We really are looking, though, because the grandsons keep getting weird symptoms and nobody really feels well. We’ve been doing some research; it seems like formaldehyde could be causing all of the weird stuff. I still don’t know what to do about the garden, because I have no idea how long it will take to find a house.

Meanwhile, between all the real-life distractions, I’ve been planting the lasagna bed in bits and pieces. So far I’ve got 3 tomato plants, some Genovese Basil, parsley, chamomile, marjoram, and 2 bell peppers. I’ve planted black-eyed pea, lima bean, and peanut seeds. They are partly for eating, but also for nitrogen fixing. Why not let some plants fertilize other plants? And I’ve always wondered how peanuts grow. Still have more to plant in there, and I’m getting to it as I can.

Took a couple pics today; pardon the paper sticking out from under the mulch. After the seeds sprout and grow a bit, I’ll cover it all over with more bark mulch so it’s pretty again. Pine mulch has the unfortunate habit of falling down and covering the spots where the seeds are planted.

My sister-in-law wanted some details, so…
I started by marking a 5′ diameter circle where I wanted the bed. That’s enough room for a bunch of plants, but not too big to reach the middle. After I wet the ground, I stuck a digging fork every few inches to crack the concrete. Then I put down a bit of organic fertilizer and covered the circle with cardboard. Soaked the cardboard real well, then put on a thin layer of dirt to hold it down. After that, I started layering. First layer was some of my unfinished compost, about 1.5″, topped by another 1.5″ of composted manure. Covered that with a layer of shredded paper and soil conditioner, then a 2″ layer of topsoil. Sprinkled some fertilizer on that and soaked all the layers thoroughly. Then I repeated the layers until the whole mess was about a foot deep. After that I made sure to soak it all thoroughly using the milk jugs to be sure it moistened all the way through. Waited a few days to let it all settle, then started planting. To plant in it, I mix up a good potting-type mix with some fertilizer, then dig a hole bigger than I need. Fill that around the plant and water in well, and you’re good to go. To plant seeds, I basically stick the trowel in and rock it back and forth to make a hole, fill that with the potting mix, and plant the seeds in that. So far it’s working.

Haven’t gotten so much as one zucchini; I think it’s a pollination problem, or the heat. I do hand pollinate, but still no fruit set. No green beans, either. They either get some dreadful disease and die, or something eats all the blossoms and half the leaves before I see green bean one. I did plant some Contender bush beans that are still looking good; I’m still holding out hope. Probably futile, but you have to be an optimist to try and garden, especially down here!

The jalapenos, on the other hand, seem to be enjoying the heat. Got several fruit, which is way more than I had last year! The Fruit Basket bells in the hanging baskets even have a few fruits.

So all is not lost, but it’s still very discouraging. I think that I’m done with self-watering containers. Haven’t had much luck at all to date. I’ll probably do like Annie’s Granny and use them in the raised beds like she has. They might work for a fall garden, but the summer heat is just too much for any plant to survive.

Still house-hunting, too, which kind of messes up fall garden plans. Don’t want to start fall veggies, only to have to either haul baby plants if we do find a house, or leave perfectly good veggies in the garden. What would you do?

Not much else to say, I guess. I’m pretty much in “Survive-Till-Cooler-Weather” mode myself. I have had quite enough summer already, even though it’s just barely started. Sigh…

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…

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

Mouseover the thumb to see the big picture.
Click for the really big pic.


The first ripe tomato this year.

First ripe tomato from my volunteer tomatoes

The Scarlet Runner beans are running, and blooming. And they are definitely scarlet!

Scarlet Runner Beans

And so are the Hestia half-runner beans.

Hestia half-runner beans

Saw today that one of my cucumber vines is flowering, but it’s only a few male flowers. Be a while, I’m sure, before I get any beans or cucumbers. Probably be another few days until I have another ripe tomato, too. The cantaloupe and Gold Bar melons I planted are starting to run, too, though just barely. And my zucchini looks a whole lot better than any I planted last year. They just stayed sickly and puny, and expired very rapidly. This year, they look like zucchini are supposed to look, growing like weeds! Now if I can just keep the squash vine borers off, I should actually get a zucchini or two. I check the leaves every day…kind of obsessive compulsive about it, even…Do not want to see those eggs anywhere near my zucchini!


