So when I went out to play today, after finally curing my baby, it made me very happy! Didn’t get as much done as I wanted, as usual, but I did pot up a few pepper seedlings that really did need bigger homes. Also took out my bolting window box lettuce and planted some ageratum and globeflower seedlings in there instead. I put the window boxes in front of the container garden bed, cuz my daughter’s dog keeps knocking it down with his leash. I thought that might help keep the dirt in place.

So, for all you people who still have cold, soggy soil, dream on! You can make fun of me in July when my garden is dead, and I’m waiting for cooler weather to start the fall garden.

The other day, before my computer went berserk, I tried to get started on the lasagna bed for the Sweet Potatoes. When I tried to poke the digging fork in the ground, it pretty much bounced back up into my teeth. It hasn’t rained in ages, so the clay is concrete again. I got my milk jugs and soaked the area real well overnight. So here’s a lovely pic of my milk jug garden! LOL!

Not much else going on in the garden. Stuff is growing, and looking pretty good. Except for the chard! Danged cabbage loopers found it, but I sprayed some bt the other day, and it seems better. Would have sprayed again tonight, but had grandson stuff going on…

Until next time…

Lots going in in the garden, as you’d expect this time of year.

The volunteer tomatoes keep pumping out fruit; I’ve collected more than 4 3/4 lbs of tomatoes so far. And they taste so good! My under-the-shade lettuce is still hanging in there, but I doubt for much longer. Now that I’ve gotten rid of the stupid little green caterpillars and the snails, we actually get to eat some of it.

BTW, that Sluggo snail and slug stuff works. I’m finding dead snails all over the place.

I have a few cukes almost ready to pick, some zucchini getting there, and even a watermelon, some cantaloupes, and another kind of melon coming along. Would have had some green beans, but bean borers keep getting into them.

Oh, if you’re still wondering…in my previous two posts, I mentioned using Gold Bond medicated powder to dust the cucumber and melon leaves to keep the cucumber beetles from killing them. It sure seems to work. We had a couple of rains, which washed it off. If I forgot to reapply, I had holes in the leaves. This reminded me very quickly, for sure. I kept the plants dusted for about two weeks, then decided to stop and see what happened. They must have migrated to somebody else’s garden, because I haven’t found any new holes in several days.

I planted another succession square of bush beans recently. One day I noticed ants crawling up the stems from under the mulch, and the poor seedling looked nearly sucked dry and dead. Next day, I noticed the ants on the next bean seedling over. I happened to have the powder in my hand, so I just dumped some down around the stems of the affected plants. Figured it would annoy the ants, if nothing else. Let me tell you, they did not like that at all. Acted like I had dumped poison on them. So naturally I dumped some around the stems of the rest of the beans too. No more problems with ants in the beans. Cool, huh? Too late for the first two seedlings, but the rest are okay so far.

I still wander on over to Gardenweb every so often. Popped in on the Organic Gardening forum recently and saw a post titled One of the best recipe 2. I figured any topic that needed two threads had to be interesting, so started reading at the beginning. The Original Poster is a girl in Russia, who uses a traditional Russian drink she calls kvas to water her plants. It’s essentially 6 Tbsp rye flour, 2 Tbsp molasses mixed in a gallon of water from which you have let the nasty stuff evaporate for 24 hrs. You put it in a closed jug, shake it frequently, and do not open for 3 days. The stuff ferments into something that Russians swear is very healthy for you to drink. Apparently plants think so too.

I gave it a try, thinking it surely couldn’t hurt. Go read the thread(s) and decide for yourself, but I gotta tell you, my garden sure seems to love the stuff. I foliar feed it at 1 cup per gallon in my sprayer, sometimes combining with cornmeal tea, baking soda spray, or garlic/pepper tea as necessary, about twice a week so far. Plants looks so much greener, seem more able to handle the heat, and seem to be making more fruit than previously. All in all, the garden is doing much better (knock on wood) than it did last year.

In conjunction with our house-hunting, I’ve been doing lots of garden-related reading to help me decide what kind of a garden I want when we actually do get a house. Yes, I’m still daydreaming about it…

I’ve come across some very interesting ideas, about which I will post soon. Until then…

Before I get on with the flowers, got a quick question. I’ve mentioned previously that we were thinking of moving into a bigger home here in the park. We’ve decided that since it’s unlikely we’ll be getting out of this god-forsaken Valley any time soon, we might as well buy something. There are a bunch of foreclosed homes down here, so we can probably find something nice that we can still afford. So, the question becomes, am I a total garden geek for spending until 3 am this morning “daydreaming” about how I want my garden when we actually do get a house? I mean, really. I have no idea at all what kind of space I’ll have, and here I am planning a garden already. What kind of sense does that make? LOL!

Pics and more

Here’s a view from the top of the stairs.

Side-of-the-stairs from the top.
This little guy stayed still long enough to get a pic while I was out with the camera yesterday.

Butterflies love gaillardia.

