Gardening: Planting Bulbs for the Spring

Hello!

I was looking through my "Southern Living" Magazine the other day and it said that October is the time to start planting bulbs for the Spring. So, check out your area and see what bulbs need to be planted now for them to be ready and beautiful and blooming late February through April. The magazine mentioned daffodils, hyacinth, snow flakes.

Its also time to plant pansies for the Fall. Pansies are such a happy little flower!

I am ready for a little bit cooler temperatures so that we can get working in our garden and getting it ready for the Spring. The drought we suffered here in Texas pretty much ended all our lovely produce but I loved it while it lasted! The heat also impeded my husband from mowing as much so there were times when the grass was too tall for me to be out in the garden....because unfortunately, we live in snake country and Copperheads seem to really like our area because we have a wetlands area behind us.....lovely, I know.

However, for snake problems, I love to use "Snake Off". Its a powder product that you sprinkle around your house and yard and it smells like cinnamon. You can order it at http://doityourselfpestcontrol.com/ and after I used it, we did not see any snakes around our house/yard for 3-4 months but its time to apply some again.

I also have been reading the book about "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholemew. It is REALLY interesting and you learn lots of ways to save space while gardening. I am excited to put his techniques to work for me this Spring.

I hope you are all doing well and loving the fall weather. I love the colors of fall, they are beautiful!

Heather

Gardening: Update

It was a beautiful weekend here in Texas and I spent a lot of the day Saturday out in the wonderful weather working on my garden. I see how so many people love gardening, its so addictive!

Here are a few pictures of my weekend work...forgive the fuzziness, my real camera's batteries are dead.





Above is my front planting area in my front yard. We had added the stones, pulled out numerous ugly spiky bushes and replaced them with....starting at the top at 12 o'clock....dahlias (they are still small), a peony (can't see it, planted it yesterday), a pink rose bush, a yellow miniature rose bush, some Salvia, some marigolds (also planted yesterday and can't see), and I transplanted some of Maw Maw's Iris's. There are also some Sweet Peas and Bells of Ireland in the back but those were also seeds planted yesterday. I have also added black mulch, which I love, I thin kit matches the shudders and gives it definition...plus it helps keep weeds out!

This picture is of my garden...Top right is my Bibb Lettuce....I could make a salad! that makes me really excited! When I first planted them, they would have gotten the "most pathetic looking lettuce" award (if it existed), below that is a marigold plant, to the left is one of 2 of my strawberry plants.

Above is a close up of the lettuce, marigold and in the back are some sweet pepper plants.

The are some small onions.

And this is one of my tomato plants....I have 3 that are looking great and one that plum died on me....oh well! I didn't want a Mr. Stripey tomato anyway...I haven't had success with those yet!

Anyway--it was so fun to be outside and see the growth of my little plants!

Happy gardening!

Recession Gardening

Howdy all,

I hope this Monday morning is treating you all well. Mine started at 5:00am with another boot camp workout....I need to post another workout soon, and I will....I promise!

I heard on the radio the other day that Gardening is growing in popularity because of the financial recession that the US is in. People are trying to save money and be a little more self reliant so they are planting gardens. One figure even showed that you could spend as little as $50 on gardening supplies and your yield could be as much as $1200 worth of produce! WOW! That is a lot!

My garden is coming along nicely and I have found that I really enjoy being outside and working in it and my yard. We have done some work on our front yard too and I can't wait for the roses and other flowers to start growing and blooming so that they fill up their little spaces. Right now they are just twigs coming out of the ground....but soon they will be shrubs and beautiful, I am sure!

So, even if it is just planting a tomato plant because you like them....and they are so much better when you grow them....then just try it and see how it goes. I used to not like tomatoes....until one year someone brought me some small yellow pear tomatoes and I loved them....they are firm and tasty! I have one of those growing in my garden now and I hope that it booms with those yummy things, they make an excellent Tomato Vinaigrette Salad....I should post that recipe as well....will do. (Do you like how I talk to myself as I write?)

Anyway...if you think you have a brown thumb...then just get something that is hardy and needs very little care....just try it....you might like it....and its good to stretch and grow and learn new things, right?

Have a beautiful day...make your day beautiful, even if the odds are against ya!

Heather

Gardening: A tree Planter

Purple Petunia's in a tree planter area!