The baby peppers I planted out the other day are doing fine so far. I put the two Fruit Basket sweet peppers in their baskets, and 4 jalapenos in the garden. All are hanging in there, despite the heat. Better than me, probably! I hate hot.


Anyway, on to the U(nidentified) F(lowering) O(bject). What, you thought I saw aliens? Not lately, anyway! Well, except the illegal kind; hard to live down here and not see those kind. Ok, flowers. I had a bunch of different packages of wildflower seeds, and have no idea what I planted where. Once I started clearing out the dying California Poppies, I found this guy growing in the pot. It’s a pretty little plant, stands about 2′ tall, basically a single stem with the thin leaves, until it gets to the top. As soon as it started budding out, the flower heads grew out from the central stalk. And the blooms are about the size of a half dollar, more or less. So here’s pics. If you know what this is, drop me a comment. please…and thank you!

Unidentified Flowering Object

EDIT: Thanks to the Texas Gardening forum on Gardenweb, my UFO has been identified as Helenium amarum, common name Yellow Sneezeweed. Thanks, ladies!

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.

Then I decided I’d divide the mums (yea, I know, should’ve been done ’round about February) while I was taking advantage of the clouds. I bought two cushion mums last fall (clearance is a wonderful thing); they bloomed themselves out and grew all winter. Pretty much took over the container. Hate do do this, but to divide, you gotta massacre all those pretty mums-to-be. It actually hurt… Here’s a couple “before” pics:

And then (Guh! Feel like Norman Bates here) I took the pruners to all those buds. Still wincing. Here’s an after:

Dug out the plants; divided the yellow mum into 2 plants, but the burgundy mum seems more vigorous. Divided that one into 4 little plants. Now they look like this:

Thought about this last night when I should have been sleeping. Decided the mums would look nice in a 24″ window box with the extra gazanias I transplanted a few days ago. So here they are in the new home:

I put the other two new mums in gallon pots, then moved pots and box to a shady spot and started praying I didn’t kill anything.

Meanwhile, I put one of each back in the original pot. See, plenty of room for more plants now:

So, more it is. I planted a couple Scarlet Runner, French Filet, and KY Wonder pole beans in the back. Put a couple Hestia half-runner beans in front to (hopefully) trail nicely down the pot, then stuck in a few Medinah bush beans behind the mums. No idea if mums make good companions for beans. We shall see what we shall see.

The red Nikki Mix nicotiana is blooming. While I’m talking about annuals, I’d recommend you try the pink Laura Bush petunia (pics here) I got from Wildseed Farms. The catalog description says “Very low maintenance and forgives neglect.” and “Flowers are delightfully fragrant.” Both are true. They grew all winter with no help from me, and they smell absolutely wonderful. If I’d known they were such great flowers, I’d have planted a bunch more. You better believe I will come fall.

I think I’ve rambled on long enough for one day. TTYL…

Later, after it cooled off a bit, I decided to pull everything out of the little storage area behind my trellis. The lawn guy can’t really weed-eat in there, so I figured I’d pull the weeds and put plastic down. I’m down on my hands and knees, trying to tuck some plastic under the lawn mower (which is wrapped in a tarp and stored there, since we got the lawn guy), when….

Yea, you guessed it. Here come the little _________ again. This time they were all over both hands, crawling up the legs of my jeans, and in my shirt. I ran inside, and immediately sprayed WD 40 all over my hands. Believe it or not, that stuff stops mosquito bites from itching and swelling, makes burns stop burning, and takes the sting out of even fire ant bites. Then I ran to the laundry room, started the washer, and stripped. Threw the clothes all in the washer, then stopped it after they were sufficiently covered. Next stop, the shower, after which I put more WD 40 all over my hands and feet where I’d been bitten. Had to apply it once more about an hour later, but the bites haven’t bothered me since then. They still all blistered up, but don’t bother me at all.

