Archive | May, 2008

Evil weeds must DIE

by on May 31, 2008 in The Growing Garden

It’s becoming oddly satisfying ripping weeds out. I went out and weeded and watered the garden but still had the urge to rip up the little yard-wrecking (they’re the spiny ouchy weeds for the most part) plants by their roots, so I tackled the back strip that was originally all neat and tidy and mulched and had become overgrown with grass and weeds so much that the bushes (more plants that I can’t name) were hidden. It looks much nicer now, but has a ways to go. A year ago, I couldn’t be bothered to do it.

Memories (lessons learned as a child)

by on May 30, 2008 in Off Topic

My parents were awful parents. Really. Not “my parents wouldn’t let me have desert before dinner” awful, but “make me sleep surround by cat sh!t and never bathe me or even brush my hair” awful. I was spared the physical abuse my oldest 3 siblings got (I was #5), I think because they were just too old to chase after me when I screwed up (my dad was 50 when I was born and disabled, my mom 43)…but they loved to garden. My mom had a HUGE herb garden and my dad was always in our very large greenhouse doing something. I loved that greenhouse, especially the earthy smell. My most prominent memory was when my dad decided to mess around with a Gopher Plant. The sap is toxic but he ignores that kind of information…until he got the sap on his hands and rubbed his eyes. Ever see a grown man scream like a little girl? I ran as fast as I could into the house to get my mom and dad ended up spending almost a week in the hospital, and many more weeks at home with patches on both eyes. Being the ever loving wife my mom was, she just scolded him and made the older kids take care of him. So besides the non-gardening lesson of taking care of your ailing husband better then mom did, I learned that gopher plants are not worth it even if they keep the gophers away.

I don’t know a flower from a hole in the wall

by on May 29, 2008 in General

I know some flowers…a few even. But I don’t know what this one is. In a previously mention post, I promised pictures and here’s a couple. These never bloomed last year so I mowed them down and was thinking about pulling them up to use for herbs….I’m glad I didn’t :D Can you tell me what they are?

The composter to end all composters

by on May 29, 2008 in Tools, Products & How To

Ok, not really. It’s actually kinda flimsy, but I don’t plan on bathing in it so it should be ok. After turning the compost in our crappy 32 gallon can, making a mess and having the can break in 14 million pieces, I went to Costco and got this 175 gallon container. It says 90 on the website – but it’s 175 and the sucker is huge (it’s also about $58 in store). Our nearly full 32 gallon can only filled in a little bit. I’m happy we’ll be able to put all the grass clippings in it, I’ve only been able to put about half in thus far. It’s attractive in an ugly kind of way…at least it’s “90% recycled material”.

Lessons from the field

by on May 29, 2008 in The Growing Garden

errr, garden. This will likely become a page all to itself, depending on how much I find I’ve learned.

To start, I have learned the peas need very little nitrogen. So little that even dried grass clippings as mulch at their base will “burn” them. There’s a reason the Earth Juice has a separate formulation (no “Grow”) for legumes!

I’ve learned that pinching off the flowers on still small plants will encourage the plants to grow larger and better suited to bear fruit.

I’ve learned that watering in the morning and keeping the leaves as dry as possible is better then other times and methods, to keep bugs and disease away.

I’ve learned Rosemary is a PITA (Pain In The A*#) to grow from seed. In fact, I can’t seem to do it all. Time to get starts!

It’s late and I’m drawing a blank on the other stuff I’ve come to know, so more to come…..

Earthworms move slow…right? Right??

by on May 27, 2008 in General

So I’ve always been of the notion that earthworms are slow. I mean, they let you pick them up and they move around in your hand slow, then inch around in the soil slow, but apparently when they need to, they have some get-up-and-go!

I went out to check on my progress from today (even more satisfied seeing it again!) and there were 2 really big worms on the surface around the zucchini. I watched them for a minute, they were really big and “something to look at”, you know? So I went in the fence and got close and I swear to [whoever] those little suckers were in the ground like lightning! 8O One was so fast I didn’t see it move, but the other one, it was like a cat darting after a mouse. 8O That quick. Seriously! Crazy stuff!

The good kind of tired

by on May 27, 2008 in Plans & Getting Going, The Growing Garden

Most days I’m tired but it’s not a satisfying kind of tired. Today however, hoo-boy.
My to do list was fairly simple: mow the lawn and transplant the tomatoes and blueberries.