This is one of the projects we worked on today and I was surprised at how quickly it went. I went to Home Depot (since it was the kid's free workshop day) and bought these gray edging pieces. They are somewhere between $1.33-$1.43 each, depending on whether you want the curved ones or the straight ones. I bought 12 thinking that would be enough and actually had 2 left over, but if we had tweaked the circle a little, we could have made it bigger and used all of them. I bought 2 bags of soil, one was a gardening mix that was less than $4 and one was a topsoil that was less than $2. The flowers are purple Petunia's that were just beautiful and vibrant and I got a flat of 18 of them for $11. So, for somewhere around $30-$35, I put in this planter and planted the flowers and it looks so much better than it did before. I took the 2 bags of soil and put one on one side of the circle and the other on the other side and then mixed them before I planted them. I put the edging stones around first and then filled with the soil and planted, then watered. They are so pretty and it really took no time at all.

So, do something to spruce up your environment! Add a planter or a edge row and put in some color. Just be sure to buy a flower that can take whatever kind of sun you get there. This part gets full sun for us because the tree is still young but a bigger tree would offer more shade and you could go with a partial shade flower.

Make your world beautiful!

Random thoughts:Where in the world have I been?

I am sorry that I have been a MIA blogger this pas couple of weeks. The only explanation is that I have been BIT...BIT, I say by the gardening bug and I have been working on getting my raised beds in. I thought I would chronicle a little of it so you can see why I have been away from the old computer and blog.

First, we talked and discussed where we should put our beds....we analyzed the light, because morning sun is better than blazing hot afternoon sun for most things, so its better to plant on the east side of a north facing house. Plus, there are parts of our yard that will get just full out sun all the time, and that would probably kill many a plant.

Once we decided that, I drew up plans for the back yard....all those years as a landscape architecture major (2 years before I switched) paid off in that I can draw up some fairly decent garden plans...plus I had grid paper, which always helps!

So, I drew up plans and then figured out the height, width, and length of beds and then calculated how much dirt I would need for each one and bla bla blah blah blah....I really did all that and have done it numerous times since the first time I drew it up when I changed my mind. So then, we decided we would have 5 cubic yards of dirt delivered to our driveway...it arrived a little over a week ago on Monday afternoon. At first I thought it wasn't as much dirt as I thought it would be...and then as we started moving it shovel full by shovel full...we realized that every grain of that 5 cubic yards was there.

(For those who need to know how to figure cubic yards, take your weight times your height times your length of your bed and divide it by 27...that is how you figure cubic yards...or at least that is what I was told...if I am wrong let me knoiw but it worked pretty well for us.)

So, we started on Monday night and worked from the time we got home and changed clothes until it was dark, so from an hour and a half to 2 hours. We did the same thing Tuesday, and Wednesday...and we got 2/3 of the dirt moved into place.

After all my measuring and planning, this is what we did. We just picked kind of scientifically, kind of randomly...5 cubic yards to be delivered and figured we would just use it until it was gone and then order more if we needed it. We also didn't want to order so much that we couldn't park in our driveway for weeks.

This picture below was taken when we only had about 1/3 of the dirt left...so you can imagine how much it was when it was all there....



This picture kind of shows you what we were doing. We had the dirt delivered to the back of our driveway and then we would shovel it into the wheel barrow ($30 at Wal Mart for the wheel barrow), and take it to the fence where the beds would go, and then dump it. Our beds are about 4 feet wide, 12 inches deep, and probably 50-55 feet long.

Here is one a little closer up (and probably actually taken before the one above).
We just dumped the dirt in the general area where it would go. now most people would probably make their beds first, but this is the way my husband wanted to do it so I just went along. I probably would have made the beds like the link I will post at the bottom, but his way worked just fine and I am happy with it...see, sometimes you have to compromise in a marriage and just let the man win or at least let him think he was right. :)

Then, once the dirt was placed, we took untreated cedar planks that are 6 feet long and laid them next to it.

Then he pounded wooden stakes to keep them upright and then went through and put stakes on the other side. Notice in the above picture the large sledge hammer....my husband paid a lot of money for that...its an 8 pound sledge....he said its something he always wanted....men....

Then we went through and evened out the dirt and finished it all off. It was really easy to do it his way, plus he wants to eventually replace the wood with stone, so he said this is an easy way to do that. If you come to my house in 5 years and there is still wood there, don't be too surprised, but we can dream that we will have stone there someday.

And now it is late and here was the last shot of the night as the sun went down!

Finito!

I should explain that the beds do not look 12 inches deep from here...our side yard is sloped down, so the edge where the cedar is will only be about 6 inches deep but it quickly drops to 12.

So, we finished all that on Saturday and tonight we started to transplant some plants and to get things ready to plant. We have been hardening off some of the other plants so they can go out this weekend. The last average frost/freeze date of the year for us is March 3rd, so we can plant our tomatoes on Saturday!

More pictures to come as we go along....really, its been so fun. The exercise has been good...the family time has been great...and being outdoors in the lovely weather we have had has been really nice. On Saturday, it was 50 and really windy, but we just bundled up in our sweatshirts and went about our business.

