual suspects showed up, with one surprise arriving late yesterday, just as I was finishing my counting for the day...

 American Robin on Honeysuckle

Contrary to popular belief, seeing a Robin isn't a reliable harbinger of spring.  Many Robins will spend the winters in the north if they're able to reliably find food.  We see them all winter here, undoubtedly because of the Hawthorn trees as well as the Honeysuckles and Crabapple trees.  Now, when you start seeing the Red-winged Blackbirds in ditches and fields, then you can get excited about spring!

What birds did you see in your backyard? If you've done a blog post about it, let me know and I'll link to your post here:

• A Gardener in Progress - Bird count results and a bird behavior question
• Garden Endeavors - GBBC 
• The Transplantable Rose - GBBD, GBBC & Foliage: A Portmanteau Post
• Living With Plants -  Counting Cardinals and Other Feathered Friends
• Birding on Broadmeade - My GBBC 
• My View -  The Great Backyard Bird Count Weekend
• More Family and Flowers -  Birds and Foliage Follow-Up (there are actually several posts on this site regarding the weekend's GBBD
• The Queen of Seaford -  Four and Twenty...
• Fairegarden - One, Two, Three...
• Kasey's Korner -  GBBC results

Total Bird Counts - February 13-15, 2010

American Goldfinch  20
Black-Capped Chickadee  10
Dark-Eyed Junco  9
White-breasted Nuthatch  6
House Finch  9
Pine Siskin  5
Northern Cardinal  2
Sparrow  10
American Robin  1

American Goldfinch

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Good quality feeders are a MUST.  I like those that are easy to clean and those that are made with quality materials.  I've bought some cheaper ones and end up having to replace them because they don't hold up to the weather.  They either rust or fall apart.

One that I like is the Droll Yankee Sunflower/Mixed Seed feeder that I offer in my OpenSky Shop.  The top and bottom remove for easy filling and cleaning and the feeding ports are metal reinforced to protect them from enthusiastic feeders. It's got a Lifetime Warranty against squirrel damage, too!  It really does pay to buy a higher quality feeder.

Where Did Those BUGS Come From?

No matter how careful you are to treat your outside plants for insect pests in the fall, before you bring them in for the winter, you'll likely encounter some anyway, before winter's over.

The last couple of years, I finally got the fungus gnats under control.  I learned not to overwater and that was a huge help. I'll see one now and then, but not nearly like I did that first winter that I had so many plants in the house.

That first winter, I also had problems with white flies on the Brugmansia plants.  I thought I'd never get rid of those. Took me half the winter to do so.  Back then, I didn't pay much attention to using organic means to rid my plants of them and while I can't remember exactly what I used, I know it's not something I would use now.

One pest I've had to battle every single year since are spider mites on my Brugmansias.  The little boogers seem to love them.  They don't show up right away and I always wonder where they come from, since I have never had a problem with them when the plants were outside. But just let me bring them in the house and eventually there they are, clustered on the stems and leaves, in their webs.

The best thing I've found to control them that I'm comfortable using in the house (or out, for that matter) is Neem Oil.  It doesn't smell bad, isn't toxic, and it works.  It may take more than one treatment to rid the plants of them, depending on how badly they're affected, but once they're gone, they're gone for good.

For this reason, I've chosen to carry Neem Oil concentrate in my OpenSky shop.  I only carry products there that I believe in.  Most of them I use personally. 

Neem oil comes from the fruit and seed of the Neem tree (Azadirachta indica), which is native to India and is widely used in organic agriculture.  It's easy to mix the concentrate with water and more cost effective to buy that way, even though it's not an expensive product anyway. 

I've found it to be a great multi-purpose product you can use as a spray to control spider mites, aphids, white flies, thrips, mealy bugs, and fungus, among others.

Our Little Acre Joins The Open Sky Project!

Last fall, I was contacted by The Open Sky Project about the prospect of becoming a shopkeeper with their company.  I'd heard about this innovative venture a couple of months before, and I was intrigued with the idea of shopkeepers, suppliers, and shoppers working together to make a difference in how people shop for the items they want.

After considering everything the company does and the way they do it, I agreed to become an Open Sky shopkeeper. Their website explains it best just what OpenSky is:

• We handpick people with passion, specialized knowledge and a point of view to become Shopkeepers.
  
  
• Shopkeepers manage their own OpenSky shop: they curate a collection of their favorite products, create original content about those products, and provide insights and advice to Shoppers.
  
  
• OpenSky empowers Shoppers to pursue their passions, discover extraordinary products, and make educated buying decisions guided by people they trust.

What it boils down to is this:  If your interest is let's say, gardening, and you want to find products that passionate gardeners have knowledge about, recommend, and may use themselves, then you choose shopkeepers with that same interest.

Each shopkeeper has personally chosen the items you see in their store. You can connect with the shopkeeper personally through their shop, asking questions and making suggestions, and you'll get a response from the shopkeeper themselves.

OpenSky has a great FAQ page that may answer any questions you might have about this new and innovative way to shop.

So, without further ado, I invite you to shop at my new OpenSky shop, Our Little Acre, where we're always open for business!

Click on the graphic below to enter the shop:

Shop Our Little Acre at OpenSky

Featured product:

This is one of my very favorite garden tools.  I confess that I'd not heard of the CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator before Spring Fling last May, when I met Anneliese from her family's company. But after talking with her and other gardeners that had used it, I promptly ordered one when I got home. 

I've used it ever since and have to say it's one of the most versatile tools I've ever used in my garden.  It's especially good for working the soil between tightly situated plants. It's been likened to a giant fingernail and I'd say that's a pretty good analogy!