All posts by Ashley

About Ashley

With a background in marketing communications, Ashley decided to take her interest in plants and gardening to the next level through The Alaska Urban Soil Project blog. As a newly self-proclaimed gardener, she's ready to blaze the trail for other wanna-be backyard vegetable gardeners and start an online community for fellow organic, local food lovers.

Do Chickens Eat Grass?

‘Do chickens eat grass?’ sounds like a rookie question for people who have been around chickens before. But before I got chickens and I was doing my poultry ownership homework, I had to Google it.

Now that I have my own little backyard brood, there’s no question: yes – chickens absolutely love fresh grass!

Here’s a video of me walking into the run area and feeding them a handful of grass.

Horizontal Coat Rack

Building a Custom Coat Rack for Your Home

Do you decorate chairs and couches
with winter jackets?

Be an adult.
It’s time for a DIY coat rack.

We needed a coat rack, but everything in stores was either stupid expensive, cheaply made (particle board coat hanger? Eeew!), or the wrong size for our space. Solution? Brian and I set off on an adventure to build our own custom coat rack.

DIY coat rack? This was either going to end really well or really poorly.

Continue reading Building a Custom Coat Rack for Your Home

cut blue jeans

DIY triple-decker plant hanger from recycled blue jeans

Recycling old jeans into a
DIY plant hanger.

 

 I had a pair of old blue jeans with a tear in an awkward place. They were too holey to donate, and I didn’t want to just throw them away.

Blue jean is a durable fabric – instead of tossing the old, ripped jeans in the trash, I decided to take the DIY recycling approach and attempted to sew a homemade triple-decker hanging planter. Continue reading DIY triple-decker plant hanger from recycled blue jeans

adding wood to a hugelkultur

Hugel-whaaat? Building an Alaska Backyard Hugelkultur

What started as
“Sweet, that’s an awesome idea!”
soon felt like

OMG did we really dig a massive hole in our yard??”
but now it’s more like

“Whew, done – YES!!”

 

Hugelkultur.

It’s a gardening word I had never heard of about 3 weeks ago (heck, it’s a word I still can’t pronounce) but it’s a pretty freaking spectacular gardening idea. And now I have one in my yard. Continue reading Hugel-whaaat? Building an Alaska Backyard Hugelkultur