Now...its planting time! More to come....

...and for those of you who could't give a hoot about gardening, don't worry, I have other things I will talk about soon...like RETREAT is in 2.5 weeks and I will have my 3 days of scrpabooking with my sisters and friends and I can't wait!

If you want a step by step instructions with pictures on how to make really nice free standing beds, here http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeandgarden/2009/02/build-your-own-raised-flowervegetable-bed/

PW does a great job of telling you how to do it.

Now plant something...its the green thing to do!

Love ya!

H

Gardening: Planting Tomatoes

Howdy--we are almost to planting season for tomatoes. In my area, you shouldn't plant tomatoes until after March 5th, so check your local gardening zone information to see when a good time is to plant tomatoes in your area. Tomatoes need a night temperature above 32 degrees F and a daytime temperature above 60 degrees F. They are readily killed by a mild frost and a week of cool daytime temperatures, like 55 degrees F, will stunt plants, reducing yields.

I have a few Tomato Tips from my gardening class that I attended the other day and I thought I would share them with you.

• Its always good to go to a gardening store as opposed to a local chain because you may actually talk to someone who has gardened before at the gardening stores as opposed to the chains. They can typically give you some advice on which variety works well in your area and when to plant.
• Tomatoes need cages or something to grow up, so be sure to purchase tomato cages. i found the round kind at Wal Mart the other day for less than $3 each, but you can also buy them in the straight kind of cages or other types.
• You can take a metal bucket and drill holes around the bottom and plant tomatoes in the bottom. The tomatoes will find the holes and grow down instead of up and you don't need a cage if you do this kind of hanging bucket/basket.
• Birds and other animals will eat holes in your tomatoes when they are ripe and turn red. Some ideas to deter these critters are to pick the tomatoes when they are orange, they will continue to ripen and turn red on your kitchen counter. You can also take red Christmas ball ornaments to red Solo cups and hang them on the cage, the critters will think they are tomatoes and when they discover they are not, they will leave your tomatoes alone when they turn red.
• If you want to do cherry tomatoes, a hanging basket works well.
• Tomatoes need wind to pollinate. If you have blossoms, but no fruit is setting, give your plants a good shake.
• If you keep your plants watered throughout the summer, they will produce again in the Fall. (at least in this part of Texas)

Here's to tomato basil soup, tomato salads, spaghetti sauces....and all the other wonderful things that come from tomatoes!

A few suggestions on varieties...

Sweet 100 is the most popular home garden cherry type tomato. It says that on a large vine, it produces hundreds of sweet, cherry sized tomatoes with very tender skins.

Early Girl is a popular variety among mid-sized fruits and will mature in less than 50 days.

Celebrity, Big Boy, and Better Boy are examples of popular main season varieties.

Roma tomatoes are preferred for making salsa, chili sauce, and other tomato products requiring less time to cook down.

Look for VFN resistant hybrids...it stands for Verticillum wilt, Fusarium wilt, and nematodes. the V and F are common soil-borne fungal diseases.

Most of the above information was learned at my class and also by reading this article at http://cmg.colostate.edu/gardennotes/717.pdf

Good luck!

Heather

The first shoots of the Garden

I hear from Gardeners that this is the best time....when you start gardening and you start to see the shoots coming up!

First we bought these on Saturday, just 4 days ago.

Then we bought some of these....


And we watered the pellets in the tray and added the seeds....

And yesterday when we checked them...we had these!!!!

in this one we have a little red beet coming up too...

It really is that simple....once these grow a few inches, we will move them into the ground!

4 days, pellets, seeds, and watered only once when we first watered the pellets, put the lid on the tray and it makes a little green house....EASY!

Gardening-Starting Seeds with Peat Pellets

Hello!

Gardening Season is fast approaching and for some veggies, we are already in the time to plant them. So, check your local gardening resources and see what planting zone you are in and when you need to start! If you are in Texas, he is a map of the zones http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/cemap/hardiness.html

I am in 8B...so if you are too, its time to plant or start thinking about what you want to plant. For instance, you can plant carrots now but tomatoes are not until March 5th!

This past weekend, we went to the garden center and bought some peat pellets. What are peat pellets, you ask? This is what a tray of them look like

You can buy a peat pellets tray of 72 for $6.99 at Home Depot and Wal Mart. It comes with 72 little dirt disc like things and it is a great way to sprout things from a seed. It is a tray about 2 ft by one foot and it has these 6 rows of 12 discs and you water the discs and they puff up to be a little bigger than a ping pong ball.

