Seed Tape and PJ gardening



We made seed tape today, which is a great way to get Alex involved in the gardening. We cut strips of newspaper about an inch wide, made a paste of flour and water, and dotted the paste across the newspaper at the correct intervals for the different seed types. Handling itty bitty seeds out in the garden can be difficult, especially if it is windy and they are hard to see in the dirt. So Alex made up four strips of tape, three salad mix and one spinach.

 We laid them out in their rows and loosely covered them with dirt. Just in time for Thanksgiving we will have garden fresh spinach and salad mix as early as Halloween. Gardening in your PJ's always makes digging in the dirt that much more fun. You can just spy the few strawberries that made it through our hot summer. Hopefully those beauties will give us a nice clutch of berries in the spring.

Give them a great big soak, you don't have to worry about them floating out of their rows because they are stuck to the tape! Genius!  Alex also gave our very late season watermelon bed a good soak as well as the bed we are prepping for Fall snap peas. Love the split growing seasons we have here in Texas.

In which I make dirt!

For Mother's Day the guys got me something that just makes my heart sing, a Composter!! That big ugly lovely eye sore of a box is my new favorite thing! My composter holds all our organic waste, things like kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, dog hair, toilet paper rolls, old leaves, and garden trimmings and turns it into lovely rich dirt!! We have a bowl that sits out on our counter now, and all veggie kitchen scraps go in there to be taken out to the composter. It isn't the prettiest looking tool, so we have placed it behind our shed right next to the massive electrical box that our shed hides. It is very close to my garden space and really not that far away!

Love this thing! It makes me that much more of a garden loving hippie!

Frogs and a list

A teeny tiny frog in Alex's hand, they are all over the place right now.

• This last week has had a boatload of drama dealing with Alex's school. We all hate it.
• The drama that is.
• I have been sick for a couple days, sleeping like the dead. 16 hours throughout yesterday, slept till 10am today.
• I can't even get into a horizontal position or else I will sleep.
• Ugh
• Alex has three days of school left.
• I have 10 days till Summer Session starts for me.
• Work: slowly increasing.
• The pool is fluctuating between blue and green, the heat has such a huge impact.
• The garden is flourishing! Have a week or two before I can harvest our first tomatoes! They are huge!
• I downloaded a ton of Podcasts, business and history and grammar and This American Life, it is all good.
• Casey is home, working local right now, glad to have him here every day!
• If I am feeling better tomorrow I might actually PAINT the ceiling. Snort, we will see. :)
  

Crossing things off

I have been chipping away at my Mega to-do list and avoiding the biggest task on that list at the same time, the dreaded painting job. Today I woke up, after a very late night with friends, with a huge headache (I can't imagine why! *grin*). I decided that I had to get Alex's curtains hemmed today of all days. A half hour later they were rehung about a foot shorter then they started out being and now have tie backs to let in some light. Please excuse the bad picture quality, I had to lighten the original shot a fair amount to be able to actually see the curtains. Alex told me that he likes that the curtains make his bedroom feel like a hotel.

I spent some time in the backyard yesterday raking up old leaves to use in my new compost bin and taking care of some garden maintenance. I transplanted the strawberries to a new bed, freeing up the tall bed for watermelons! I planted zucchini and eggplants around the corn to help shade the corn roots. Added two more rows of green beans, one a bush variety the other climbing. All most every square inch of our garden space is well used. Once the beans get bigger I will plant lettuce between those rows to take advantage of the shade and help keep water in the soil. I love Companion planting! I would still love to build more beds, maybe later in the summer for some Autumn harvests.

That makes two more things crossed off my Mega Monthly goal list. I am seriously thinking about tackling the ceiling painting tomorrow. It is the worst part of the whole list. I only have so many days left in my month off. Might as well get it done!

Carrot Haul

My Mother's Day was great, I was loved on by my kiddo, went to a great service at a new church, lounged with my family, had my Mom over for a very Springy lunch complete with Mimosa's, and then put together my mega composter that the guys got me. They know me so well. :) I just love that they both have hopped on the compost making wagon!

Last thing I did in the garden last night was to pull the last haul of Spring Carrots. We got some big ones and some tiny ones and loads in between. I used a "stubby" variety this time, the longest one grew to be about 6 inches long, but some of them sure are fat! The newly opened up bed space is going to be filled with watermelon and pumpkin seedlings today. I can't wait!

In the mean time I have some carrot processing to do. :)

Garden Yearning

Source: Unknown

It's that time of year again, not seed catalog time (even though it is), not Jiffy Pot time (even though it is), not checking for the final day of frost (even though it is)... It's time for me to daydream nonstop about living off the land, growing and canning a massive garden, raising chickens and gathering eggs, compost piling, flower planting, and eating from our work.

