So far, nothing has died of heat stroke; I hope this mess ends SOON!

Okay, done whining; on to the important stuff. Have you ever watched Paul James, the Gardener Guy, on HGTV? He had the best garden show for real gardeners, but they dropped him and put on all those landscaping guys. All well and good to landscape your yard, but how do you grow all that stuff after the landscapers have gone? I found his website and went to check it out.

He mentions a book called “The One-Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka that inspired his gardening and changed his life. In the course of looking for that book, I discovered a concept called Permaculture. The basic idea is to create a self-sustaining ecosystem of your own, similar to the way nature would do it, only quicker. It’s all tied up with Peak Oil, climate change, and ecological disaster. I can’t say as I believe all the dire predictions; after all, who even wants to think about the kind of world it will be if all that stuff actually happens? Just in case it is even remotely possible, I’m going to plan my garden at my new house, whenever we actually buy one, to mitigate the ugliness as much as possible. Self-sustaining homesteads can’t be a bad thing, right? If you want to find out more, you can download The One-Straw Revolution here in pdf format.

So, once I’d discovered the concept, I needed to find out how one creates such an ecosystem. The book “Gaia’s Garden – A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture” was recommended as being especially helpful. It has been an absolutely fascinating read! Download the pdf yourself and see. Gotta warn you, though, it is a big (34M) file. It tells you pretty much everything you’d need to know, in a very easily understood, entertaining style. You can buy both books, and countless more, all over the web. Gonna do that soon as I can!

If you’ve got the time and interest, a wander around all the permaculture links on the net can be very educational. Inspiring, too, when you see all the things these design principles can accomplish, like turning several acres of desert in the Dead Sea Valley into green, producing farms. Totally amazing!

Lovely, you say, but why post about it? Why not? It’s my blog, right? LOL. The point of all this is that, when we do finally find the right house, in the right place, I’m going to give this a try. I guess I’ll make a separate page for permaculture-related stuff, and try to document the process as we go along. Wish me luck!

I bet you know what comes next. The garden dept at Lowe’s. Yup. Almost as bad as a book store. I needed stuff to make Al’s container mix, and a little batch of gritty mix for the herbs. When all was said and done, I spent about $80.00, cuz I needed seed-starting mix, vermiculite, perlite, orchid bark mix and on and on. Then of course there was the new hose nozzle – old one died – and, oh yea, the creeping lemon thyme, Provence lavender, marjoram, and rosemary I just had to have. And the garden magazine. And the seeds. Only 3 packs, I swear…SIGH…

To make things even worse, I had to lug all that potting soil, etc, to the truck cuz the helper lady was helping a lady even older than me. So I’m trying to manhandle that cart thing in the vague direction of my truck, and I wandered off without the bag with the dog chain in it. The whole reason (so I told myself) I went in the first place. Naturally I didn’t remember until I was pulling in the driveway, so I had to turn right around and go back after it. Was still there, no problem, but…

Oh well. Once I got home, I made a small batch of gritty mix and planted the herbs. I put the marjoram, lemon thyme, and creeping thyme I already had in one of the ceramic pots Hubby got me on clearance last fall, but I also took a little piece off each to try another experiment. Hubby bought one of those cheap little charcoal grills for something or other, but I think he only used it once. The top (pretty red) was just taking up space in the laundry room, so I took off the handles and grill supports, lined it with a piece of coco fiber mat to keep the soil marginally cooler, and filled that with gritty mix, too. I put the little pieces from the other herbs in it, and will plant the common thyme seeds I bought today, maybe tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

Once I got done with all that, it was getting dark, and I was starving. Forgot to eat lunch today, and breakfast was a long time ago. Called it quits for today, and made a left-over roasted chicken sandwich.

I know it ’s way late, but one little corner of my raised bed is close enough to the house that it gets some shade even in summer. I had a foot or so of space once I pulled out the borage, so I decided to take a chance and plant some lettuce and spinach. Between the house and the swiss chard next to it, the spot may get enough shade to let them grow, at least for a while. Some of it’s already sprouting – so far, so good. Also planted some carrots. May not do well, but all it cost to try was a few seeds.

Just a couple flowers:

Blue Larkspur

Blue Bachelor Button

Tired and gotta get up early to ride to McAllen and have breakfast with Hubby’s nephew and his wife. That’s all she wrote, for now…

Here are some pics I took about a week ago that show how much the garden had grown while I was in Colorado. Compare them to these pics.