Then you take 3 seeds and put then in the center of each little pot/disc and you wait to see them grow. Once they grow a few inches (like for peas it will take about a week), then you start taking the tray outside and getting the plants used to the sun. Take them out during the day and bring them in at night. This is called "hardening them off." Then eventually you take each little plant and you just plant the pod with the plant in the ground. Its a way to get the seed growing and sprouting before you put it in the ground.

See, like in the picture, the right is the disc, you add water, plant the seeds, then once it sprouts, you take the whole thing and plant it.

Its a good way to make your own starter plants and can save you some money. You can always try to just put the seeds in the ground, many people have success with that as well. This just provides a little green house environment for the beginning of the plants life.

If more than one seed grows and you have 3 stems, then you just cut off all but the strongest looking one and then plant it.

We did one tray of these this weekend with our little boy and it was fun. We did peas, carrots, beats, basil, and chives. I also bought a starter plant for kale and jalapenos. We plan on buying more and doing a raised bed garden once we get our tax return money back.

So, stay tuned for more!

P.S. I should put out this disclaimer...I am not a Master Gardener...I am not highly skilled in this, I kind of just wing it. I took the Master Gardner lab in college because I needed a one hour science class and I took a Horticulture class....but I have only had one in ground garden and a container garden in my adulthood....so I know enough to be dangerous but not enough to really know anything, so please do not take my word as Gardening Law...because I may say something totally kooky! But I am happy to share whatever knowledge I have and hope to inspire you to plant a tomato plant or something!

Ideas for Ladies Groups

Here are some ideas for groups that you could create. You don't have to think along the same old lines that have always been done, think outside the box and be creative, you may spark some interest and get a really active group where the sisters can bond and create lasting friendships.

Here are some suggestions--

#1-Adoption & Infertility Support Group-
We had a group like this in our ward because we had some sisters who were dealing with these issues, and generally these issues go hand in hand and many of the sisters involved in the infertility side may be looking into adoption. We had 2 "specialists" in our ward that ran this group, one was knowledgeable on infertility because she had battles with infertility for 6 long years and tried all sorts of medical intervention...3 failed rounds of clomid, 4 failed rounds of mini-injectibles, 5 failed artificial inseminations, and finally were successful with in vitro fertilization. After many years and many dollars...and many many prayers...they were successful! This sister is me. I felt like I have been on a long journey and wanted to share what I had learned because I felt like I had a PhD in infertility. And, to be honest, being LDS means you live among the land of the fertile and home of the preggos! We had another sister in our ward who has infertility issues as well but they went the adoption direction after trying a few infertility rounds. They were successful in their endeavor as well! So, since we were 2 sisters with similar issues and different paths, we offered up our world of knowledge on the subject and created this group. We only met every other month or every quarter, depending on the needs of those in the group, but I think it was a good way for people to share information in what can seem a daunting journey full of many little decisions that always are predecessors of the really BIG decisions.

#2-Healthy Living Group-
This group would get together on Saturday mornings (or whenever their schedules allowed) and they would do meal prep for the week. They would bring the veggies or fruits or whatever and cut it up and get it ready so that their meal time preparation during the week was much quicker and healthy easy meals would get to the table faster. They would also share healthy meal recipes and a fun sisterhood of chopping vegetables and eating healthy.

#3-Gardening-
A gardening group could be a shared or community garden. If you have someone in your area who has a patch of land that they would not mind you digging up, then you could start a group or community garden, where those who help with the upkeep, reap the reward of the shared crop. You can have a rotating schedule for watering and weeding with assigned days and share in the responsibilities and costs of the garden. What a fun way to learn how to garden for the beginning gardener and a great way for an expert to pass down their wealth of knowledge. Plus, the community spirit of helping each other grow your food can change lives and make lasting friendships.

#4-Recipe Exchange-
A recipe exchange group could meet once a month and exchange recipes, and at the exchange, bring a sample of what your recipe is that you are providing. The months would have different themes, like cookies, potatoes, Asian, casserole, cobbler or crumble, jello, chicken, green veggies, desserts made from veggies, appetizers, holiday fare, etc. Whatever the theme is, everyone brings a sample of their dish and copies of their recipe to share. It could just be an hour every month but a fun chance to share recipes and chat with friends over a yummy family favorite.

#5-Book Exchange-
Instead of a book Club, do a book exchange. This could be once a quarter or however often you like, but have people bring one of their favorite books as a gift for someone to leave the party with. This does not have to be expensive, you can always purchase books at half price books, but I think it would be a fun way to see what other people are reading and share the stories that you love with your friends. You could also have a blog for the book exchange members where they could post reviews and discuss the books.

Did I get your creative juices flowing?