Butterfly garden, beginnings…
Speaking of butterflies, here’s the humble beginnings of my butterfly garden. The pots with the pipes are cleome. As I’ve mentioned, it tends to be windy here, so I expect I’ll have to stake the cleome. The windowbox has Carpet Cosmos, which are only supposed to grow 6″ tall, and in the middle, 3 red penta. Two of the seeds have sprouted, but the babies are really small, about the size of thyme when it first sprouts. Hope they make it. The black container has just-transplanted blue salvia and some Cosmos Bright Lights seeds. The round pot has blue ageratum seeds, just planted today. The seeds are so tiny, and it was so windy, that I was afraid to try to plant them until the wind died down a bit. Also want to try zinnia, Cosmos Sonata mix, and maybe even a tithonia. Don’t tell me it won’t do well in a container; I refuse to accept that until I try! More on that as it evolves. Need more potting soil first; hoping to go get it tomorrow.

One last pic and I’m done for now.

Mums and gazania
A while ago, I posted about dividing mums and gazania. Here’s a pic of the windowbox, blooming like crazy. I swear, I cut off all the buds when I divided the mums, but they would not be denied. They wanted to bloom, so I’m letting them. I think we probably have a long enough growing season to let them bloom again in fall. Seen it happen before with my mums.

I guess that’s about all she wrote, for now. Tired after staying up too late tomorrow, so g’nite, y’all.

I have a few baby tomatoes to put between the two melon towers; just letting them get a good set of roots before I plant them.

This is the container garden. See how everything is all tilted? The wind has been brutal. I keep turning the pots to try and keep the plants straight! The two SWCs on the far right are cherry tomatoes. I had to rig a wind shield for the taller one cuz it was getting beat all to heck by the wind. It had blossoms, but the wind broke them.
The wood container has two patio tomatoes, and some cilantro. On the far side, you can see the volunteer tomatoes, the cucumbers, and the green beans with the mums.



Container Veggies
The volunteer tomatoes are coming along nicely. There’s one that should be ready tomorrow; there might even be enough lettuce and spinach to make a salad for everybody. YUM!

Almost ripe tomato

Actual green beans!
I’ve got a bunch of small green beans, not quite ready to pick yet. Maybe tomorrow. Not sure what’s going on with the green beans; disease or bugs. Think it might be Mexican Bean Beetles. Need to do more research on it. But I’m still getting green beans, which is an improvement over last year.

Fruit Basket Sweet Peppers
The baby Fruit Basket peppers seem to be doing okay so far. They get quite a bit of morning sun, even in the tree, but filtered afternoon sun. Considering the summer heat, I think they’ll probably do better hanging from a tree than the ones exposed to full sun in the garden. Good thing hot peppers like heat!

I noticed yesterday that the same bugs, judging by the chewing patterns, that decimated and killed my melons last year appear to be trying to do it again. No idea what bug it is, but I don’t see any caterpillars, so I’m going with beetles of some kind. I read somewhere that Gold Bond Medicated powder worked for a few people. They said the bugs apparently didn’t like the menthol taste. I went to the Dollar Store tonight and bought a couple containers of the store brand and puffed it all over the leaves after I misted them with water to help it stick. We’ll see in the morning if there are new holes. Made some garlic/hot pepper tea, but it was still too windy tonight to even spray. I would very likely have ended up wearing more of the stuff than the plants; it’s supposed to be less windy tomorrow. I’ll try it tomorrow night if the powder hasn’t helped.
So that’s what’s going on in the veggie garden. All in all, doing much better than they did last year. And now it’s time to say good night, y’all…

Pics and More

Here’s a pic of all my babies so far. Not much to see, yet, but they are growing.

So, after all the rain and cloudiness, I did a baking soda spray (1 Tbsp baking soda, 1 Tbsp Murphy’s Oil Soap in a gallon of water) just to be on the safe side. I’d prefer to prevent the diseases instead of treat them. After remembering all the aphids and spider mites last year, I have also decided to try a water spray-off of everything in the garden every 3 or 4 days, just to wash off as many potential problems as possible. If I keep it up, and the weather doesn’t get too miserable, I may actually get something this year.

Planting a bunch of flower seeds, as well, mostly annuals. I saw a butterfly/bird garden plan in the garden mag I bought, and decided to see what I could do in containers. If it works, cool! If not, oh well, live and learn. Not losing much but a few seeds and some sweat equity…

Meanwhile, here are some pics of the current state of the garden.

Time to let the California Poppies go to seed, I think. Been religiously deadheading so far, but they are looking a bit the worse for wear, so I’ll let them make seed to collect, then pull them out to make room for something else.

The Laura Bush petunias, on the other hand, are doing great. Love these plants!

The beans I planted a while ago are growing nicely. The pole beans are starting to run, and the half-runners are stretching out as well.

The baby beans I planted a couple weeks after that are up and growing, too. These are bush beans. There are melons planted around the trellis thing. The bottles are buried to provide efficient watering when summer really kicks in. Which it seems to have done today…

And last, but certainly not least, the tomatoes keep on keeping on, which makes me very happy…

So that’s what I’ve been up to this week…

So, any ideas?
Pics and More

On the up side, I did find this little guy on my sweet potato vine today. This is a very good thing.

Just wanted to show you how much the beans have grown since I planted them, bird netting and all. I bent some wire coat hangers away from the pot to keep the bird netting away from the beans. Hope it works. Has so far.