So, yea, I hate the little _______.

In my last post, I’d been debating whether or not to start new pepper plants. In thinking about it, I realized that, with all the aphid damage, the ones I have might survive and produce, but they won’t be at peak performance after all the heat and bugs. I have enough room for a few, so I’m gonna go ahead and start new ones.

I’m going to pull the Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes, cracked fruit and all, in a day or two, empty the dirt out and refurbish it, then plant some new tomatoes in that container soon as they’re big enough. I think I’m going to yank the Roma tomatoes pretty soon, too, as they haven’t set much fruit and look like they have some disease. I’ll let the current fruit ripen, but unless they have a miraculous recovery, they’re gone, too. Got some new paste tomatoes started to replace them, anyway. Probably would have had more luck if I’d started the garden in a more timely manner, but that’s life…

We’re actually getting some nice, sorely needed, rain showers today. Very happy about that. Came at a good time, too, cuz it was time to give the garden a fertilizer booster today, anyway. The rain just makes it that much more effective. Hubby’s weather gizmo said the high today was 109! It’s at least 20 degrees cooler now, after the rain started moving through. So thanks, Mother Nature. Appreciate it…

As for the garden, just been keeping up with the routine chores. It’s been hot, so watering is critical, and been cleaning aphids off my peppers every other day. Been cleaning them off everything, actually, but they seem to really like the peppers.

Got a few more cukes coming along, one will probably be ready tomorrow, the other the next day, and more shortly thereafter. I did harvest an actual ripe Heatwave tomato, too, and more are starting to ripen. The Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes are a major disappointment. The tomatoes are tiny, and split every time we get a little rain shower. Admittedly, that’s all too rare, but still…

As soon as the few tomatoes left on the plants ripen, I’m pulling them out and replacing them with another variety of bush tomato I started a few days ago. They haven’t even sprouted yet, and won’t be ready for a while, but I’m hoping they’ll do better than the others.

And now a few pics of garden progress since my last post:

The Kentucky Wonder pole beans I planted to grow up the arbor thingy are finally doing so. The french filet pole beans are not doing well at all, and the bush beans are even worse. The Contender beans bit the dust a while ago. They look like they have some sort of disease, and something still keeps eating just the leaves. KY Wonder have some disease resistance, so that may be why they are doing better. I bought some bush beans that have good disease resistance, and have them germinating in paper towels at the moment. I’ll put them out soon as they sprout. The other ones will probably end up being my post for Garden Blogger’s Death Day this month.

As if keeping up with the watering, harvesting, and debugging weren’t enough, it’s already time to be planning my fall garden. I’m supposed to have planted tomato and pepper seeds to put out come late August for my fall garden. I did start the tomato seeds, but am undecided on the peppers. Mine are just now starting to blossom and fruit, and should last until frost, if we ever actually ever get one. Unless, of course, the aphids eat them before then! If I start more, I may have to pull producing plants; if I don’t and the aphids kill them I’m SOL. What would you do?

I have to be thinking about all the cool season crops, like lettuce, parsley, potatoes, etc, and still find room for the fall hot weather crops. Gonna be a tricky juggling act, for sure. Then there are all the perennials I want to start, too…and the herbs…Oy, giving myself a headache thinking about it!

That’s about all the garden news, so here’s a personal note…

Today is my middle daughter’s birthday, so Happy Birthday, Chrissy!

My son and his girlfriend were here from the Thursday before the 4th until yesterday. He’s moving back here, as he’s applying to a local police force. My brother-in-law’s son has a relation on his wife’s side who is already a cop there, and he says they really need people. So I guess Mike will be staying until he actually gets hired, goes to the police academy, and actually starts working. Be nice having him here; he’s my “baby” and I like having him around – most of the time!

Whew! Think that’s just about enough for this post. Didn’t start out to write a novel; hope you didn’t get too bored!

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…