Pics within

Heatwave tomatoes living up their name, setting lots of fruit even in this heat

Hubby’s picnic table, WIP

Hubby’s picnic table, another angle

As I said, these pics are about a week old. In a couple days, after it stops raining, I’ll take some more, just to see how they grew after the rain. You can water all you want, but even a little bit of rain does so much more…

My shade arbor is done, SWCs filled and planted, including the pole bean seeds that are supposed to grow up the poles and shade my tomatoes.
Here’s a pic, even though you can’t see the baby plants in the SWCs.

The leftover part of the big blue SWC is planted with a sweet potato, while the blue SWC has two Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes. The white SWCs have Heatwave tomatoes, while the two SWCs in the back are watermelon and Kentucky Wonder pole beans. I put a couple gallon pots by the middle legs, on the outside, and put some pole bean seeds in those, too.

Oh yea, I put some more pins into the landscape fabric to hold it down better, too. The area will be mulched eventually, but before I can mulch I need some edging. If I just dump mulch, it’ll wander into the lawn instead of staying where it needs to be. Before I can do edging, I’d have to wet the ground, as it is so dry and hard it’s impossible to dig. In fact, in order to get the landscape pins into the ground, I had to poke a couple small holes in a gallon milk jug, fill it up, and let it drain. Then I could actually get the pins in the ground.

Ok, on to the tomatoes…one of the Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes actually has a blossom. I’m excited about that, even though I won’t be here to see it if it survives and turns into a tomato. Hubby will be happy, though. Here’s a pic:

I repotted an oregano and a sage plant, too, which I would have done at some point in the next week or so, but had to do it now. Don’t think they would have made it if I’d left them be until I get back.

Also had to put the cuttings from my SIL’s shrubs into yogurt cups; they rooted nicely in the Parks Biosponge thingy, except I used seed-starting mix instead. The sponge things don’t impress me at all.

While I’m thinking about it, remember when I told you I planted lettuce in a window-box under lights? Well, they are doing fine and growing well. I’ll post a pic if I have time before I leave.

This is it for now. Still got laundry and other stuff to do, and time keeps ticking away…

That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’ll post again, probably tomorrow, after it’s finished.

Apparently it’s easy to propagate by seeds or cuttings, so I may try that down the road some time. Got too much other stuff going on right now to deal with it.

Yesterday we went to brunch with my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and his son and wife. We don’t get to see them as often as we’d like, so it was a nice visit. After we ate, we went to the BIL’s house for a “plant consult.” I answered my SIL’s questions, and took some cuttings from some of her plants.

Years ago, when they first built the house, my BIL planted some ordinary red geraniums in a little garden spot next to the shed, in memory of his grandmother who used to grow them. More than 10 yrs. later, the geraniums have grown into a huge geranium bush, as we have had no hard freezes to kill them. Unfortunately, they’ve also grown long woody stems that flop over and look very untidy. It does have new growth coming up from the roots, so I told her to just cut the woody stems down to the ground, and let the new growth have a chance.

Weird thing is, most of the geranium is red, but there is one stem that produced a mutation and grows pink geraniums. Anyway, I took cuttings from both stems, which I hope will grow. Any geranium that will survive 10 yrs. with minimal care is one tough plant!

I also took cuttings from two shrubs she has. One has pretty dark blue flowers that butterflies and bees just love; I just saw one at Home Depot the other day. Name starts with a “D” but I can’t remember the rest of it. Hers gets huge, and they have to cut it back every year to keep it from eating the house and garden. I’m going to keep mine in a container, assuming the cuttings take.

The other one only blooms in spring, with tight bunches of tiny white flowers that have the most heavenly spicy scent. Have no idea what it is, and she doesn’t remember, but I will find out eventually. Just have to do some googling. I took softwood tip cuttings and some from more mature wood, so we’ll see if they take.

Other than watering baby basils and peppers, and checking on flower seeds, that’s all I did in the garden yesterday. I did play with Monster Mud yesterday; the rosemary pot is finished, I think, with the exception of leveling the bottom so it stands up straight, and touching up the rim to make it look smooth. After it dries about 24 hrs, I’ll waterproof again. When that dries, I guess I have to decide what color to paint it, or maybe just leave it as is.

I also put another layer of Monster Mud on the styrofoam thingy, as it was still too light. Wind’s blowing today at 20 + mph, as it has been for the past day or so and will be for the next couple of days. If I put a beer cooler outside in this wind, they’d find it in the next county very shortly! I think it may be heavy enough now, especially after I fill it with soil and a shrub…

That’s it for now. Got laundry to do, a house to clean, and dinner to think about. No clue what to cook yet. Anybody got any ideas?

Here are a couple pics of my pitiful-looking bean cage. Here’s hoping it works better than it looks.