In reality I have a very small garden that we have honestly not eaten a lot from. In reality we can't have chickens due to our HOA even though we have more than enough land. In reality my composting had been tiny and insignificant compared to what I could be doing. In reality flowers never grace our yard. In reality we eat from our work but through the grocery store.

In an effort to be a little bit closer to my daydreams I have started my seeds for plants that we WILL eat from, no more tomatoes, no more garlic and potatoes ( I will buy till I have a dedicated bed). I have planted seeds in Jiffy pots and placed them under my Aerogarden as a grow light and I am excited for yet another planting season. I am excited to dig in the dirt and smell green on my hands when I rest for the night. I am excited to try again.

And all of that is Good Enough. :)

Garden Babies

I spent the morning in our garden, it was cool and clear outside and I happily watered, weeded, rearranged wayward vines and counted Garden Babies. This is truly giving a "face" to our food.

Pumpkin Blossoms, we have so many, hopefully in time for Halloween, surely for Thanksgiving pies.
Flower Full, a squash blossom.
A Tom Baby, our Roma's are doing wonderful. I expect to have a huge haul in the next couple months. Time for canning.
Watermelon Baby, we decided to experiment and see how far out we could grow watermelons in Texas. Seven blossoms so far for Sugar babies.
Bell Pepper Babies, potted when I ran out of box space.

Getting things done...

Casey is home for two weeks straight, which means we have lots of time to get things done that have been waiting and waiting or I just avoided them.

Like Mowing the lawns, it was slightly tall.

Yes my legs are this white, even with a trip to Cancun.

Or gardening and plucking any stray weeds. This is our pumpkin and water melon bed from about three weeks ago, I swear that it is now about triple this full. With Pumpkins too!

Or puppy playing, well we always have time for that. BUT we did get the garage power washed yesterday. I all most love the power washer as much as I do my weed whacker.

And we were able to get the garage power washed because WE FIXED THE JAG!!! This is huge for us folks. Goldie will be sporting her Texas plates next week, and we can resume weekend luxury driving. Nice nice nice.

In the Tomato Shade

Today I was spending some time in our garden, weeding and training and pulling plants past their prime. And as I crouched by the beds with the hot sun beating down, the wind shifted and blew the tomato plants just enough to shade me. I was suddenly in a mini garden jungle in cool shade inhaling the scent of growing things and dirt. It was bliss.

Wild boxes, half ready to dump large hauls, half replanted for a new summer crop.
A baby green bean, can you see it?
Tomato jungles.
Five feet of green beans.
Tethered.

Makes me happy.

• Both beds are fully planted, trellised, and gated.
• Clothesline is back in production.
• Bags and bags of more mix for our third bed, which I will completed tomorrow.

Good stuff.

It really works!

Tonight by sheer I-can't-wait-any-more-urges, we got our first "produce"!

I was testing out my carrots, which have been a bit of an experiment from the very beginning because I didn't thin them and I just used a big old rubber maid tub for their bin, and just for poops and giggles I pulled one stalk and found this! A wee tiny baby carrot that smelled heavenly.

If you are a carrot lover you know that carrot smell, sweet sweet and more sweet. Once I cleaned it up, I took the three mini bites I needed to eat it up. And it was good. And I can't wait to pull the rest up in a bit. Now I just have to figure out how long that bit of time needs to be!

Green thumb is the way, where's yours?

Amid all the stories out in the news world of food shortage worldwide, I just felt that it was folly to not start a garden for our family. It is right up our alley of eating healthier and eating local and I will know EXACTLY how it is grown. So after much research and book reading and blog pursuing I settled on the Square Foot Gardening technique. Casey gave me a super generous Home Depot gift card for my birthday, which I immediately started spending while drafting my plans.

The ready bed, complete with trellis and square grid.

Waiting for filler, trellis and grid.

So far I have two beds built, one ready for our many seedlings, the other needing some more compost and filler. I also have one extra tall bed ready to be assembled which will house and grow our potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots and pumpkins( which will grow vertical on a trellis).

Sugar snap peas, I am going to keep this batch in this pot because they are all ready trailing. That's okay cause I am planning on starting more in the beds. There are also come varieties of lettuce in the white pot.

Green to red bell peppers, yum.

Seriously, so happy with my beds, which I built on my own with the help of Lisa and Alex. Seriously so happy to be moving our various seedlings into their squares and sowing the seeds that I have been waiting on. Seriously so happy that we will have an abundance of food that we will have grown and know from seed. So happy.

Tons of tomatoes, more bells this time yellow, a bucket of carrots, strawberries, and more lettuce with some basil hidden around and a nosey Pen-Pen.

What I have been growing...

Tomatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers!
Snap peas, Zucchini's, and green Onions Oh My!
And some tiny little basil sprouts to brighten my day.