My Stuff

About Me (pics)
Everything you never wanted to know about me.

My Car
I'm a little nuts about my car!

My Family

Mom
The lady who went through to trouble of my gestation. She calls me George for no particular reason.

Dad
The guy who had the fun part of my being in the world.

Carrie
My oldest sister.

Katelyn
My 'lil sister.

Alex
personal blog
Not blood-related, but just as close.

Annie
The lil sister I never had. I actually have one, but still.

Kenna
Surrogate mother.

Bob
Quasi-dad and maker of the greatest ribs in history.

My Friends

Rachel
personal blog
My fiance.

Johnny 5000
My best friend since the sixth grade.

Gortho
My friend and roommate for the past few years.

Niccole
Friend originally through Katelyn.

Fun Kristan
Her name is Fun Kristan, 'nuf said.

Bish
personal website
The Great Bish. The best programmer I know.

Kurt
personal website
The Intern.

Dan
personal website
Co-worker.

Tall Kristen
personal website
Friend through Katelyn.

My Favorite Sites

Slashdot
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.

The New York Times
All the News Worth Wrapping in Markup.

Google
I hope no explanation is necessary.

The Jargon File
Dictionary of techy slang.

Fark
A daily collection of all the truly odd news on the net. Very funny stuff.

HowStuffWorks
The most fascinating collection of articles about how things work.

Wikipedia
The best encyclopedia ever written. And it's all free!

Project: Herb Garden

Project Started: 04-24-2006
Cost to Date: $133

So, I cook quite a bit and I so I buy a lot of fresh and dried herbs. The thing is, they run something like $5 for a package which are usually wilting and most likely weeks old. So, I decided to start my own herb garden. Seems like a good spring project, right?

The biggest issue with me starting an herb garden is that I don't have a yard. I don't have a garden or really any land which I can use to plant things. On the up-side I'm pretty darn good at keeping plants alive and thriving in pots, so that seemed like the right place to start. But before we get too far along, I'll list out my requirements...

• The garden must contain at least the following herbs: cilantro, oregano, basil, mint, chives, and parsley.
• The garden must be on the deck of my house, but it should not take up more than a few square feet of floorspace.
• Since I cook year-round, it would be nice to have the garden mobile enough to move indoors for the winter.
• The whole thing setup shouldn't be too expensive. A phased-in approach would be even better so I can spread out the cost.

Pretty easy, right? So I thought about a few options and came up with the one I'm going to try. First, I'll pick up one of those wire-metal shelving units that you can get pretty much anywhere. Then I'll get some sort of pan or something to put on the shelves to stop the water from draining out all over the place. The herbs themselves would go into smaller pots which would sit in the pans.

I found the shelving at Target. It's 54" high, 36" wide, and 14" deep. I only installed three of the four shelves so that the plants on the lower two shelves wouldn't get shadows from the plant above them. They'd also have quite a bit of room to grow, which is important too.

The shelving was something like $50.00, which is a bit more than I'd hoped to spend on this part of the project. Still, I think it's a perfect size, it looks nice, and it's pretty solid.

Next, I found the pans at Ikea. They're actually roasting pans that I found in their cookware area. It's $12 for a stainless steel, solid pan that's 14" deep by 10" wide, which is the perfect size. This was the very best find for this project. Cheep and perfect. I bought four for this first phase.

Next up I needed pots to plant the herbs in. Ikea had a really great selection. I ended up buying 16 galvanized steel pots. They're 5" in diameter and 4.25" tall. I think this is going to be just big enough to hold one or two full-grown plants, but small enough to be manageable and super-portable. I'm able to fit four of these pots into each pan. They were $0.99 each, so that's very cheep.

The only real problem with them is that they didn't have any drainage holes. That's a total deal-breaker for me, so I simply punched out four holes along the bottom of the side with an awl and hammer. I think that should work just fine.

I bought 7 packets of seeds from Target at $1.30 a piece and four small bags of normal potting soil for $2.50 a piece.

That should be all I need to buy for this phase. Next, once the plants have grown enough, I'll split the plants out into almost twice as many pots.

I planted the seeds in the pots on 03-29-2006.

1 x Wire Shelving: $50
4 x Broiler Pans: $48
16 x Pots: $16
7 x Packets of Seeds: $9
4 x Bags of Soil: $10
Phase 1 Grand Total: $133