Not much else today. Going to start some flower seeds for my containers, now that most of the veggies are done, for now. Just think, I get to do this all over again, along about the end of June, for my fall garden.

I’ve been planting babies into the garden, like cukes, stevia, and bee balm, or tomatoes into SWCs. I’d already put the two Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes into the 18 gal SWC, but this weekend I went to HD and bought 4 of the ugly, but cheap, orange 5 gal buckets. I also bought some white spray paint to cover the ugly orange, but mostly to help with heat reflection. So I built, painted, and planted those two with the two Heatwave tomato babies. Then I put the two watermelon babies into the milk-jug SWCs that the Heatwave were in. By next weekend, no doubt, I’ll have to make 2 more for the watermelon.

Here are a couple pics of the garden as of yesterday evening.

Made a ladder trellis of sorts for the moonflower vine. I’m hoping it’ll grow right up the tree and make a cheap old ash tree look like a moonflower tree eventually. There’s a Mexican Mint Marigold, or Mexican tarragon, plant, a dichondra, and 2 baby coleus in there too. I’m waiting for some hyssop and a Moonlight nasturtium to sprout and grow big enough to stick in the empty spaces.

The peppers, bell and hot, that I’ve been presprouting in paper towels and baggies keep sprouting in dribs and drabs, so I’ve been putting those all in yogurt containers. Ran out of room under the lights, so I moved all the growing peppers outside into the shade to start hardening them.

Trying to start flower seeds for containers, and have a bunch of those in yogurt and applesauce containers, too.

I love the smell of chamomile almost as much as basil, but if you’ve ever tried to grow chamomile from seed, you know how tiny they are. I sprinkled a bunch of seeds, and ended up with 36 tiny chamomile babies in one container. What is it with 36, anyway? Nevertheless, I had to VERY carefully transplant 36 teensy tiny chamomile into separate containers. Since I was almost out of yogurt cups, I put 4 in each, spaced as far apart as I could get them. I figure when it comes time to plant them out, I can just stick all 4 of them in the space I have for them, and they should be okay. I hope.

The basil babies were begging to be transplanted, but I had to go buy 3″ peat pots, cuz I have used all the yogurt cups. Thought I had enough, but I was obviously wrong. Tonight I transplanted 12 of them, and they are under the lights with the chamomile. Couldn’t do more cuz there’s no more room. Getting seriously short on space here lately! I’ll carry the chamomile and transplanted basil out into the shady spot tomorrow, just to make room for more transplants. Don’t know what I’m gonna do when I run out of space in the shady spots, too! LOL.

What else? Oh yea, I came up with a good idea for my pole bean trellis, and bought the stuff for that, too. It’s gonna require an extra pair of hands, and getting hubby out there to help hasn’t worked so well yet. I’ll post about that, with pics if I remember, when I get it done.

There’s a ton more stuff buzzing around in my head, but the post is already long, and I’m ready for bed. One more thing, I bought the ticket to Colorado Springs for my eldest daughter’s graduation from Jr College in May. I’m looking forward to seeing her and the grandsons I haven’t seen in ages, but I’m also afraid hubby might forget to water the garden while I’m gone, and all my hard work will die! I plan on leaving written instructions, and hope for the best.

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Went to Big Orange and bought some joint compound, paint, drywall tape, and a paint stirrer attachment for the drill. This was highly recommended, as it takes about 30 minutes to mix it by hand. Too much like work!
I covered my cracked 12″ terracotta pot with a plastic trash bag, then wrapped it in a layer of dry drywall tape, just to make sure I could get the pot out when I was done.

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Made only a small amount at first, to test the process without making a huge mess.

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Here’s what it looks like all mixed up.

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And here’s what it looks like after I used up all the mix I’d made.

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I let it dry, then painted it with masonry sealer to waterproof it. I figure it may help if I waterproof every layer. After that dried, I wrapped it in chicken wire for some strength.

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I made more goop and just slopped it over the chicken wire to give the tape something to stick to.

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Then I used up my remaining goop to start the next layer of tape. The rest will have to wait until I buy more joint compound and paint. Since this post is already huge, I’ll continue this in a new post as it progresses.

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Anyway, I guessed on which end goes in the water. I figured I had a 50/50 chance. So I stuck one end in the water, then went to look it up. Do you have any idea how many articles about sweet potatoes I had to read before I found one with a picture of the right way up? But I finally found one, and…you guessed it. I had the stupid thing in upside down. I corrected that, and we’ll see how this little experiment goes.

In case you were wondering, here’s the pic I found:

Right Way Up