But what I got done, with Chris’ help, was a bit more:

  • Mowed the backyard
  • Cultivated the area for the tomatoes & transplanted them
  • Moved the green peppers to make more room for the squash and zucchini, then moved those to give them more growing room
  • Did some weeding in the garden
  • Planted the blueberries
  • Did some serious heavy duty clearing and weeding around the unused gate. Found the bulb plants actually do produce flowers (iris or tulips or ? I’m not sure, will find out when they open up I guess!), they didn’t last year (will get pictures soon).
  • Thorough watering in the garden followed by a thorough Earth Juice feeding

I really enjoy this organic gardening. The kids can get in there are help with every part of it and I’m not worried about them getting sick. I remember when I used Round Up in one of our rentals. It was a 4 bedroom manufactured house on a 5 acre ranch…I wasn’t up on all the latest and greatest with weeding and got the chemicals. The entire house had a 1 food rock/pebble border with a few small bushes here and there and the weeds were popping up like mad. Hours after I sprayed, we were all sick. I thought dad was going to die…he got really sick. But we were so dumb we didn’t connect it until later. It’s the only time I’ve used chemicals and never will again. Aiden, my 4 year old, loves to spray the Earth Juice on the plants and I’m glad I can let him.

Today in pictures

by on May 26, 2008 in The Growing Garden

As promised, here’s some pictures of the garden’s progress.

Potatoes. In front (bottom) are the 3 russets from organic store bought potatoes. The rest are reds from seed potatoes. I need to build the dirt up on each plant…with no experience I’m not exactly sure of the process, but apparently if you cover with dirt and leave just a couple inches of leaves out, the taters will grow better. Since they have clay soil to fight with after about 6 inches down, I might as well try anything that will safely give a better yield.

Strawberry patch is coming along well, almost all the plants have blooms on them.

Carrots( a very small portion of them)…will need to thin these soon.

Corn (very small potion)

The grapes

“Prizewinner Hybrid” giant pumpkin sprout

The broccoli is trying to take over!

So is the zucchini!

Thyme

Parsley

Lettuce

Rain

by on May 26, 2008 in General

I was wondering if Oregon had migrated into Idaho with the serious lack of rain, but it looks like we’re back to normal wet spring weather. I am enjoying not having to water the garden but really need to mow the lawn!

The rain is doing amazing things to the garden though… All the potatoes are just growing by leaps and bounds. Really all of it is. I’ll try to get pictures if the rain lets up long enough when I can get outside. It’s time for another Earth Juice feeding, but I’ll wait for a semi dry day so the leaves and soak up the nutrients more before being washed away.

garden-of-eatin.com

by on May 25, 2008 in Blog

Moving over… gradually getting it done, but all the posts and comments are here now, and all new gardening posts will be made here, not on the blogger blog. Thank you for reading!!

Note about images: Posts older then this one with images will not open up their images to full size.

Weeding made…….. fun?

by on May 24, 2008 in Tools, Products & How To

If not fun, at least tolerable, and easy. I’ve been eying an oscillating hoe for a couple months now but only recently started to get weeds enough for me to consider my weeding options seriously. Chemicals are of course out, I’d rather completely lose my garden then spray anything toxic, so after reading about Tiny Farm Blog’s wheeled hoe, I decided I’d give the cheaper and smaller scale one a try. This one is from Lowes, locally it was $14.92 but at the checkout, the cashier asked if either Chris or I had been in the service and I told her that DH had (so what if they screwed him in boot camp – if it wasn’t for his mother, he’d still be in – LONG story), and we got $1 off that. I assume for Memorial Day. Got home and had all the open areas weeded in about 10 minutes, no kneeling. Nice.

I still have my 2 prong hoe for deep weeding and use it often. I also get down on my hands and knees and use a hand weeder or just my hands when I need to get close to the plants that should be in the garden. These items have made the dread and loathing I used to have for weeding completely disappear. Nice!

Little update

by on May 23, 2008 in The Growing Garden

The garden is doing super. Though I keep leaving the tomatoes out too long while hardening them off and they’re protesting with pale leaves and slowed growth, but still plugging along. I’ll probably transplant them the first sunny warm day we have next week. After that awful hot weather we had last weekend, it’s been in the low 50s and raining all week. The carrots are getting these cute little fuzzy true leaves. I love watching things grow :)